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Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#91

Post by friendlybus »

barry-cotter wrote: post #32
WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The evidence for transfer learning is weak to the point of non-existence. Citation needed. But transfer learning is a term specific to the ML field anyway, so I'm not sure why you used it. > teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school I don't think most people believe this is the purpose of school, not even nationalists.

Sorry, meant transfer of learning. Re: schooling as a means of promoting nationalism > Education and Military Rivalry > Using data from the last 150 years in a small set of countries, and from the postwar period in a large set of countries, we show that large investments in state primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. By con- trast, we find that de…

That paper is a decent description of how autocratic or militaristic governments invest in education, the purpose of a school is a separate meaning though. The paper itself states that threats to democracy increase enrolment and not funding, showing that parents or kids find value in applying to school even when it is not invested in. The paper goes on to note that expansion into studying economic threats as a motive for investment into schooling could be explored.

The paper is too narrow to be a 'better sell' than transfer of learning, as dubious as that is.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#92

Post by watwut »

hrktb wrote: post #71
emanuer wrote: post #58

My 9 years old son has refused to go to his public Tokyo school for two years now. I am from a German speaking country and the idea of a child not to attend school is absolutely unimaginable. His mother (Japanese) has always insisted that this is not uncommon in Japan. His head-teachers also insured me that this is not uncommon. As I am not living in Japan I had to accept these circumstances. I was somewhat calmed by…

> So, if my hypothesis is correct, parents in Japan are more likely to go untreated You are right that people don’t often admit mental illness in public or to people they don’t trust. That’s not that different from western countries in my experience, there is a stigma associated to even depression. Perhaps agoraphobia would be the line where people just nod and ask for details, otherwise they tend to draw a line and…

Only few mental health issues can be solved just like that by prescription. Many if not most are lifetime issues with considerable consequences on everyone around.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#95

Post by paganel »

growlist wrote: post #85
paganel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we get on quite well in Europe, thank you very much. I suggest you take a car-ride through Northern France, close to Verdun, if those numberless WW1 cemeteries don’t change your mind I don’t know what else will.

> Actually we get on quite well in Europe, thank you very much. I suggest you take a car-ride through Northern France, close to Verdun, if those numberless WW1 cemeteries don’t change your mind I don’t know what else will. That'll be the same France that has nuclear weapons?

I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt as per this website’s rules but looking at your recent post history I can see that you’re a Brexit supporter so I’ll leave it at that, there’s no benefit in arguing. But for the life of me I cannot understand why people like you, who are against an open society, choose to spend your time on the Internet, i.e. the number one “result” (so to speak) of the post-WW2 open society. In other words, if you are a provincialist why do people like you choose to spend their time in discussing with foreigners on a borderless thing like the Internet?

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#96

Post by swiley »

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

I thought when I got older I’d look back at homeschool and think it was a mistake. The older I get and the more I hear about public school the more I’m convinced my parents knew what they were doing.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#97

Post by dkersten »

satori99 wrote: post #87
dkersten wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except school never thought me how to learn. School learning was always an uphill battle for me and using schools ways of learning was a hindrance to me in uni and later life. I had to figure out for myself the best ways for me to learn, but unfortunately didn’t really have a good grasp on it until much later (after uni). Hell, I was a somewhat troubled teen with problems and when I was about 14, I outright refused t…

I had a similar experience, though I still value skills I was forced to learn. Even things like cooking skills, that held little interest for me at the time. I often found that my interests were there, but misaligned. I may have been intensely interested in some aspect of history -- but not the anything on the current curriculum. If, by chance my interests aligned with a class topic, I excelled without much effort. M…

> though I still value skills I was forced to learn

Oh, I’m not saying it was without value, just that it was a very inefficient way of learning, which in turn means I learned a lot less in the time I spent on it than I could have or was otherwise unhappy with my school years when they could have been amazing.

> I often found that my interests were there, but misaligned. I may have been intensely interested in some aspect of history -- but not the anything on the current curriculum.

Yes, absolutely. Or even just that I wasn’t interested at that particular moment. Somebody recently explained to me that Montessori basically lets kids choose what to learn any any particular time (in a self learning way). I feel this would have been extremely suited to me. I was always an intuitive person who had to learn how or why things work, I’m pretty sure that I would have found myself interested in most school things at some point.

> My other gripe was the lack of integration between topics

Yeah I agree with this too. Also just not being very hands on. Other people mentioned the “when will I ever use this” question. School (and even uni) was pretty bad at teaching ways that you might actually want to know this thing aside from general interest. For example, I hated statistics in uni and did bad in that course (didn’t help that the lecturer was ab alcoholic but anyway), until some time later when I needed it for a project I wanted to do and I found that not only is it useful, but also quite interesting. When something is thought purely in the abstract it’s boring and seems not that useful but when you put it into practice it can be really fun and interesting.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#99

Post by Filligree »

steve1977 wrote: post #46
sametmax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid, it's very easy to make friends. You don't need school for that. Three of my child hood best friends were not in my schools. I sill visit one regularly, 20 years later. In fact, I'll argue that school distort the child ability to socialize, not improve it. Because it's an artificial setup were the crazy values and rules only exist and make sense in the school. And worst, adults sell you values and rules from…

And it's an arbitrary cohort of same-age kids. Whereas for example my friends in the neighborhood all were of different ages. Not very different, but still.

That's the biggest thing schools do wrong, in my opinion. Children learn best from each other, but that requires mixing age groups so there's something for them to teach.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#100

Post by shifto »

emanuer wrote: post #58

My 9 years old son has refused to go to his public Tokyo school for two years now. I am from a German speaking country and the idea of a child not to attend school is absolutely unimaginable. His mother (Japanese) has always insisted that this is not uncommon in Japan. His head-teachers also insured me that this is not uncommon. As I am not living in Japan I had to accept these circumstances. I was somewhat calmed by…

I wish you and your son the best of luck.
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