Many Japanese children refuse to go to school • Hacker News Board

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#121

Post by VLM » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

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…

"The pathway from school to job is nebulous to" everyone, now a days.

This has been decoupling in western civ over the last couple generations.

People, including kids, will put up with all kinds of ridiculous behaviors and treatment for a long term reward. Slowly take away the reward over a couple generations and people WILL stop responding in a Pavlovian fashion and the game is over.

The kids are right. In the old days abusive school system lead to a materially successful career. But with an economy holding more people than productive jobs, why put up with the abuse if you're not going to get anything out of it anyway?

In the old days, hazing led to automatic full membership in the cool kids club. Not any more. Unsurprisingly, hazing isn't too popular anymore other than some vague traditional "when I was a kid they abused me too" sense.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#122

Post by SkyBelow » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

krige wrote: post #41

chii wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after they are successful in life... where the definition of success is based on the parent's perception of what success means. The child's opinions nor desires don't come into the picture.

Ignoring the extremes, why would a child's opinion be taken into account in a situation like this? What experiences does the child have that makes their opinion valid in parenting issues?

As a young child, talking from the single digits, I knew I wanted to build video games. That desire eventually grew into an above average career in software development. While I don't do video game development other than some small side projects, that's a choice I've made as an adult due to the current video game industry.

It's the child's own future, so when possible the parents should let the child's own desires lead them toward a successful future. That is a hard balance to strike, because the parent has to turn their child's desire into more general skills that can be useful even if the child's dream isn't realistic or the best outcome.

I wonder how my life would've been if my parents got me involved in computers and programming when I was 8 instead of ignoring it and waiting until I taught myself at 15.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#123

Post by electriclove » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

known wrote: post #94

I think schools should teach/protect kids from Machiavellianism (manipulate/deceive others) Psychopathy (lack of remorse/empathy) Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others) Narcissism (egotism/self-obsession)

Agreed! If you find one that does this or have recommendations on how to teach about this, please share. As a parent, I want to impart knowledge on these things to my kids. We have always focused on teaching compassion and kindness. The real world is full of all kinds of people, with all kinds of values or lack of, and all kinds of parenting or lack of.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#124

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #38

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.

Nationalists most certainly believe that, for example every small change to our children’s history books that can be seen as not conforming to our glorious past (or what the nationalists see as our “glorious past”) is seen by our local nationalists (I live in a Eastern Europe) as potentially the end of the world as we know it. Europe can be interesting like that, good thing that we (almost) stopped killing each other…

> killing each other after WW2 over stupid things like imaginary lines drawn on soil.

Those imaginary lines drawn on soil determine how resources are allocated, for example, enabling cheap energy and customers for the US’s military industrial complex, or cheap spices and labor for the British, and so on and so forth.

Even the most advanced mammals use tribes to maximize chances of survival, and humans are no different.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#125

Post by shantly » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #20

satori99 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But when am I actually going to use this?" I was as guilty of this as anyone in my school days, and yet not a single teacher ever pointed out to me that I was at school to learn how to learn , so in a sense the subject matter was irrelevant.

A lot of people graduate highschool with severely damaged ideas of what it means to "learn" (cramming for tests, teasing out hints from the exact wording of multiple choice questions, highlighting keyword-y sentences in textbooks based on the expectation that test makers will be lazy.) So school may not even be teaching that.

Being good at quickly figuring out the intended correct answer of multiple choice questions has two actual uses in adult life: personality & behavioral screening tests for jobs in the lower tier of the economic pyramid, and corporate/government mandated "training".

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#126

Post by undoneAgain » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #102

I tried as hard as I could not to go to school, beginning with second grade. In retrospect I maybe wish I had done an advanced degree, but avoiding junior high and high school still seems the rational choice.

The truth is, there was no open path for you, and from your perspective, you saw that the doors were closed and the gates were locked.

I see this with every interview. Smirks, eye rolls, laughs.

It wouldn't have mattered what you tried. You were held down, ruined by a denial of access, systemic in nature.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#127

Post by danfang » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

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…

The community here on HN seems to have a very negative opinion of school. PG seems to talk about it quite frequently.

Here's a different viewpoint.

I personally really enjoyed school.

I enjoyed the social structure of school. I wasn't popular by any means, but I had my group of nerdy, academic friends who shared a passion for learning and building things.

Learning how to deal with social conflicts, when they inevitably arose, turned out to be super useful.

It was interesting just to observe all the different types of people. I learned a lot about myself by learning about others.

The relationships I made through school are much stronger than ones made later on. Maybe it's that I found like-minded people early on. But being put in a high-stress environment and going through shared struggles brought us closer together.

I also enjoyed the academic structure of school. It exposed me to a breadth of knowledge that I know I wouldn't have explored otherwise. I found it to be a great stepping stone to learn more on my own.

FWIW I went to a public school with decent academic rigor. I had mostly good teachers, a few great, and a few bad. Maybe my experience was "lucky" compared to most others here?

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#128

Post by nabla9 » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

> In Japan, more and more children are refusing to go to school, a phenomenon called "futoko"

Articles about Japan always bring up Japanese names for things. What is the reason for this?

You don't usually see the same for other countries: In German more and more children are lonely, a phenomenon called "die Einsamkeit".

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#129

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #65

sametmax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Even as an adult, If I could do it all again, I would avoid school as much as possible. School is an upgrade from child labor, but I now have enough experience to know it's a downgrade from what I can learn of my own. Not saying every kid should do the same of course. But personnally, after being in 11 schools, including fancy private ones and ones in poor neighbourhoods, I found extremly few decent teachers, a v…

> Also, I don't miss having to fight for social acceptance, the bullying, the stress and pressure nor the hypocrisy of the ones in charge. Ironically this is somehow the most valuable lessons learned during school, since you ultimately have to deal with this shit throughout your life in most career paths. So at least you got prepared for that.

[deleted]

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#130

Post by shantly » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #102

I tried as hard as I could not to go to school, beginning with second grade. In retrospect I maybe wish I had done an advanced degree, but avoiding junior high and high school still seems the rational choice.

A US kid who hates school but has above-average general intelligence (so, not the prodigies who teach themselves Attic Greek at age 6 and go to Harvard at 12, just normal 1-in-50 or 1-in-25 smart kids) can probably bail on high school when they're 16, get into a community college (test scores ought to do it), take all the courses for an associate's degree, then snag a GED when eligible and officially pick up the degree. Doing all that plus having a part-time job is almost certainly a smaller time commitment than high school is and you'll get basically the same education or somewhat better, except you'll already have a degree and a ton of transferable credit toward a bachelor's at age 18.