It's slightly amusing to me that people are upset kids are "forced to sit still" in zoom as if the didn't have just as much trouble being "forced to sit still" in traditional classroom environments. The big difference is that parents weren't around to see how much suffering this very unnatural forcing of kids to sit still was causing them. A lot of schools have 30 minutes of recess if they're lucky. All kids, especially kinesthetic learners need to be able to move to learn. It's part of the process.
My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
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Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#92I can't help but feel that many of the dismissive comments here must be either from folks without kids, or from people that got lucky with a well-mannered child. You think those good manners were all your amazing parenting? You probably deserve some credit, but I think you also lucked out more than you realize. Haven't you seen parents with multiple kids and those kids have wildly different dispositions? I urge you t…
> Haven't you seen parents with multiple kids and those kids have wildly different dispositions?
Agreed - I have three kids. One is going to her school in-person. Another sits on the couch on his laptop for 4 straight hours until he gets his work done, and refuses to take a break. The last one works in 20-30 minutes sessions, doing screen time, then taking a break.
If I were to force any one of them to work like the others, it would go badly. Different people, different ways to work.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#93I just pulled my own kids out of public school because I can't stomach it either. I can't in good conscience subject my kids to 6 hours of online class 5 days a week. Whether or not you want to judge me for feeling this way or call me nasty names, "psychic torture" is exactly how I'd describe the solution these educators have come up with.
I would prefer this but my wife and I both work, I didn't want to make my kid re-test into grade level/honors, and they didn't release the "on screen 8am, off screen 2pm" schedule until last week.. oh well I guess we will see how it goes.
I specifically complained that the main benefit of remote learning is the at-your-own-pace aspect of it, which is being tossed out the window. I swear the district was more concerned with the teachers putting in the correct number of working hours than with doing things that might actually work for kids.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they have raised a hellion A five year old is far from having been raised. As a parent of a 6 year old I know a bunch of other parents that have similar experiences where their kids are revolting against being forced to sit in front of a virtual teacher for hours every day.
You can't fix much of that stuff after he is 7 years old. Educate the child so you don't have to jail the adult. At least that's the common wisdom grandmothers say in my country. Some study I found that also mentions the seven-year milestone: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Personality-Is-Fully-Dev...
Well about 1/4 of the prison population has ADHD and half are dyslexic. Female prison populations also have a very high rate of BPD.
The grandmother's where you're from might benefit from learning about pervasive developmental disorders and the effects of trauma.
Some people are dealing with stuff that isn't their fault and that they never got adequate support for.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#95I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here. I read the article and it seems totally normal for a little kid not to be able to do "school" on a laptop. Kindergarten is so much different than later years of schooling. It's not about lectures and subjects, or homework and tests. It's about much more fundamental lessons, interspersed with creativity, socialization, and learning to be separated from your parents.…
"I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here" The contrarian dynamic strikes again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the contrarian dynamic?
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here" The contrarian dynamic strikes again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the contrarian dynamic?
"Threads often get an initial wave of negative comments, followed by a second wave of objections to the objections. What determines the initial wave of comments is not community opinion—rather, it's what's the easiest thing to make reflexive objections to. Those comments are the first to show up because those reflexive reactions take the least time. Thoughtful comments require reflection, which is much slower" ?
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#97Kids can't learn all day long in a classroom. I don't know why we expect them to be able to do it remotely. School has always been 1/3 learning 2/3 baby sitting.
When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the contrarian dynamic?
" Threads often get an initial wave of negative comments, followed by a second wave of objections to the objections. What determines the initial wave of comments is not community opinion—rather, it's what's the easiest thing to make reflexive objections to. Those comments are the first to show up because those reflexive reactions take the least time. Thoughtful comments require reflection, which is much slower " ?
Thank you.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#99A glaring irony for me here is that historically, wealthier families have significantly more access to online courses. Rather than being the great force for democratization of education we all hoped for, research shows they are privileging the elite. What if we worked to expand access to online courses and improve them for all? https://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/blog/18957-MOOCs-Are-Not-the-S...
> What if we worked to expand access to online courses and improve them for all?
I'd really like for everyone to have a home Internet connection that is symmetric gigabit or better. For some reason, in at least one town in the US, you can get Comcast Internet access that is gigabit down but only 30 mbps up. This is not good enough when you have multiple people who are trying to do things online at the same time. It is all fine if all you're doing is streaming movies/music (downloading)_but uploading videos or conference calls by video means we need decent upload as well.
I don't see a solution other than fiber to the home. Would love to see municipal fiber to be honest.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here" The contrarian dynamic strikes again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the contrarian dynamic?
The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet comments generally) are propelled by people making objections. [1]
The objections come in waves. In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are a community consensus, it's that they're the fastest reactions to feel, and the fastest comments to write—especially when the topic is provocative, when most of us are reacting from cache [2].
Then a second wave of objections is generated by the first wave. Readers come to the thread, see the comment section dominated by those initial reflexive responses, and feel some version of surprised-shocked-dismayed at how "all HN commenters" seem to react in the same way. This propels them to write defenses of the article, often carefully expressing more moderate or balanced views than the first wave—but they probably wouldn't have been motivated to post anything if there hadn't been the first wave of comments to object to!
These second-wave comments tend to get more upvotes, perhaps because more people tend to share the more moderate view, but also because those comments tend to be more reflective [2] and therefore better written.
This explains why the top comment in a thread so often begins (ironically) with "Wow, I can't believe the comments here"—or from the current thread: "All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old" [3]—followed by a defense of whatever those objections were objecting to.
Eventually you get objections to the objections to the objections—which reminds me of the line "My complication had a little complication" from Brazil [4], and also epicycles.
[1] Cunningham's Law touches on this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...