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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

#141

Post by jonahbenton »

actfrench wrote: post #73

"forced to sit in front of a screen" is the key phrase here. What if we didn't force them to sit, but allowed them to stand and move about freely, come and go when they please, have some autonomy and decision making power around what goes on in class (e.g. share preferences for what they want to learn) and give them frequent movement breaks (a good set of headphones, an ipad with a wide lens attached allows that). Wh…

It's a much bigger question/challenge than lack of hardware.

With all respect, the model this assumes for how kids work... is just not how kids work. It's not how attention works.

Think about it like a movie. Kids at different ages will sit through movies of different lengths and subjects. Those movies have production budgets- of minimum thousands of dollars per second even at the lowest end, and shooting and editing commitments that are tens to hundreds or more person hours per video second.

Expecting a live performer to engage not just 1 passive kid but n active kids with a new show every day over a screen- where every mistake or every blip doesn't get edited out in post but actually has to be dealt with in real time, while each kid has their own dynamics, their own family situations, their own issues PRESENT WITH THEM while all this is going on....

In terms of the quantity of human attention at production time to ensure consumer engagement- the ratio between a movie and a live person on the other side of the screen is, like, 1,000,000 to 1.

It is NOT POSSIBLE to solve the engagement problem in the way that remote school is expected to solve for it and there is no model, resource, technology, or anything that makes it work.

This is coming from a long time ed tech advocate, having built games and education platforms and worked in schools and having 3 kids of my own.

What we are doing with remote school is INSANITY.

Unfortunately, the alternatives are also insane.

There is no solving anything. There's no what if. There's no answer.

And more pointedly- it sounds like the poster here does not have kids.

Pro tip, no offense intended- if you don't have kids- don't weigh in on these issues. You don't know what you're talking about. And you don't have any idea how much you don't know what you're talking about. It isn't worth it for you or for anyone else to engage.

Have a nice day.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#142

Post by elliekelly »

dpcan wrote: post #70
coderholic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and the parents.

What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing reward at the top.

Something being difficult and worthwhile doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient use of your time. And it doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t make those things easier. Building a computer is hard. It’s also worthwhile. I’ve built a few. But I’ve bought a lot more. It usually isn’t worth my time, effort, and energy.

And having conversations about the difficulties is how people, especially people on HN, will better understand the problem and come up with a solution that will (hopefully) leave everyone better off.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#143

Post by inerte »

floren wrote: post #123
learc83 wrote: post #97

Kids 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.

> When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day. Wait, hang on, is kindergarten all-day now? I was in kindergarten in... 1992, and it was half a day.

My son's school changed to full day this year (Los Gatos, CA area) - but I think all the other schools in the district were full day already. When he did Kindergarten few years ago, it was for half a day.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#144

Post by visarga »

Animats wrote: post #111

"Virtual pre-kintegarden?" That's childcare, not education.

Yes, agreed, but parents are desperate. Kids need kids to play with, at least they see other kids on the screen. It's a really unfortunate situation for the development of small children.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#145

Post by marta_morena_25 »

dstick wrote: post #125
marta_morena_25 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a crazy idea that needs to come before this: What if we taught our adult population to process their difficult emotions instead of suppressing them and stay active and move freely while working and studying. Actually, this already falls flat in the first section. At least 90% of adult fail on that one. How are they supposed to teach something to their children that they themselves don't even understand? And t…

Is there some deeper meaning to 1 + 1 = 2 you could enlighten us on? Most teachers I’ve met seem perfectly capable at getting at least that across.

"seem perfectly capable at getting at least that across" yeah, that's part of the problem. They already know that 1+1=2, or so you'd think. But you would be hard pressed to find a teacher who can actually explain WHY 1+1=2 (which is based in how our number system was created and using proof by induction). Anyway, that is besides the point, since you won't teach children math with college approaches, but the important thing is that most teachers don't understand what they teach, they just "say what they remember".

And that doesn't pair well with children's insatiable "why" requests, even if they don't utter them. Teaching children is actually harder than teaching adults, because most adults largely gave up on the "why" and just settle on "I gotta remember that, if I want to pass the next exam" (school did a good job with them I guess).

So why 1+1=2? There is a lot of depth in that that is left unanswered and children are forced to memorize the answer. From then on, a sharp decline of cognitive ability follows as they "graduate" through our excellent school systems...

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#146

Post by jdofaz »

floren wrote: post #123
learc83 wrote: post #97

Kids 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.

> When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day. Wait, hang on, is kindergarten all-day now? I was in kindergarten in... 1992, and it was half a day.

Arizona does not fund full day kindergarten

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#147

Post by gonehome »

treis wrote: post #131
danShumway wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on education, I'm not going to speculate on the psychological effects of having a year without school on a kid. I don't think I'm qualified to do that. Outside of developmental effects though, by the time you get to college does it really matter if someone is one year older than another person? Is anyone going to get rejected from a first job interview just because they're 26 instead of 25? Plenty o…

You can't push pause on human development, though. Having your first job interview at 26 instead of 25 doesn't matter. Missing out on a year of socialization when you're 6 almost certainly does.

You're still taking in input and experiencing the world.

I was really young for the grade I was in which made things harder than necessary. It would have been easier to be a year older.

You'd still get the socialization anyway, you'd just have one year with a little less (and I'm not really convinced that remote socialization via remote learning is particularly helpful, whatever alternative socialization outside of remote learning is probably just as good or better).

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#148

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #109
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #40

All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old. Adults are barely able to make it through a day of Zoom meetings without feeling drained, how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to sit in front of a screen? The only reasons adults can do it is years and years of learning impulse controls and suppression of bad emotions for everyone's good. A 5 year old does not have the…

> how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to sit in front of a screen? The same way that you expect a kid to sit more-or-less still, and not-too-disruptively in a classroom with 29 other children for 6 hours a day. When they, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, can't, we diagnose them with ADHD and give them a Ritalin patch. I get it. Remote learning isn't great. It's worse than in-person learning,…

[deleted]

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#149

Post by jdmoreira »

baq wrote: post #114
jdmoreira wrote: post #38

The problem is not so much that kids can’t handle virtual education as much as we not being able to care for our kids because we have a jobs. Think about it... Do you think it’s normal for a human child to be institutionalized just because his/her parents are working? Where is their hunter-gatherer band when your kids need it? Nothing about 2020 nuclear family society is normal for a human child. Nothing at all.

your points seem to be contradicting each other. hunter gatherers would naturally have institutionalized child care - when some people go gathering, some people go hunting and some people stay put and look after the tribe's children if they aren't ready to do either. this is about as far from a nuclear family as you can get though, especially if the tribal culture isn't monogamous and e.g. a child can have many fathe…

Until very very recent times a child would accompany the parents in their daily activities and help.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#150

Post by bdamm »

ghaff wrote: post #117
CydeWeys wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a top-of-the-line $3,000 16" Macbook Pro and it comes with a garbage-tier 720p webcam that has terrible dynamic range and low-light performance. It's embarrassing . Most Windows laptops at a third of the price have significantly better webcams.

I assume thinness is part of the problem--my high-end Logitech webcam is about an inch thick. Also webcam quality was probably just not much of a consideration until fairly recently. But, even if someone doesn't more or less set up a studio as I've done to a degree and some of my colleagues have done, there are some pretty basic things related to lighting and webcam height that can be done pretty easily by most peopl…

iPhone cameras are pretty good and they're very thin. Front or back.
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