Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers • Hacker News Board

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#61

Post by adamrezich » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #57

adamrezich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this was my entire experience in "computer" classes K–12 in the 90s–00s. never once were we encouraged to play around or try new things. we were taught to follow instructions to the letter to use computers to complete arbitrary tasks exactly as prescribed. the closest thing to letting us "color outside the lines" was letting us literally pick the color and bgcolor attributes for the HTML4 web pages we made for some a…

In a computer class in the 90s, it would actually have made some sense. Schools have never had good IT staff, and it was easy to screw things up accidentally. Hell, in '94 I was in USAF tech school and watched a guy answer yes to the "WARNING: This will remove all data on non-removable disk drive C:" prompt not 30 seconds after the teacher explicitly said that getting that message meant you had mistyped. Allegedly an…

reasonably fair assessment, but the problem with Chromebooks is that they're basically glorified smartphones as opposed to desktop PCs, in that they're consumption devices as opposed to creative devices. sure you can get various chrome extensions (presumably not on these school Chromebooks though) that let you get part of the way there—I passed my first semester of CS using only a Chromebook with the Secure Shell extension to remote into my linux box at home—but by and large the era of everyone having the untapped creative power of a cheap commercial desktop PC in their home is kind of over now, and in my opinion we largely squandered that wonderful time by not encouraging more young people to play around with them creatively.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#62

Post by WalterBright » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

sporkland wrote: post #53

supernova87a wrote: post #52

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I believe it was pg's, The Four Quadrants of Conformism: http://www.paulgraham.com/conformism.html I still think about it quite a bit. I think some rules are valid for a point in time and become invalid over time (e.g. some of the old Jewish rules around food probably made more sense before modern food mgmt standards). And pg's point is people / kids follow rules without understanding them for the most part. Or they…

1. novice follows the rules because he's told to

2. master follows the rules because he understands the rules

3. guru breaks the rules because his knowledge transcends them

Doing these out of order doesn't work very well.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#63

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #58

supernova87a wrote: post #52

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I guess, not really? But this results in justifying any existing rule and that conclusion is incompatible with my existing world view so I end up viewing it as an artifact of rhetoric rather than a result of logic.

[deleted]

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#64

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #59

sandworm101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern schools, most any deviation from prescribed behavior is considered "rule breaking". A kid playing a game they way they want to play it, rather than the way they were taught to play it, is a disruptive kid that needs correction by peers or authority figures.

When Flight Simulator came out, my first thought was to see what would happen when you crashed the airplane. People would actually get upset as I would try to crash it. These were adults! They'd get so into the game they were afraid of crashing the imaginary airplane. (It was a bit disappointing, it would only freeze the screen and draw a crack across it!)

Surely by 2021 there is the equivalent of Burnout for aviation games?

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#65

Post by orgels_revenge » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #52

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

As someone who can tolerate just about anything - take it back to the start: we were thrust into this life without our consent. Life is inherently an inconvenience from this perspective. So what if a roommate doesn’t do dishes, if people cheat, break rules, etc? I didn’t even ask to be here in the first place. I am quiet, happy, unbothered, when I adopt this view. But not unambitious, lazy, etc. Quite the contrary. It just seems like complaining about rule-breakers is worse than rule-breaking itself.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#66

Post by brnt » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #44

swayvil wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like that with Lego. Some people grab the bricks, mess around, create and destroy chaotically, explore. But then there's this whole other culture. They create the thing described by the directions, step by step.

I was a combo of both. I would build the thing one time when it was brand new. It was a good way of learning how some pieces could be combined and be used in designs. After that, all the pieces got placed into big buckets for later assembly into whatever. I've never had a lego "build" last longer than a few days.

I think I treated Lego instruction books a bit as my bible. Thou shalt built this, at least once. Most of my creativity was in composition: I would built a city out of all those more or less built-to-instruction sets, and would overhaul said city every few months or so. Road plates would have sidewalks, roads with directions, that I would type and print on a computer, rail, preferable with a higher bridge somewhere every time. Once the whole city was built up and complete (no space left empty), I'd take it all away and compose a new city.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#67

Post by mlyle » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #41

mherdeg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this! When the toddler plays an iPad game he likes to start by "failing" (choosing the wrong option, deliberately crashing a toy car, doing nothing at all) and watching what happens. It looks to me like he's basically experimenting - trying things and watching what happens. I generally just let him try and fail (and discuss what happened with him) and after about 1-2 minutes he tries the "right" thing becau…

A toddler probably gets as much 'reward' from the Skinner box like iPad games on failure as on success. It makes a noise, flashes an interesting image. The reason to 'succeed' an older child is to satisfy the conditions and progress in the game, a toddler maybe gets equal reward (at first) because they don't see why driving further is success. Once the novelty of the first set of sounds and images is exhausted then i…

Being able to control the game and progress on demand is still mastery, even if the spectacular failure is interesting to explore first.

I blow up plenty of things in Kerbal Space Program in interesting ways before deciding to buckle down and get more science.

Playing around with the "wrong" geometrical proof instead of taking the straightforward and known-to-myself approach isn't harming me, either.

Young kids like exploring the whole state space-- not just the ones we're likely to label as success or useful. Then at some point later they get afraid to fail-- especially to be seen failing. It's a mixed bag: motivation to push "forward" is useful, but fear of failure prevents deeper understanding or full effort sometimes.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#68

Post by mlyle » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #42

OtomotO wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about US modern schools, right? (Genuine question)

Not my school in the US. Cynical me thinks there is no actual underlying experience driving the observation.

It was a pretty common feature of the schools I grew up in.

My second-earliest school memory was being asked to sit on my nametag in Kindergarten (the standard time out). We were doing an activity where we were supposed to circle whether something made a short or long O sound, and were listening to an audio tape with headphones. The words were printed on the worksheet, though, so I went ahead and circled all the correct ones and then sat quietly doing nothing. When the aide noticed she sent me to the tag on the carpet and then everyone forgot about me because I was so quiet. I would guess I was there for quite some time, but my 5 year old notion of time was wacked.

I have many more memories of similar things: being punished for doing math problems in different ways, or completing work early, mutually agreeing to play a board game by different rules during "free time", or responding to an essay prompt in an unexpected way.

I am now a teacher at an independent school which my 3 sons attend. Faculty tries really hard to avoid doing this. It is aggravating and difficult when you have 20 kids and a subset go off in a completely different direction than you were hoping to reach with the activity. I can totally understand that with larger classes like most public schools have, a worse behavior baseline, etc, how one would be tempted to leap to chastisement.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#69

Post by mlyle » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

swayvil wrote: post #31

mherdeg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this! When the toddler plays an iPad game he likes to start by "failing" (choosing the wrong option, deliberately crashing a toy car, doing nothing at all) and watching what happens. It looks to me like he's basically experimenting - trying things and watching what happens. I generally just let him try and fail (and discuss what happened with him) and after about 1-2 minutes he tries the "right" thing becau…

It's like that with Lego. Some people grab the bricks, mess around, create and destroy chaotically, explore. But then there's this whole other culture. They create the thing described by the directions, step by step.

Man, we do both in my house.

When I was a kid, I mostly had pile-of-legos and not sets. I did very little following of the directions.

My kids *love* just messing around with piles of LEGO (and even Duplo) and making their own creations: mostly weapons. And they also love working on the 3000 piece crazy-complicated sets, presorting everything and figuring out where to put each piece step by step.

There's a whole lot of creative, unstructured play (not really heading towards mastery of sculpting or design), and a whole lot of concentrating replicating a model. It'd be kind of neat if they'd decide to do something inbetween.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#70

Post by Supermancho » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #28

Correcting 'mistakes' - children help their peers.

> We assumed that, because everyone knows everyone else in small scale communities, direct interventions would be less common, as people could rely on more indirect ways such as reputation to ensure compliance with rules. But we actually found the opposite to be true.

Sigh. This is the kind of bad assumption I would expect from a 1st year college student.

In rural communities, the risk of someone making mistakes is more impactful (and therefor more serious). Rural life is a lot simpler in some ways, as well. In an urban center, there are countless ways to solve problems and discoveries to be made with the materials at hand. Urban mistakes or inefficiencies are well tolerated, as they may simply be a previously unknown solution/technique with their own cost/benefit profile.