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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

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Re: No Way to Grow Up

#521

Post by runako »

rdtwo wrote: post #485
runako wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the situation on Day 1 return from vacation in my district: - ~20% of the teachers at one school out sick - classrooms being combined due to low staff. Some classrooms combined across grade levels. - Substitutes in many classrooms. Administration staff being used as substitutes. This is all before we are passed the median incubation period for New Year's Eve infections, so I would expect staffing levels to con…

That sounds like a terrible situation. Sorry you have to deal with that. When things are that dire I guess you have to prioritize what’s important. From what you describe they are prioritizing for child care. The older kids probably need more education focus the k-5 kids need the child care. That’s probably administratively hard to pull off though.

To add to our situation, the major hospitals in our metro area area are doing "diversion," which means e.g. there is no room at the trauma center for auto accident victims. "Elective" surgeries like cancer treatments are being deferred.

Nobody expects this wave to continue indefinitely. From what I can see, the peak of the wave may pass in a 1-2 weeks (this is my layperson's understanding). A few years back when storms caused damage to some schools, naturally the kids were out for some time and everybody was fine. But now many parents (pressured by their jobs) are in dire need of childcare, so everything must continue as normal. IMHO better would be for the kids to take at least the week off. It would suck for everybody, but it also seems like the kind of intervention that could save a life or two somewhere in our city.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#522

Post by alfor »

We did homeschooling for 5 years here is my conclusion:

- school is 90% daycare

- 30min of real learning at the level of the child is more than a day at a regular school

- Give your kids real challenges with motivating reward and get out of the way

- What they miss most is connection with kids at the same level (That one is hard to fix)

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#523

Post by bombcar »

adolph wrote: post #468
geoduck14 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools? Actually, a pediatric emergency was just declared [0]. And both Republicans and Democrats passed a $250 Million bill to provide rapid support for children's mental health. A Dr friend described it as "if I'm seeing a child and I'm concerned he/she is suffering from depression, I can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the…

can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the country That seems like a less than scalable approach.

Five experts * 30 minutes means at most 240 kids/day assuming they works around the clock or it’s less than 30m to solve the problem.

Sounds unreasonably optimistic.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#524

Post by yes_really »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #280
ianbicking wrote: post #239

I'd love to see an emotionless cost-benefit analysis of different approaches to handling schools in the pandemic. I suspect the cost of closed schools far exceeds what we intuitively think, since it's not just the educational loss now, it's the cost of future mitigations due to the problems we're causing, and a large cost of lost productivity by parents. How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each da…

> How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a school is closed. I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? If so, does parental productivity also fall drastically during summer when schools have holidays? Stresses by the pandemic itself hav…

> I don't understand the American blind spot that allows people to think of schools being as essential as hospitals; and requires them to both face Covid infections while paying teachers $40k and doctors $400k. Clearly the rates at which teachers are paid indicate that US society doesn't consider them as essential.

That's not how salaries work at all. Waste collection is extremely essential to society (without it, tens of millions would die of easily preventable diseases, and big cities would be unviable). Yet garbage collectors also earn around $40k.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#525

Post by lmm »

throwawaygh wrote: post #439
quadrifoliate wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American society depends on personal responsibility in the aspects of healthcare, retirement, and employment. Your child's education is usually an honorable exception to this in that it's totally government run and borderline volunteer-run, but funding for that is not adequate to the point where you can reasonably expect it to continue as usual in the midst of a global pandemic. The sooner you can come to terms with…

> personal responsibility in the aspects of healthcare Pre-retirement: I don't take any personal responsibility for healthcare. It’s not an option. My employer provides me with a menu of more-or-less completely standardized options. Those options even specify how often I should go to general checks-ups and strictly police my access to specialists. I have very little power to control my own consumption of healthcare,…

> I’m not sure how this is different from places like Europe or even China/Russia.

In most developed countries it's illegal to fire someone without good cause.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#526

Post by DarylZero »

somebodythere wrote: post #494
BobbyJo wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small doesn't mean non-existent. One of the few things even the most extreme anarcho-capitalists believe the government should do is protect it's people from a hostile takeover on behalf of a non-anarcho-capitalist nation.

I think that most anarcho-capitalists don't believe in a government or nation.

Anarcho-capitalists just want archipelagos of privately-owned governments.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#527

Post by kamaal »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #414
ilteris wrote: post #367

I don't give a shit what the article says or specifically points to but I can tell you this much. I am a dad of a 6 year old. My kid goes to public school in NYC and last year was bad... They did a test at the beginning of this year before the start of the first grade and her results were awful. This is an unprecedented event and everyone is clueless including in education. I don't make a big deal about the test resu…

American society depends on personal responsibility in the aspects of healthcare, retirement, and employment. Your child's education is usually an honorable exception to this in that it's totally government run and borderline volunteer-run, but funding for that is not adequate to the point where you can reasonably expect it to continue as usual in the midst of a global pandemic. The sooner you can come to terms with…

>>American society depends on personal responsibility in the aspects of healthcare, retirement, and employment.

All societies in all aspects are like this. Regardless of people like to accept this or not, a person as an individual is always in total ownership of any situation. Sure every once in a while there are bigger problems and the society has to come together. But by and large, we are all on our own.

Acknowledging this helps take control of their life, then do whatever is the best for them.

People need to be ok, with this concept of 'total ownership'.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#528

Post by ryanobjc »

refurb wrote: post #435
honkycat wrote: post #399

And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools? Hell, Anything? No. Nothing is ever done. Nothing ever happens except decay. The United States is spinning down its governmental duties. The pendulum will swing right again, and that will be the death blow. They will continue to gut public and infrastructure programs. All 3 branches will finally truly be a jobs program for the upper cl…

This is an impressive rant and makes sense if you ignore the fact that more and more money is being sucked up by the government that seems to be providing less and less in return. I mean San Francisco has a $1.1B budget for homelessness. That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF. And yet the problem is worse, not better. Maybe it's not a money problem but the approach that's…

You’re wrong about San Francisco having a $1.1B budget for homelessness.

In fy2021-2022 the amount is $670M … over two years.

SF spends 1/4 of the amount you accuse it of.

Furthermore, it’s well known that other counties near and far send their homeless people here. So as a SF tax payer… I think you owe me many thanks for taking care of your homeless people.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#529

Post by DarylZero »

n_plus_1 wrote: post #517
geoduck14 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools? Actually, a pediatric emergency was just declared [0]. And both Republicans and Democrats passed a $250 Million bill to provide rapid support for children's mental health. A Dr friend described it as "if I'm seeing a child and I'm concerned he/she is suffering from depression, I can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the…

I find it funny how there is a separation between the ideas of mental health and peoples lives, as if there is no relation between the two.

That's kind of the entire premise of medicalizing "mental health."

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#530

Post by DarylZero »

partiallypro wrote: post #507
honkycat wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think democrats are the left?

I love this talking point, because in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left. It's only fiscally where they are more moderate. Which is basically the opposite of what most Americans want, yet they seem confused on why they struggle.

Far left on posturing, far right on policy.
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