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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

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Re: No Way to Grow Up

#621

Post by uniqueuid »

ianai wrote: post #606
uniqueuid wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this comment, it's incredibly true. Some elementary school teachers I know (in Europe) repeatedly remind me how important non-academic elements are in school. * Kids go to school to get emotional care. * Kids go to school to get attention, and someone to listen. * Kids go to school to learn social behavior. * Kids go to school to have a surrogate mommy to care for them while parents work. * Kids go to s…

Wow that’s absolutely not what public school was like for me. It was brutality left right and center. My first grade teacher put me in “remedial class” after she “caught” me being able to read upside down and backwards. She was across the room at the time. Then there’s all the bullying on the playground - including being knocked out unconscious the first time I actually stood up to a bully. The school punished us bot…

I'm deeply sorry that school was so horrible for you.

I can also tell you that in contemporary affluent european regions, my rosy version of the story is common.

It's of course an enlightment-style utopia, but even if reality often was and is different, I'm very convinced that this is what we should strive for.

There are different stances towards educating children, of course, but this one (and its versions) is arguably the humane one.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#622

Post by dogleash »

dqpb wrote: post #605
dogleash wrote: post #480

This article is a confidence trick. By making it about COVID, the affluent readers of the New York Times can pat themselves on the back as if they weren't failing the youth prior to quarantine measures. Of course they were. I've seen it. Everyone's seen it; even if they've chosen to believe they haven't. The secondary sources have to water it down like this article if they want to talk about it at all. And the primar…

You’re being a little too cryptic.

COVID procedures negatively impacted schooling, it follows that removing COVID restrictions and procedures will positively impact schooling. That's all fine and good so far... Let's posit going back to 2018-era schooling will provide 4 Units of School Improvement. 4 USI sounds great, right?

What if there was 40 USI just sitting on the shelf waiting to be picked up? But it's in a blind spot. It was there waiting in 2018 and never touched.

The 4 USI can be achieved by getting rid of the things we never wanted in the first place. Achieving that 40 USI will mean ruthlessly tearing into the status quo.

So, let's circle back and remind ourselves that this is an article using big words and statistics to state the obvious: schooling under covid sucks. No shit, that's not news, but it's in The Times. So let's look more carefully at what it does say. They're not learning enough, and the institutional socialization is producing people less well-adjusted than ever.

OK, technically true. But those were the most visible problems with schools before COVID too.

So, why is this specific article - written this way - in The Times? What purpose(es) - deliberate or not - does it serve?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#623

Post by uniqueuid »

ianai wrote: post #607
uniqueuid wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha sure! What I implied is: There are many things we need to learn about life in public spaces, including trivial things such as: What is a stall, where is the toilet paper, how do other people behave, what's the etiquette etc etc. Much of this is completely non-evident to small kids, because behavior at home is (naturally) so different.

That could be taught at the public library.

Only if that involves watching people, since much of what kids learn is subconscious and sub-vocal.

I.e. they learn many things we don't know they learn, and don't know exist, because we are taking them for granted all the time.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#624

Post by dqpb »

It’s interesting. Our actions have been too weak to stop the pandemic, but strong enough to destabilize our economy and social systems.

I imagine our response to climate change will be the same. Either we won’t do anything, or we’ll do enough to hurt ourselves, but not enough to solve the problem.

This is probably the consequence of our half-assed faux democracy. Power is neither concentrated enough to have an autocrat make decisions, nor distributed enough for crowd-wisdom to take direct action.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#625

Post by sanedigital »

cm2187 wrote: post #94
animal_spirits wrote: post #5

> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults. At first we didn't know how much harm the virus would cause to children. But now that we see it is much less dangerous for them we shouldn't be preventing them from learning because we are afraid of getting sick. The children are the future, and in order to secure a positive growth in society it is our obligat…

Chinese deaths stats by age were available from March 2020. It is just the media decided to ignore them.

Chinese stats about anything should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. According to them, zero people have died since April 2020.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#626

Post by sanedigital »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #416
nsxwolf wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was pretty much understood the vaccines weren't doing much for contraction of Delta already. We've moved on to "prevents serious illness and death" which is still true for Omicron and ought to be enough for teachers to return to work.

In that case, shouldn't it be enough for everyone to return to work? I wonder why top companies in the S&P 500 are delaying return to work then. Clearly they must be operating under the same mysterious constraints that are keeping schools closed.

Top companies in the S&P 500 are delaying return to work because many tried it and were met with absolute mutiny. The vast majority of people got a taste of the remote life and don't want to return.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#627

Post by sanedigital »

wayoutthere wrote: post #458
quadrifoliate wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vaccines for teachers have been widely available for almost a year now. You appear to have missed the news around the Omicron variant being much better at vaccine evasion than Delta. You can't compare the situation a year ago with the one now, which is unique and unprecedented, just like the pandemic was initially.

I have Omicron right now. I’m vaccinated and had my booster in November. I’m young, healthy, I work remotely and I’m struggling to make it through half a day. My symptoms aren’t even that bad, I’m just exhausted all the time. There is no way I could do a job where I had to be on my feet all day. I can barely carry on a conversation. The problem right now where I live is that everyone is sick . Grocery stores, restaur…

> My symptoms aren’t even that bad, I’m just exhausted all the time.

There are 30-40M symptomatic cases of the flu each year in the US, with the same or worse symptoms as what you just described. There is no "new" normal, cold & flu season just got more complex.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#628

Post by yohannparis »

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…

I don't understand your point, the article is clearly advocating for school to get back to normal despite of Covid, because their education and social development is so important in contrast to their risk to covid.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#629

Post by wayoutthere »

sanedigital wrote: post #627
wayoutthere wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Omicron right now. I’m vaccinated and had my booster in November. I’m young, healthy, I work remotely and I’m struggling to make it through half a day. My symptoms aren’t even that bad, I’m just exhausted all the time. There is no way I could do a job where I had to be on my feet all day. I can barely carry on a conversation. The problem right now where I live is that everyone is sick . Grocery stores, restaur…

> My symptoms aren’t even that bad, I’m just exhausted all the time. There are 30-40M symptomatic cases of the flu each year in the US, with the same or worse symptoms as what you just described. There is no "new" normal, cold & flu season just got more complex.

I’ve had the flu. Covid is way worse.

We’re already in the new normal; nobody is going back into the office if they don’t have to and that alone will force a realignment of American life. We were slowly headed that way before Covid anyway, the pandemic just made it happen. Companies requiring knowledge workers to be onsite are having huge levels of attrition because the employees have options.

One of my clients who was very eager to get back into the office and tried forcing the issue in Q3 last year has seen 40% of their engineering staff quit over the last 6 months, and are having a hard time finding replacements. They made the decision just before the holidays to switch to a remote-first model and downsize their offices. This is happening, and it’s going to crush commercial real estate.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#630

Post by ryathal »

snerbles wrote: post #508
rdtwo wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point you get too old and you outgrow your college peer group. I think 2 years is the most id recommend. College is like 30% study 30% social and 40% getting the initial experience that you can use to start that first job.

I finished my degree after returning from an enlistment, and was about 8-10 years older than the typical "college-aged" peer group. Though ages tended to skew older in the ECE department I attended, with at least a quarter of the EE majors being established over-30 professionals and veterans finishing their own degrees. Variety in age in socialization is a healthy thing, and I feel cramming entire cohorts into a 24-m…

You also spent enlistment time in a similar to college setting for the social aspects anyway, so you would be less impacted by the lack of it in actual college.
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