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I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

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Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#421

Post by recursive »

Aerroon wrote: post #77
ldoughty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, everyone needs kids in schools... (Not saying this is a good thing, just thinking it through as the situation is right now, assuming no changes) Parents who are rejoining the workforce can't take 4-6 weeks of with no notice to babysit their kids again... But they also can't afford to stop working. Businesses can't afford to lose workers, it continues the strain on the system which raises wages and threatens…

> Parents who are rejoining the workforce can't take 4-6 weeks of with no notice to babysit their kids again... Why do you need a babysitter for a school-aged child? OK, maybe if the kid is below 7, but 7 and up should be more than capable of being alone at home. Entire nations do exactly that. In Estonia 7 year olds are expected to go to school on their own and come back home. At home they will likely be alone (or w…

All of my school aged kids are below seven. They absolutely can not handle themselves on their own. There are many like me.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#422

Post by Glyptodon »

da39a3ee wrote: post #189
Glyptodon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, a "class" where you study, do homework, etc., but which in practice is usually a lot of so nothing and goofing off. I think it's a way to get funding for educational minutes without actually having to have anything taught for a period.

OK thanks. Does it (despite the name) take place in a conventional class room? Just wanted to check that the implications wasn't that it was particularly bad for covid transmission, like a big crowded gymnasium or something.

In most circumstances (assuming it's during normal school hours and not an after-school program or something) it's in normal classrooms. I think there's some variation on whether students can't choose a classroom (IE "I need to work on or get help with Math") or it's always an assigned room (IE "my study period is always Ms. XYZ's room).

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#423

Post by discardedrefuse »

lvl100 wrote: post #388

They should really consider repeating grades for kids. The pandemic is robbing the kids of proper education. I suppose this is too late.

These kids have been getting robbed of a proper education since well before the pandemic arrived. Holding them back a year is just going to create a generation of delayed adults that will ripple through the economy in ways we can't even imagine.

But lets try:

Shifting average graduation age to 18-19

* Drop out rate: TO THE MOON!

* Shit pay "high school" jobs no one wants: Now for adults!

* Wages don't just stagnate by age groups: Stagnant wages for everyone!

* Entering the work force a year later? Great reason to raise retirement age!

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#424

Post by whimsicalism »

MattGaiser wrote: post #329
mavelikara wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of schools have nothing to offer the top 10% of students IMO, the ability to self-study ahead of peers is a defining criteria for being in that top 10%. So, the system is working as designed.

But to succeed in the educational system, you have to self study in a way that the system appreciates. That usually requires at least some external guidance. A student who studies the wrong subjects in chemistry gets no credit for that on the exam.

If the school is so easy that you have to self-study to stay engaged, then you don't have to worry about flunking your chemistry exam.

This is very different from, say, perceiving school to be "so easy" that you are too advanced for it.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#425

Post by timr »

darth_avocado wrote: post #328
autarch wrote: post #268

Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…

It will be year 3 of covid and this is 100% the fault of the same people who have created every other problem in the education system: the administrators. There is no perfect way to open schools, that much is certain after looking at other countries. But looking at the state of things, it doesn’t even seem like people are trying. Japan has students come in on alternate days, so that the school can operate at 50% capa…

> Japan has students come in on alternate days, so that the school can operate at 50% capacity. Mask mandates, social distancing and temperature checks are enforced strictly.

Citation? I am familiar with Japan's national Covid policies, and I have heard nothing of this. In general, Japan allows the prefectures to make their own decisions, and for issues like this, prefectures issue requests, not mandates. This paper suggests that even at the outset of the pandemic, the range of NPIs imposed by Japanese schools was quite variable:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01571-8

This news story from September 2020 explicitly says the exact opposite of what you're implying -- school districts operating at maximum capacity, and interventions varying based on what (for example) the PTA decided to pay for:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-schools-back-in-session-c...

"Typical classrooms in Japan would seem to flunk the 3C test, however. In Ms. Katayama's classroom, desks were spaced just enough to walk between. Regulations allow up to 40 children per classroom."

"Last month, a panel of scholars and education researchers in Tokyo launched a petition to urge rapid adoption of smaller classes. Class size "should be reduced to 30 right now, and quickly, to 20," the panel said."

"Japan's Riken research institute, working with Kobe University, argues that even large classes can be held safely — provided ventilation is sufficient."

Japan is a big country, and -- just as with masks -- there's a fair amount of "orientalism" going on in the west, in terms of overgeneralization and stereotyping of their response to the virus. My only overarching observation is that they've been much more relaxed than we are in the US.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#426

Post by stefan_ »

sva_ wrote: post #365

I read this post earlier today, and found it quite shocking. I really hope this is an exception rather than the normal. I previously didn't think about it this way, and thought closing schools was the more sensible choice. But we're failing a whole generation like this. It more and more feels like we live in a society that sarcrifices their young, just to keep old people on their life support machines a little longer…

I don't understand. This is what you took away from this? I thought this post shows that keeping schools open is an absolute fantasy. This is one of the best funded schools in NYC; it's going to be absolute shambles in the rest of them.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#427

Post by jeromegv »

jimbob45 wrote: post #271
fourseventy wrote: post #13

How many students that got sick are experiencing symptoms more severe than the common cold? It seems like the chaos is caused by the attempted solutions to covid and not the actual symptoms? Edit: 7 day rolling average of COVID cases according to https://www1.nyc.gov/ is 32k cases per day with 38 deaths. So there is a 0.1% mortality rate.

I think the fear was that teachers would get the virus and then have to duck out. Even worse, many of the sub teachers we had in school were semi-retired teachers who would be even more vulnerable. You could make a case for putting up a plexiglass wall between students and teachers just to end this headache and I think you wouldn’t find as much opposition now as you would have in 2020. That said, some kids have to be…

Virus is airborne. Plexiglass does nothing at all.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#428

Post by ceras »

jakeinspace wrote: post #403
ars wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The divide in this country is just getting larger and lager. You have those who just no longer care about COVID, and those (like the kid in the article) who treat COVID as the most important control in their life. Are COVID deaths higher in the places that ignore? Not that I could see. There's going to be such a divide as these kids grow up. Personally? It's time to move on. Get vaccinated (no boosters), and then ign…

If you control for population density and age then yes, death rates are higher in places with lower vaccination rates (which I presume qualifies as a form of not caring).

No longer caring about Covid isn't the same as being against vaccines. Many people no longer care about it because vaccines are widely available to anyone who wants the - except for young kids, who are much lower risk from Covid anyway.

I would even bet most anti-mandate folks in the US are in fact vaccinated, because the vast majority of US adults are vaccinated, including in states like Florida that are particularly anti-mandate.

Stats on how much mandates help given a vaccination rate would be very interesting.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#429

Post by whimsicalism »

rdl wrote: post #84

This sounds like some kind of incarceration or at best day care program, rather than actual learning. Unclear if that is the baseline for schools vs something specific to a Covid surge. I don’t have children but if I were to do so I don’t think I would put them in a schoool like this for 12+ years.

Many schools are basically an incarceration like day care program.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#430

Post by jeromegv »

oezi wrote: post #359
bally0241 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got it along with family (both vaxxed and unvaxxed, there was no noticeable difference in symptoms). It was somewhere between a 'common cold' and the flu. Not fun, but definitely not something to panic about (understandably everyone will have a different reaction depending on their current state of health). However, I think we've reached the point of diminishing returns on any sort of intervention (they've all…

Most of what you say is just plain wrong. - Masking is highly effective and just a bit inconvenient. - Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive. - Vaccines are very effective even against transmission. - Nobody is aiming for 0 Covid anymore (except some Australians and China I guess), but getting through the winter wave without too many fellow citizens dead should be something we spend some effort on. Co…

Reducing in person meetings isn’t enough for omicron.

This is about closing schools. Should we keep schools closed for 5 year? How long? For vaccinated folks omicron is very manageable.

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