71–80 of 389 posts
My oldest son started in secondary school last year, so his first two years were largely in lockdown. He's quite introverted (and by now extremely so), so he enjoyed not having to meet people, but his school discipline suffered enormously. I already caught him gaming instead of following classes during the lockdown, and he apparently never learned to finish his homework. He's got more failing than passing grades. Sti…
> Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is. It's sad to me that this is the way things work. Being smart and understanding the material are th…
Any guesses what the long term consequences might be? I have a hard time imagining anything more dire than the immediate consequences of social isolation during the pandemic. In other words, I think the kids that make it through are going to be okay.
I'm curious which is worse, social isolation, or mass consumption of video media. I bet Netflix is worse. The social isolation was bad, no question. But during the early school lockdowns I saw first hand what 12+ hours a day of modern TV does to a person's brain in a short period of time. It's nothing like what TV was like in the 80s when I was a kid. The social isolation gets a lot of air time. I'd guess it's not th…
What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in…
> So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated. > It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared. Huh? So you think the problem of being behind is overstated, but observed many students not being properly prepared yourself when you taught?
There's a typo: it should have said "a lot of students". Not sure whether that was the confusion here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, people have stated that 'the kids will be fine' quite consistently. Also, all costs other than deaths have been underplayed by people in favour of lockdowns. Memory-holing this is literally insane (where insane = disconnected from reality). That's not to say that what was done wasn't the best of a suite of bad options. But I saw nothing but fairly extreme downplaying of the consequences of lockdowns from people…
one reason to close school is not just about kids got covid themselves, but they could carry covid back home and hurt those elders in the house and make the pandemic worse. it's a trade-off, I think we did what we had to do.
Especially in high school, an astounding amount of time, money, space, and personnel are dedicated to sports, and this does not just impact the athletes. In many schools the entire day is structured around the football team's practice schedule. Make school sports a truly after-hours extracurricular activity and remove their impact from non-participants, and I'd estimate you could see around 20% improvement time spent…
You have players on the team and coaches, yes. But you also have cheerleaders, marching band, trainer assistants (usually students who want to go into medicine or physical therapy). There are homecoming pagents and dances plus the social event every weekend for the school that goes along with it.
There’s no sport in high school that comes close to pulling everybody together the same way as football. There’s more to it than just classroom education vs sports in this case. It’s helping to foster a sense of community and school pride.
Often there will be charity drives that coincide using the games as a place to make announcements.
What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in…
> So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated. > It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared. Huh? So you think the problem of being behind is overstated, but observed many students not being properly prepared yourself when you taught?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is. It's sad to me that this is the way things work. Being smart and understanding the material are th…
I thought so too, until I got to a point in my education where it actually required work to continue making process, and the discipline to do it wasn't there. Habits are hard to break, and forming healthy study habits early is as valuable a result of education as the acquisition of that day's knowledge. Maybe more important. The school system often fails to do that effectively, but their failure does not invalidate t…
Saying busy work is important because they might need study habits in five years is not motivating.
Any guesses what the long term consequences might be? I have a hard time imagining anything more dire than the immediate consequences of social isolation during the pandemic. In other words, I think the kids that make it through are going to be okay.
I'm curious which is worse, social isolation, or mass consumption of video media. I bet Netflix is worse. The social isolation was bad, no question. But during the early school lockdowns I saw first hand what 12+ hours a day of modern TV does to a person's brain in a short period of time. It's nothing like what TV was like in the 80s when I was a kid. The social isolation gets a lot of air time. I'd guess it's not th…
A bad teacher in adolescence can ruin an individual’s appreciation of a subject. Today’s kids are blessed with the best teachers in the world, only a few taps away.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with video content. But perhaps the recommendation algorithms need to be tweaked so that these websites have more social responsibility towards younger users.