Kids are far behind in school • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#101

Post by markvdb » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #55

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…

> What does being "behind" even mean?

In my case as a guitar teacher, I see two patterns:

- Students with less support at home or natural feeling for guitar are about a year behind where they would normally be after four years of studying.

- My most motivated, talented and best supported students are on schedule or slightly ahead.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#102

Post by lapcat » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #90

lapcat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh? There's a typo: it should have said "a lot of students". Not sure whether that was the confusion here.

You're saying that you taught and felt people were not properly prepared, but also believe people are not behind?

What I'm saying is that there's no uniformity. Incoming college freshman are mostly the same age, but their preparation for college varies dramatically, depending largely on where they came from. At any given age, many US students are "behind" their peers, because they're not all receiving the same education.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#103

Post by the_only_law » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #100

JohnDeHope wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While Netflix may be bad, what kids watch on YouTube and TikTok is far worse. Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited.

> Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited

Eh after spending the holidays with siblings around the age targeted by these things, I highly doubt the quality of Netflix material as well.

On the other hand, I was impressed by the ability of shows who’s IP is owned by massive corporations pump out material that looked worse than a HS video editing project.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#104

Post by tejohnso » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #55

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…

> What does being "behind" even mean?

Or matter?

Is extending parental dependency the problem? If someone starts college at 20 instead of 18 they are likely at home longer. But a lot of people aren't leaving home for college anyway, or they return home after college whether they graduate or not.

If a bunch of kids start high school at 16 instead of 14 is it going to cause serious problems? It seems to me the only issues would be those that we create by our own expectations.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#105

Post by buildsjets » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #77

buildsjets wrote: post #64

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…

The thing about football is that so many people are involved with it, it becomes a school wide event. 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…

If football is so disruptive to the primary purpose of school, which is education, then it should be completely eliminated from schools. No taxpayer money should be used for this entertainment nonsense.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#106

Post by endisneigh » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #102

endisneigh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that you taught and felt people were not properly prepared, but also believe people are not behind?

What I'm saying is that there's no uniformity. Incoming college freshman are mostly the same age, but their preparation for college varies dramatically, depending largely on where they came from. At any given age, many US students are "behind" their peers, because they're not all receiving the same education.

That doesn't mean they're not behind, though? If anything it just means most students are behind. It's strange you say that the problem is overstated but also say that you encountered many kids yourself who were not prepared.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#107

Post by carapace » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

It's the ratio of (sane, emotionally mature) adults to children that's important. A decent ratio is no greater than 6:1. Most of our schools are more like 30:1. In other words the "dosage" of tutoring (to use the article's bizarre metaphor) is ~5x too low.

- - - -

The second major problem, after chronic and extreme under-staffing, is that our didactic methods are designed (inadvertently but surely) to be slow and ineffective. If you teach children well they learn happily and rapidly. What we do instead is teach poorly and so "eduction" is slow, boring, uncool, and ephemeral (i.e. people forget what they "learned".)

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#108

Post by OscarCunningham » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #73

OscarCunningham wrote: post #60

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…

Understanding why something works and being able to put that in use are often two different things.

I agree. I just don't think spending extra time on homework and paying for tutors is going to help with the latter.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#109

Post by lapcat » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #94

lapcat wrote: post #55

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…

>Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite direction. The main determinant of whether a school is "good" is the average academic ability of the students who attend the school. And that, statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income. Policy interventions based on the idea that school qua…

> These interventions include local and regional busing.

Busing raises a host of problems that are independent of school quality.

I can only offer my anecdotal experience here, but I was able to thrive in my new school, after I caught up. My inherent ability didn't change simply by moving, but more was given to me and more expected of me after I moved. But I wasn't bused in, I lived in the same neighborhoods as my friends and peers.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#110

Post by rufius » Mon, May 23, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #77

buildsjets wrote: post #64

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…

The thing about football is that so many people are involved with it, it becomes a school wide event. 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…

> It’s helping to foster a sense of community and school pride.

You forgot part:

> It’s helping to foster a sense of community, school pride, *and brain damage*.