Kids are far behind in school • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#161

Post by Talinx » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

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…

I'm from Germany, here sport is integrated into the timetable like every other subject. Sport is not that important here so I might underestimate the amount/impact of sports in US high schools.

I'd say that more sport is generally a good thing. What matters most to me about high school learning is that IQ does not decline. Grades are just a bad IQ test and most things you learn in high school don't matter. Sport is healthier than sitting in a dim classroom all day.

I am the kind of person that likes to learn by myself so all learning in school is time spent ineffeciently (from a pure learning perspective; reading a book instead is better). But I think that for most people many things that are taught in high school are useless while more important things (understanding how social media affects you, how to declare taxes, how credit cards work) are not covered (at least here in Germany, I suspect its no different in the US).

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#162

Post by micromacrofoot » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #22

One thing I don't think I've ever seen in my life and never expect to see is a statement along the following lines: "Yeah, those cranks and 'conspiracy theorists' were right again." And this will stay true no matter how many times they are right. The credit will always go to some academic who discovers the obvious after the damage is done.

You can't easily conclude "right" here, but you can very easily adjust the narrative to fit certain biases.

There's at least one study that tried to link loss of education with a greater long-term loss of life than the short-term losses avoided with closures... but there are a lot of holes and assumptions so it's far from reliable.

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/31/962090342/did-closing-schools...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#163

Post by taeric » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

nverno wrote: post #138

giraffe_lady wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that their role? It's very common to see journalist-posited hypotheses used as the justification for dismissing concerns, on HN in particular. I think it's reasonable for them to relay the noticed effect and not try to guess why, if the research they're reporting on hasn't established a link yet. Plus what does it change about our understanding, or responsibility? The effect is there, it's real. What are you hopin…

No, I'm interested in how people learn successfully, and what scenarios lead to better outcomes. I highly doubt being a minority has anything to do with it, aside from being a confounding variable. It may be the case that people of some ethnic group are more likely to have a home dynamic that made this distance learning situation more difficult, who knows, but that would have been a useful insight the people research…

Good luck. If anyone actually knew how to make everyone learn effectively, they would be sitting on a gold mine.

At large, incentives and feedback loops rule. And poverty robs families of incentives and creates poor feedback loops.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#164

Post by micromacrofoot » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #96

mavhc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having dead parents is a great benefit for kids. Not having dead parents who you infected and caused to die is an even better benefit

Parents were mostly fine from it in the end. Look by all means lockdowns made a lot of sense early on in the face of an unknown disease. I hope we can all agree they no longer make sense for Covid.

In the US 200,000+ children lost caregivers to covid. So technically most were fine, but that's also not a number to scoff at.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/200000-us-children-lost...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#165

Post by richwater » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

throwaway95919 wrote: post #154

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Academic ability does not mean inherent intelligence based on genetics.

You're the one being racist.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#166

Post by lijogdfljk » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #124

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

While you are correct that good schools are caused by good students, it's not strictly accurate to say that "statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income". Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness. Income doesn't cause intelligence or conscientiousness, although it may be partially c…

I've always believed, though i'm unsure of specific studies that back this claim up, that income is dominant in defining these traits not because wealth translates to intelligence but that poverty inhibits it.

Stressors make everything difficult, of which poverty is a massive one.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#167

Post by richwater » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

sndean wrote: post #155

Steltek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to anecdotally back you up, in Massachusetts with the #1 public schools in the country, I hear and see nothing about football. I think I hear more about the HS plays and concerts than HS football. The last football funding discussion at the town level was whether to fund better helmets to protect against CTE or make the players' parents pay for it, so the town isn't seen supporting/encouraging brain damage to c…

And to add another anecdote, the overall #1 high school in the US in Virginia (by some rankings at least) doesn't have a football team. Sports like cross country get more attention.

TJ might be one of the best high schools in the world not just VA.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#168

Post by izzydata » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

buildsjets wrote: post #105

brightball wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what I'd personally like to see. Anything not related to education should not be part of the education system. If some third party wants to establish various sport systems then that's fine.

There are so many non-traditional ways and skills to teach kids that I think would be worth exploring, but sport doesn't even register on the scale of usefulness. Apparently we don't even teach finance in highschool yet or any kind of professional development skills.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#169

Post by mcv » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

OscarCunningham wrote: post #60

mcv wrote: post #6

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…

I think it really depends on the student and what their primary challenges are. School isn't merely about accumulating knowledge, it's about learning how to learn, how to work, how to plan, etc. And those are the issues my son is struggling with. Stuff he's interested in, he picks up very quickly. But actual projects he needs to finish, he doesn't finish. Or he doesn't even know how to start. Or he finishes them halfway and then doesn't submit them. He frequently fails to read the assignment properly and ends up doing duplicate work as a result. He doesn't study for a test that should have been easy for him. He keeps postponing stuff that's already overdue.

These are the things he needs to learn, and they're probably a lot more important to the rest of his life than French grammar.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#170

Post by spiderice » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #119

Simply end social promotion. You shouldn't move up to the next level of a class until you've mastered the current level. (Levels can be much smaller than a year.) Being at a different pace isn't a problem if you can just make up the time. The side effect bonus is letting other students test out of levels they don't need, they can finish early while others end later.

This solution appeals to me, though I'm wondering what the implications are. Like what does a 12 year old who finished the curriculum do for the next 6 years? Early college? Continue to go to public school anyway even though they've mastered everything?

I'm not suggesting the solution wouldn't work. Just interesting to think about the new problems that would arise from it. Especially given that public school doubles as "babysitting" for a lot of working parents.