Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 389 posts

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#221

Post by annyeonghada »

Allower wrote: post #69
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

If someone start a Physics degree without knowing how to add fraction is it the duty of a university professor to correct such deficiencies?

>Just stop acting like its someone else's problem to solve.

It is a problem for all the precedent teachers that let pass someone so unprepared.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#223

Post by brightball »

taeric wrote: post #213
brightball wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I keep reading replies to my comments the more I'm realizing what a great high school I must have gone too. Our marching band always got superior ratings every year in their own competitions and had a blast playing throughout all of the games. Everybody in our band seemed to have a great time with it, especially the drummers.

This is classic survivor and selection bias. You likely didn't notice all of the people sidelined by this. I suspect selection bias also plays in to all of the negativity. But variety reigns and places that had more offerings almost certainly had more success.

How could someone be sidelined by this?

EDIT: Since we've hit the reply nesting limit. I still don't see how having an activity that involves so many people sidelines anyone or how a lack of that activity would improve the involvement?

I can't think of any school sanctioned activities that discriminated against any student based on their appearance, even cheer. I had giant glasses that slid down my nose, a belly and braces. Believe me, the only thing that kept me from feeling included was my own perception of myself. Having coaches and a routine that forced me to exercise and lift weights was one of the best things I ever did.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#224

Post by prescriptivist »

Steltek wrote: post #131
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…

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…

I assume the #1 public schools in Massachusetts are Cambridge/Beacon Hill? There are many more reasons why they would be best in class than de-emphasizing football.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#225

Post by w0m »

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 curious how many schools this is actually true for. I played football 'back in the day'; but despite winning our district/traveling mid-state for playoffs; I never felt like the team got any special treatment. We showed up an hour before school for weights and stayed a few hours after every day + Saturdays; ~nothing mid-day at all outside of the Misc rally the entire school attended.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#226

Post by v-erne »

lapcat wrote: post #171
jeffbee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning music. It baffles me that anyone would be blind to the idea that children could be "behind" when so much of childhood development involves muscle strength and dexterity that must be practiced. This goes for many musical instruments as well as the voice, all athletics, penmanship, verbal articulation, and so much more.

Is this actually a problem for music though? Who are the future professional musicians? "My most motivated, talented and best supported students are on schedule or slightly ahead." So it's not clear that we're losing any potential virtuosos here. If a generation of amateur musicians end up being a little less proficient in music, that's unfortunate, but hardly worth panicking, I think. I personally started playing gu…

>> I personally started playing guitar, and tennis, too late in life to become a professional.

I would argue that literally no one needs professional guitar and tennis players, those are at most the "nice to have". As humans we like to have nice things, even pretend that we have to have them otherwise our life is meaningless. Don't get me wrong I love music, but deep in my mind some intuition lingers, that its vanity to claim that it is necessary, when there are people in china working 996 culture to produce our unnecessary mostly plastic stuff.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#227

Post by taeric »

brightball wrote: post #217
taeric wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ignoring federated football. Rugby. Baseball and cricket have more games... But probably far fewer injuries and seem really able to muster fans. Don't get me wrong. I'm not fully against football. But praising the sport that has more money spent on it for reaping the rewards of said money feels... Not that charitable to other sports. Edit: I feel ashamed to have omitted basketball I'm my list. :(

This is a chicken and egg situation. Football has more money spent on it because it became so popular that people started spending more money on it. I can't say for sure WHY it became so popular, but people in my area know college football history back 100+ years so well that it's a common topic of conversation. Usually the 2 big state schools would play a football game at the state fair every year and it became a ma…

Agreed it is chicken and egg. I just think it is silly to say that it is a natural and sole fit.

Football was likely popular in it's origins due to not needing a lot of equipment, amusingly. Is the reason pickup games were so popular in local parks. If you have a local court, basketball is rather popular for similar reasons. If you are out in the court, you are there to play and the main equipment is the net.

And, at large, any sport or group activity is good. Remember back when schools would have large tug of war contests? Tons of fun that most anyone could join in on.

Fairs were neat in the sheer variety of offering. Shame we lost those in favor of organized game nights, to me.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#228

Post by annyeonghada »

Talinx wrote: post #161
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 h…

>Grades are just a bad IQ test and most things you learn in high school don't matter.

Well, speak for yourself. It may be a very unpopular opinion here on HN but I learned a lot at school, be it elementary, middle, high or university. But I went to school in Italy, and it was a good school.

>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).

This are thing that you can easily google. Why would I want to waste time teaching such trivial things while there are subjects much more interesting and intellectually engaging. Talk about inefficiency.

If someone does not want to study academic subjects it is not obliged to finish school, they can simply abandon once they reach the appropriate age (in Italy, 16 y/o): I know someone who did it and went the trade route and was very happy, but please, please, let us, academically inclined people have our own habitat.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#229

Post by beej71 »

pjkundert wrote: post #210
lapcat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a concerned parent will wildly outperform a school teacher. A parent teaches maybe 2 students per day. A school teacher teaches maybe 200 students per day. It's an unfair comparison.

I'm struggling to find the purpose of this reply. Do you believe that saying "no fair!" invalidates the superior outcomes for home-schooled children? If billions of dollars of state funding and the teachers' aggregate decades of university education can't overcome this obstacle (which did not seem to be a problem when children in one-room schoolhouses routinely used to learn Latin), I'm wondering what other advantage…

> I'm struggling to find the purpose of this reply.

Not the OP, but I think the pushback is against the implication that instructor training means nothing in the context of a large classroom. It's unclear if this was an assertion you were making.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#230

Post by taeric »

brightball wrote: post #223
taeric wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is classic survivor and selection bias. You likely didn't notice all of the people sidelined by this. I suspect selection bias also plays in to all of the negativity. But variety reigns and places that had more offerings almost certainly had more success.

How could someone be sidelined by this? EDIT: Since we've hit the reply nesting limit. I still don't see how having an activity that involves so many people sidelines anyone or how a lack of that activity would improve the involvement? I can't think of any school sanctioned activities that discriminated against any student based on their appearance, even cheer. I had giant glasses that slid down my nose, a belly and…

How many ugly people do you remember that excelled at your school? Awkward people? Anyone that didn't have the support of being otherwise successful?

Edit: if you click the timestamp on a post, you can reply to it. :) Having an activity vacuum up all the money from any alternative sidelines folks. Did you have a thriving chess club? Go? Math or spelling bee?

Post reply on HN