Kids are far behind in school • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#241

Post by sodality2 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

annyeonghada wrote: post #211

mschuster91 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness Only partially - only ~40-50% of a person's IQ are a result of parental genetics [3]. The rest is a result of the environment in which the child is raised - and there are very important factors at play that directly correlate with income of the parents: - Does…

>Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures. I had a small that I shared with two brothers. My desk was minuscule. I had top grades. >Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) ha…

Have you considered that your experience is entirely anecdotal and statistically someone in your place is less likely to succeed in general, not guaranteed to fail?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#242

Post by andreilys » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

tfandango wrote: post #182

My wife teaches 2nd grade in a public school. She has kids this year who had not been in school since kindergarten. It is difficult to cover such an achievement gap when other kids in the class are on level. It's worse yet when our state has outsourced federal pandemic education fund distribution to 3rd parties which allowed people to purchase Xboxes and TVs. And even worse yet as her district is focusing on putting…

Serious question, what are you learning between kindergarten and 2nd grade that's so important?

I remember my time there being effectively day-care, I learned more outside of class than inside it. The only real benefit was socializing with kids my age but otherwise everything I learned in those 2 years could've been taught in a week.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#243

Post by lapcat » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

v-erne wrote: post #226

lapcat wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I would argue that literally no one needs professional guitar and tennis players

I would argue that I need professional guitar players, and my life would be drabber without Steve Vai in it.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#244

Post by jdmichal » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

Ancapistani wrote: post #233

jdmichal wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I'm really surprised that people have such a hard time extrapolating from their own experiences learning to children and school. Individuals will tend to learn things at their own pace. Individuals will tend to learn different things at different paces. Example: I despised history in school. The only subject I ever scored less than a B in during a quarter. I discovered it was mostly just down to how it was…

> Example: I've hired people that had zero experience in one of our programming languages. They typically end up completing their first PR in that language within a month or two -- with assistance, of course. People tend to pick things up pretty fast when it's part of their job expectations. (I always make it clear during interviewing and the hiring process that such an expectation would be present.) This seems... ex…

Personally, I also don't care much what language I'm in. But not everyone has a brain that works that way.

Also, some of the people I'm referring to are also of non-traditional backgrounds. Meaning they don't have a foundation in abstract computer science in order to ground such transitions.

I'm also not counting changes like, "modify this one if-statement to work this way." I'm talking about actual meaningful changes.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#245

Post by taeric » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #234

taeric wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This variable seems easy to equate to wealth and access to technology, though?

Then equate it to wealth and technology access…

In this, I think I agree. Picking the proxy of minority is certainly playing to the current atmosphere more than it is helping to make the message.

That said, it is the current atmosphere. Hard to have that as a major complaint on this article, and more against the atmosphere. Hate the game, as it were.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#246

Post by beej71 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

spiderice wrote: post #170

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…

> Like what does a 12 year old who finished the curriculum do for the next 6 years?

Don't have a curriculum that "finishes". Put more material out there, even college-level. Maybe a student gets their PhD by 18, but they're unlikely to get it but 12. And if they do, congratulations.

I think the concepts of grade levels and even different school types (elementary, high, college), useful as they are socially, are getting in the way. We should be trying to make it a granular, smooth progression all the way up.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#247

Post by itronitron » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

The author lost me with their mention of 'achievement loss' ... how can you lose something that you haven't 'achieved'?

Consider that the primary goal of marketing is to create the perception of a need/want on the part of the target segment.

I would be more interested in seeing a survey on what students have actually learned and done over the past two years (both inside and outside the standard curriculum) instead of this pervasive whining by the educational industry.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#248

Post by corrral » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

Cerium wrote: post #74

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…

My parents are teachers and talk about mass consumption of internet media as the largest negative effect of the pandemic on children. Many of them are serious addicts, high school students acting like children at just the thought of their video games and YouTube access missing for minutes.

Anecdotal, but my friends who are teachers report a marked decline in student reading ability (vs. even just 20 years ago) in middle and higher grades. The main problem seems to be that kids have trouble parsing sentences that aren't very simple and short, with the result that most of the students—including "advanced" students in accelerated classes—have trouble following the basic narrative, let alone anything deeper, of works that weren't regarded as difficult when they were written. I don't mean Shakespeare or Paradise Lost or something, but works aimed at younger readers from as recently as the late 20th century. They lose track of what's going on by the end of a sentence having more than a small number of clauses.

This trend pre-dates the lockdowns. Web-induced changes in reading behavior is my #1 suspect for the culprit, though I'm also suspicious of the YA book genre—I have an unconfirmed hunch that, as it's risen to prominence, it's also chased more and more "palatable", if you will, writing styles, in the name of greater sales.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#249

Post by redlights » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

Doesn't this just prove the fact that the US education system was never good in the first place (especially for the lower and middle class)? There's absolutely nothing scientific or moral about forcing a kid from age 6 to sit in a classroom for 8 hours straight twiddling their thumbs longingly looking outside the window. Forcing them from a young age to do regimented work that is clearly meant to be done at a later developmental stage will just cause them to hate it and zone out, which is what caused the problem the author is describing. If you're not truly engaging with kids, how will you get the results you want?

None of those suggestions will solve the fact that the education system itself is incredibly flawed and near collapse.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#250

Post by sodality2 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

tfandango wrote: post #182

My wife teaches 2nd grade in a public school. She has kids this year who had not been in school since kindergarten. It is difficult to cover such an achievement gap when other kids in the class are on level. It's worse yet when our state has outsourced federal pandemic education fund distribution to 3rd parties which allowed people to purchase Xboxes and TVs. And even worse yet as her district is focusing on putting…

What are your(/her) thoughts on gifted programs? I can say personally that gifted programs saved me from this fate of slogging through high school during these pandemic years. For some reason some gifted programs get dragged but having actual difficult assignments instead of just crap I can google, honestly 100% saved me from mediocrity.