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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#91

Post by MattGaiser »

williamcotton wrote: post #87
candiddevmike wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my area, you get 10 days of unexcused absence per year before parents and kids start receiving fines and possibly a referral to CPS. That number is way too small IMO, and it forces folks to go to the doctor constantly for getting small illnesses excused (school policies are 24 hours without a fever, but they don't take temperatures, it's honor based...), since you want to keep those 10 days for an actual vacation.

Why would you take your kids on a vacation during school? There are plenty of breaks during the year including all of summer.

Price. If you can travel outside of Dec 20-Jan10th and summer, you can pay maybe half. I have an annual grand trip around the world every year I do off season and I pay less for it in points or cash (mix depends on the places) than friends do to go to Hawaii for a week at Christmas.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#92

Post by rybosworld »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #43
diggan wrote: post #5

> In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance. Wow, pajama day didn't bring back students? So strange. I wonder if they tried less homework, shorter school-days and/or later start of the day? Basically the three reasons I myself was chronically absent from school for as long as I can remember.

Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I spent a few hours a day on homework. Parents I talk to feel the same way. Give the kids more work to do at home to keep them off their phones and YouTube.

"I had to do it, so should the younger generation" is the the same line of thinking that delayed remote work a decade longer than it needed to be, and an over emphasis on knowing how to write in cursive.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#93

Post by bryanlarsen »

Ajay-p wrote: post #60
Mizza wrote: post #25

Are there similar changes at Montessori schools? Maybe they could try making school less like prison, with less mandatory pointless toil?

I attending Montessori and enjoyed it, but this was 10+ years ago. We did not talk about the teacher's personal beliefs and politics, and there was no discussion of student gender or sexuality. It was focused on social and interpersonal development and academics. I understand some people believe discussing these sensitive topics is essential to student development, but I think it has made kids very uncomfortable and…

Despite what you've heard, they don't really talk about those things in public school either.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#94

Post by gilbetron »

My wife and I have noticed this, and it is really bizarre because it is across all kinds of demographics. We consider school mandatory for our son, except for medical reasons or significant events (funeral, for instance). Nearly all of his friends, even those that have teacher parents, will often be out of school, "because we wanted to go skiing" or "didn't feel like it today". I don't get it at all, like I didn't get the memo of "meh, school is optional".

Our son doesn't really even want to miss school, because he knows we'll make him do his missed work anyway. I guess we are old school (we are older, Gen X parents). The pandemic seems to have, if not broken, changed society in many fashions, and I guess schooling is one of them.

Many of his affluent friends still won't turn in homework and regularly get Bs and Cs and their parents just shrug. We are far from "tiger parents", and push our son to mostly get As because he easily can do so, and feel guilty that we don't push him harder to do advanced work.

Weird times.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#95

Post by martindbp »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #59
bluedevil2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I spent a few hours a day on homework. Parents I talk to feel the same way. Give the kids more work to do at home to keep them off their phones and YouTube.

Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the lib…

I still don't see any data from school maximalists that schooling is anything more than signaling (beyond basic math and literacy), and that kids wouldn't be much happier if they could spend time on projects and pursuits they were passionate about instead. My son is 6 and in 6 months of a Minecraft obsession he's fluent in English (besides Swedish and Chinese), learning about all sorts of concepts like animal breeding, crop rotation and automating factories and farms and building all sorts of machinery. Meanwhile school is teaching one letter a week. I can guarantee that if you put kids like him together with a bunch of other kids with the same passion and let them go wild building stuff with some guidance from a technically competent adult, they would come out much more prepared for life at 18. Fine if your kid has no curiosity or internal drive to do anything, but then I question what they will get out of school anyway.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#96

Post by newaccount7hhhf »

alephnerd wrote: post #65
toomuchtodo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~40% of pregnancies annually in the US are unintended, so the uninvolved/uninterested/under-resourced parent thesis isn’t unreasonable.

Absolutely! There absolutely is a small subset of parents like that, though being in the Bay Area, access to abortion has been fairly common for decades, especially given the affluence of the district and the relative lack of stigma, so I don't see that as playing a significant factor.

Are you fucking kidding me.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#97

Post by bryanlarsen »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #55

Perhaps it's because most schooling seems irrelevant to many of the students? I went to very good schools and actually enjoyed quite a lot of my schooldays but even while I was there I could see that a lot of it was a complete and utter waste of everyone's time. I spent six years attending French classes and three of Latin. I can't read, write, speak, or understand either one. I moved to Norway fifteen years later an…

It's not the methods. If you and all the rest of your class would have been motivated the methods would have worked fine.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#98

Post by alephnerd »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #85
alephnerd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and I mention it in my comment as well, so IDK what your point is.

My point is that parenting is hard, expensive, very involved [1] [2], and it should be unsurprising that the success rate is not great from an attendance or academic outcome perspective. Not arguing with you, providing citations for my thesis that agrees with your anecdotes. [1] https://archive.is/dXpQf [2] https://archive.is/dXpQf/fba33991824e68e9b1ecfbde5c773bcbe92... (from [1])

Fair enough! Sorry for the standoffish tone! HN has been getting to me lately

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#99

Post by vlunkr »

MattGaiser wrote: post #91
williamcotton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you take your kids on a vacation during school? There are plenty of breaks during the year including all of summer.

Price. If you can travel outside of Dec 20-Jan10th and summer, you can pay maybe half. I have an annual grand trip around the world every year I do off season and I pay less for it in points or cash (mix depends on the places) than friends do to go to Hawaii for a week at Christmas.

Also, lots of travel is based around life events. I can’t control the fact that funerals and weddings can happen at any time of year.
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