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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#251

Post by Nextgrid »

whiterknight wrote: post #206
halfcat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. The curtain was pulled back and people realized the lies they were being fed by companies. Turns out the business won’t fold if people are remote, and if you’re out sick that immovable deadline gets…moved.

Maybe it won’t collapse but maybe everything is only working 70% as well as it used to. It sure feels that way.

If purchasing power falls 30% it’s only fair that things are only working 70%.

Spoiler alert: purchasing power fell way more than 30%, so we are actually lucky things work still as much as they do.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#252

Post by usea »

andy99 wrote: post #185
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.

Why would you prioritize making your kids sit in school over taking them and doing something fun like a vacation, given the option? My first thought reading the headline was that more people are realizing the irrelevance of school and work, and prioritizing other things.

Because school is important and not at all irrelevant.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#253

Post by anon291 »

vundercind wrote: post #240
muaytimbo wrote: post #222

Kids don't want to be at school, teachers don't want to be at school, local residents don't want to fund schools. In NYC public school reading/math comprehension is at 50%. They fail as measured by their own grading scale every year. In aggregate, public schools are always lagging behind their private counterparts. Unfortunately once a large special interest group is subsidized by the taxpayer and a voter base is est…

> They fail as measured by their own grading scale every year. In aggregate, public schools are always lagging behind their private counterparts. This on its own communicates nothing interesting. It’d be surprising if this weren’t the case, given private schools possess the superpower of not having to serve everyone .

Public schools shouldn't either. At the end of the day the entire purpose of a school is against equality. History has demonstrated that while everyone can achieve a basic level of competence, there are real differences in hard working behavior and intelligence that helps you succeed in academia.

It's insane that public schools have to be some great equalizer and then they're simultaneously sold as preparing kids for the ultra competitive cutthroat world of academia and commerce.

Either they need to not be the great equalizer and prepare kids for the real world. This would mean not serving some kids with the same services (although again, a basic education would be guaranteed). Or we could admit that while we succeeded in building a basic education system, we have failed at building a public academic system for the early years and just let the private academia take over.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#254

Post by bombcar »

jhbadger wrote: post #139
kwhitefoot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my kindergartener only gets like 20 minutes of recess What? In Norwegian kidergarten (barnehage) there are no formal lessons at all. The whole point of barnehage is to turn young animals into cooperating members of society not to teach them mathematics and reading, that comes later. So the whole day is some kind of play time with intervals of helping to lay the table for lunch, having stories read to, going for wal…

In part because the US has created "pre-school", which children attend for a year or two before kindergarten. This is more like the traditional kindergarten that you describe -- it is intended to get kids to learn to get along with each other, play nicely, sing songs, etc.

This is 100% it right here. When I was young, kindergarten was preschool (sometimes actually called that) and was also not mandatory. You could start school in first grade, and some schools didn't even have kindergarten.

Now preschool has standardized tests (!!!!!) and expected outcomes and kindergarten is worse. And 3K has been invented to be what preschool (and before that, kindergarten) once was. Of course, you can't go to 3K or 4K if you're not potty trained, which puts additional time crunches and restrictions on things.

Maybe it helps overall, but I'm not entirely sure it does.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#255

Post by lolinder »

taeric wrote: post #201
kube-system wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those situations existed in decades past. Why do parents think that school doesn't provide as much value as they used to?

I get the impression it is more that many students that feel they were above the system are projecting other reasons into this, to be frank. Especially in forums like this one. Combine that with somehow we seem to have far less empathy and charity than in the past, and you get this sort of situation. And it isn't even that folks are wrong; but evidence is fairly clear that nobody has a solution for education that wor…

Sorry, what? What does lack of empathy have to do with taking time out from school to go visit Grandma on her 95th birthday?

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#256

Post by bombcar »

Nextgrid wrote: post #251
whiterknight wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it won’t collapse but maybe everything is only working 70% as well as it used to. It sure feels that way.

If purchasing power falls 30% it’s only fair that things are only working 70%. Spoiler alert: purchasing power fell way more than 30%, so we are actually lucky things work still as much as they do.

Or another way to put it, if 50% of everything is bullshit, you can cut out quite a bit and still not really effect anything.

The number of TPS reports filed is not the actual value to the economy, but it gets counted in the GDP.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#257

Post by usea »

williamcotton wrote: post #212
i80and wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're sneezing and sniffling, please for the love of god, do not go to the office. Even before the pandemic we had that policy, and it's a very good default. No, colds are not the end of the world, but they are genuinely miserable, and you will share it. And if money is all somebody cares about, well, colds also diminish work output, so one ne'er-do-well going in sick can screw up an entire department's metrics o…

My office basically dictates that we show up regardless. Why? We work in legal services and our clients depend heavily on us and with massive consequences when we make mistakes. Court mandated deadlines don’t care about a runny nose. I see no measurable impact on performance.

This is just another way of saying you're under-staffed so owners can capture more of the value of your labor. It's neither virtuous nor effective.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#258

Post by vasilipupkin »

ptero wrote: post #171
williamcotton wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about just piling in the van and driving somewhere? That doesn’t cost more in the summer. Is the expectation that a family takes a 2 week luxury vacation every year?

> What about just piling in the van and driving somewhere? What about schools not sticking their nose too far out into the parts of life that they should not control? Like where and when we take our kids on vacations. If my kids get good grades and catch up on any missed homework the school should not get spun up about them missing some days. Turning schools into a mild version of prisons is not good for anyone -- ki…

you can't teach very well if 20% of the class is absent, it just creates an absurd situation for the teachers

it's not that hard, if you commit to going to school, then just try to go and do vacations during school holidays

otherwise, just home school

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#259

Post by anon291 »

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…

> how to negotiate with tradesmen about repairs to a house

It's called socializing.

> how to handle money

It's called math. Especially calculus.

> how to drive a car

Most schools do offer drivers Ed in America at least.

In my experience, the people who complain most that school didn't teach them X were the same kids who didn't pay any attention.

I don't even like schools, but this low effort nonsense should end.

Obviously you learned Norwegian faster in Norway. Good for you. The idea that a school should send kids on international vacations is ridiculous.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#260

Post by bombcar »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #71
the_sleaze9 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, USA is one of the highest funded education systems in the world. Funding for education even outpaces USA's um.. robust defense spending. The trick is to look into total funding - beyond federal funding and into state funding. I strongly agree that education in the internet age needs to evolve. I would love to see an education system centered around critical and entrepreneurial thinking, financial…

But it's also one of the biggest countries in the world. It's simply too big and undeveloped for education to work as well as in, say, Switzerland. See also public transportation.

Rural schools often do better than urban schools, so size and transportation are likely not the reasons.
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