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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

291–300 of 401 posts

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#291

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

People didn't invent the saying "when the student is ready, the teacher appears" for nothing. But following that it's a fair point that how we do things is not optimal. E.g. pushing kids into classes based on their age and than having everyone for the most part do the same things. People/kids are just different, different interests, different levels. Maybe it was a necessity once, but maybe we can do things different…

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#292

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There are other kinds of investments that are less risky than isos.

I don't understand this attitude. Most sw engineers at a startup are well compensated salary wise. Who cares if you also have a lottery ticket.

Well at least 5 years ago it became clear you should value those tickets at ~$0 at most startups when making career decisions, so those tickets come at significant opportunity cost even if the other money is "good."

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#293

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I'm approaching 40 and I'm pretty worried about climate change and don't really think I can afford the American dream. I can't imagine staring down six or seven decades into the future at this point.

Every generation says this, they still showed up and did the work. Do you honestly think a teenager that was drafted into WW1 wasn't scared for their future? What about people in the Spanish Flu or Polio epidemics? People in the 50s thought we'd all die in nuclear war. It's so annoying that people think our circumstances are worse than our ancestors. They aren't, unless you're literally at war, your life is better th…

One of the lessons I learned as a kid that I’m trying to pass onto my kids: don’t let school get in the way of learning.

There are things schools can’t or won’t teach and unfortunately for them, there value was significantly tainted when parents got to see what was happening every day in the classroom.

I’m pulling my kids to go to see the solar eclipse in Texas next week. They’ll get to experience something that won’t happen again in the US for another 20 years, get to visit family they rarely see, and go to parts of the country they’ve never been to. Obviously I find more value in that than the day of school their missing.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those breaks don't line up with things like the solar eclipse. Because those breaks don't line up with other cousins' breaks. Because those breaks don't line up with great-grandma's 95th birthday, and she lives a full day's journey away. Because those breaks don't line up with your work schedule, or your partner's work schedule. Because my child is excelling academically, and I absolutely don't think that she…

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'm not sure about parents in general, but I think schools do provide a tremendous amount of value now, the same as they did back when I was attending.

But that's overall, in aggregate. All those drops fill up a river. But a single drop won't be missed.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#295

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…

> I spent six years attending French classes and three of Latin. I can't read, write, speak, or understand either one.

I spent ~4-ish years learning Spanish in high school and was the same. HOWEVER, after visiting Puerto Rico for the first time, I was genuinely surprised with how much was still rattling around in my head and how quickly I picked up new words and phrases. I was eventually able to navigate a restaurant without English at all in the few weeks I was there. No way I could have done that without the background I got during school.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#296
post #119

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

My gut agrees with you, but then we'll be keeping our young kids out of preschool to go see the eclipse. So much for principles lol.

Last chance for decades without going to another continent. I’ll likely be dead before I can see another. My kids were too young to remember the last one, some chance they’ll never see another. We’re going, too—first time we’ve taken them out for something other than illness or a doctor’s appointment or something.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#298

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There are other kinds of investments that are less risky than isos.

I don't understand this attitude. Most sw engineers at a startup are well compensated salary wise. Who cares if you also have a lottery ticket.

If you go and look at levels.fyi as an engineer in a startup, you get almost the exact same cash compensation as a FAANG engineer but now you have a bigger slice of a lottery ticket, can grow your career faster, and generally you are likely to have a 'free spirit' kind of workplace.

Even if the startup goes 'total loss', you lose nothing compensation-wise and get picked up 48 hours - 3 weeks later by another place.

Maybe I am anti-jaded (?) but I can't understand the allure of being employee number 290,000 where your job is to change the color of a button back and forth. Is $150k+ in cash really not worth actually being useful to a company?

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#299

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Fear it? I would be embracing it. Send my allocated AI entity to work and send me the checks. In a sense it is like having a body double go to school for you.

Oh goodness... This must be satire.

Just give it 10 years, when you freshly graduate college ready to start a 40 year career.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#300

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This winter has been brutal with kids. One bug after another.

If it were simply that, wouldn't we see a similar effect across socioeconomic backgrounds? Colds don't discriminate.

Richer kids get more vitamins and high quality food in general, have more exercise, have good winter clothing, clean and warm bed sheets, their home isn't full of mold and other problems, their water might be higher quality...
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