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

American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

1843magazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 173 posts

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#111

Post by BeetleB »

roel_v wrote: post #91
rimantas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

>Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

Would you apply the same to, say, mathematics? Or chemistry? Or programming? Do you think the parents should not give their kids feedback on these subjects, and instead leave it to the teacher (aka technical coach)?

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#112

Post by mempko »

NTDF9 wrote: post #22

What I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation. I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band. In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going gu…

Saying "Great, good job" and giving praise is the same as giving a prize or a candy. It is a verbal doggy biscuit.

Reward and punishment externalizes motivation. American's tend to reward and other countries to punishment.

However I bet you in those other countries they hate math just as much as everyone in USA.

If you want people to be intrinsically motivated, rewards like "Great Job, awesome" have the exact opposite effect.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#113

Post by WallWextra »

zhemao wrote: post #110

It doesn't seem like this is a problem with self-esteem. The problem is that American schools don't have good educational standards or trained teachers. In the countries that rank ahead of us in the international assessments, even elementary school teachers need to have education degrees. That is not the case in most American school districts (just need a teaching certificate). Teaching is also a more highly respecte…

1. I don't know what education degrees look like in other countries, but I highly doubt more education majors in the US would solve anything without first overhauling that curriculum and making it more demanding.

2. Is there any factual evidence for this often-repeated stereotype about Asian children having less curiosity and love of learning than American ones?

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#114

Post by lukeasrodgers »

The author states "Nor is [poor education performance in America] due to high levels of inequality: the proportion of American children coming from under-privileged backgrounds is about par for the OECD."

I'd be interested to see a citation for this claim; I think it's either misleading, or things have changed a lot over the last 5-8 years (which I doubt). What I recall from my time working in education research, looking at the international tests including PISA, is that average scores from the USA are brought down by the fact that the bottom-performing kids do so much worse than elsewhere, which if you look at the way public school funding works in America, makes a lot of sense (i.e. wealthy district = higher taxes = more funding for public education).

The problem isn't that America has more low-SES students than other places, it's that we (speaking as someone currently living in America) do a worse job educating them. I'm not saying that the problem is only inequality, but it is definitely part of the picture.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#115

Post by rdabane »

I can attest to this fact ... I was a tutor to freshmans during my grad studies. The kids couldn't handle simple sum of fractions without a calculator. Forget about sum fractions containing a variable. I was astonished at how they managed to clear the SAT's.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#116

Post by forgetsusername »

roel_v wrote: post #91
rimantas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

>It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

That's insane. Of course it is!

Until their skill in a subject surpasses yours, you're the only technical coach.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#117

Post by gutnor »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #67
charlesdm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. Maybe I have different view on things, but if I look back at how much focus was put on putting in effort (and not actually achieving anything) during my high school years, then I think we have things wrong to so…

If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patt…

There is a lot of assumption in this discussion like there is nothing between blind encouragement and stark criticism.

You want you son/friend to learn to code and his first project is copy-pasta from a book. Fantastic. Actually doing something is by far the number 1 challenge people never overcome.

Second project is also copy-pasta, that's only fantastic if you son/friend learn to be a typist. He and You both know he can do that. Does not mean you need to trash him, but showing the same enthusiasm as with the first project is counter productive, instead you should probably encourage him to tinker a bit with the program.

Challenge needs to grow. Sure you don't want to discourage a beginner showing how far he is from the mountain summit, but after climbing a step you need to show him the next one.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#118

Post by alasdair_ »

mgalka wrote: post #57
charlesdm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you an American? I'm European, and maybe this is just personal experience / a personal anecdote, but whenever I've had conversations with an American I found that they tend to always be really excited and then casually ignore any further communication. It's much harder to figure out for me what an American _actually_ means vs say a Belgian or a British person. No point in being an open person if you're only touti…

What country are you from? In my experience Americas fall somewhere in the middle in terms of directness, compared to European countries. I lived in the UK for a few years and found Brits very hard to read / resistant to confrontation. On the other hand, I'm married to a Spaniard, and when I'm over there, it's sometimes a bit uncomfortable how direct and open people are.

Where in the UK did you live?

The Scots and Irish can be brutally direct, while a Londoner will take great pains to avoid confrontation (in general).

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#119

Post by alasdair_ »

mgalka wrote: post #57
charlesdm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you an American? I'm European, and maybe this is just personal experience / a personal anecdote, but whenever I've had conversations with an American I found that they tend to always be really excited and then casually ignore any further communication. It's much harder to figure out for me what an American _actually_ means vs say a Belgian or a British person. No point in being an open person if you're only touti…

What country are you from? In my experience Americas fall somewhere in the middle in terms of directness, compared to European countries. I lived in the UK for a few years and found Brits very hard to read / resistant to confrontation. On the other hand, I'm married to a Spaniard, and when I'm over there, it's sometimes a bit uncomfortable how direct and open people are.

Where in the UK did you live?

The Scots and Irish can be brutally direct, while a Londoner will take great pains to avoid confrontation (in general).

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#120

Post by quadrangle »

dwaltrip wrote: post #88
gaur wrote: post #78

> SORRY, YOU NEED TO ENABLE JAVASCRIPT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE. I need Javascript to read a magazine article? Nope. Bye.

If the underlying issue is that you don't like ads or tracking, you could try installing uBlock origin instead of disabling javascript. There are some other useful extensions in this area but uBlock origin is the only one I have experience with. It's been great for me. Usage of javascript as a tool for building web properties is only going to keep increasing, and grumbling about it doesn't solve anything.

Lots of complaints about how stupid it is for people to require javascript to display text and images does help people realize how stupid that is. Using Javascript and requiring javascript is not the same thing.

People who want to apologize for whatever bad shit is in the world always like to complain about complainers, sheesh. What does that solve?

Post reply on HN