"Virtual pre-kintegarden?" That's childcare, not education.
My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
111–120 of 467 posts
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#112A lot of people complain about Zoom fatigue, and while on one hand I'm fairly happy that it is a competitors offering that has ended up with being a part of that moniker, and not the product I'm working on, it is somewhat unfair to blame Zoom or the software stack for that. The main culprit for messing up meetings are the cameras and the microphones on laptops. I'm not sure if there are any vendors at all, including…
You can buy a top-of-the-line $3,000 16" Macbook Pro and it comes with a garbage-tier 720p webcam that has terrible dynamic range and low-light performance. It's embarrassing. Most Windows laptops at a third of the price have significantly better webcams.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#113Most studies show that unless kids come from low income families the differences between kids who go to pre-k and kids who don't are gone by 3rd grade or so. And for low-income kids it's only advantageous if it's "high quality" preschool.
I can't for the life of me figure out why you would bother putting your kid through 6 hours a day of virtual pre-k, when you have to be right there to watch them anyway.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#114The problem is not so much that kids can’t handle virtual education as much as we not being able to care for our kids because we have a jobs. Think about it... Do you think it’s normal for a human child to be institutionalized just because his/her parents are working? Where is their hunter-gatherer band when your kids need it? Nothing about 2020 nuclear family society is normal for a human child. Nothing at all.
your points seem to be contradicting each other. hunter gatherers would naturally have institutionalized child care - when some people go gathering, some people go hunting and some people stay put and look after the tribe's children if they aren't ready to do either. this is about as far from a nuclear family as you can get though, especially if the tribal culture isn't monogamous and e.g. a child can have many fathers who equally accept a child as theirs.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
My son had to miss pre-school when he was 4. I created a home-based program (week to week) where we learned everything I could find that would normally be in a regular pre-school curriculum. We worked for 3 hours every morning "studying", and he was 4. I made it fun. I made it productive. We took breaks. We had snacks. We had recess. It worked. By the end of the summer, he was reading and more prepared for Kindergart…
What you did with your child is vastly different than sitting them down in front of a computer screen for hours. You interacted with your child and gave them a social experience and hands on activities. People have to work and can't just take off to be full time teachers for their children. Sure you would have loved Zoom, but I doubt your child would have.
This is a good point. GP is arguing that their experience with their child was great, specifically because they didn't sit their child down in front of a screen and tell them to sit still and watch a pixelated head talk at them all day. And they're probably right, what they're describing sounds like an awesome learning environment.
In a weird way, they're kind of agreeing with the article here -- remote learning as it's currently structured in the average public school does not work for every kid.
The only disagreement seems to come down to whether someone's reaction to seeing a paragraph like this
> Even our worst-case scenario is a privileged one; a trashed apartment and frayed nerves are nothing in comparison with what other parents are about to undergo. My husband and I can work at home, and we can afford some assistance with child care. The huge number of parents who must work outside the home, parents who can’t afford any child care, and parents who don’t feel comfortable managing a sitter’s viral risk alongside their own are in a far worse situation.
is:
- Wow, this is a problem we should collectively work to address.
or,
- Wow, parents sure are lazy with their kids.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and the parents.
What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing reward at the top.
> if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing
that's a very narrow minded way of looking at the world. Kind words, hugs are very much worth it
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#117A lot of people complain about Zoom fatigue, and while on one hand I'm fairly happy that it is a competitors offering that has ended up with being a part of that moniker, and not the product I'm working on, it is somewhat unfair to blame Zoom or the software stack for that. The main culprit for messing up meetings are the cameras and the microphones on laptops. I'm not sure if there are any vendors at all, including…
You can buy a top-of-the-line $3,000 16" Macbook Pro and it comes with a garbage-tier 720p webcam that has terrible dynamic range and low-light performance. It's embarrassing . Most Windows laptops at a third of the price have significantly better webcams.
I assume thinness is part of the problem--my high-end Logitech webcam is about an inch thick. Also webcam quality was probably just not much of a consideration until fairly recently.
But, even if someone doesn't more or less set up a studio as I've done to a degree and some of my colleagues have done, there are some pretty basic things related to lighting and webcam height that can be done pretty easily by most people. Though I'd add that comms problems are also a frequent annoyance and there's not a lot people can do there.
I'd add though that I normally move around my house when I'm working. Sitting at a desk all day in a "studio" doesn't really work for me.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and the parents.
What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing reward at the top.
Nothing is wrong with hard. But complaining about hard things, sympathy, and recognition of the difficulty is also a large portion of what makes doing hard things tolerable. Trying to shut it down will have the opposite effect of what you want.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#119There are very practical techniques for addressing these problems. However they aren't widely known.
For example if you want to keep a kid still to listen, give them something good to fiddle with. For example, teach kids how to finger knit. And then have them do simple finger knitting while they are listening. The finger knitting is an outlet for the ansies, and they are able to pay better attention, for longer.
You also have to be more cognizant of kid limitations when you have less feedback. But we haven't done that. We have kept the same schedule. It is easier to miss a kid acting out over Zoom. And the combination is bad. We really need to tell kids to get up and do jumping jacks, come back in 15 minutes with milk and cookies.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and the parents.
What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing reward at the top.
have you been taught to tell hard from bullshit? i've been taught that hard and worthwhile are orthogonal and the amazing prize at the top sometimes is just the fact that you've made it, thanks, now get the f* back down you idiot.