Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns • Hacker News Board

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#181

Post by vacri » Mon, Oct 27, 2014, 9:33 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #179

vacri wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they were good. I said that they don't cause the problems we associate with adolescents in adult staff: ie: it's not the bloody chairs that cause adolescent acting out. Saying "I don't act out. I have an expensive chair" is not a counterpoint.

You really don't think sticking somebody in an uncomfortable chair for 7-8 hours a day, giving them a desk that's too small to even accommodate the work they're expected to do, telling them to basically shut up all day, and getting on to them for even getting up to take a 3 minute stretch-walk is going to have any impact at all on adolescent behavior? There are reasons that all these things are done, of course. But p…

To quote myself: "Crappy chairs in high school don't help". I'm not 'pretending they don't have an impact'. Mind you, I'm also not pretending that $800+ office chairs are the norm for adult [office] workers, and that it's those chairs that underly the difference between adult and adolescent behaviour.

Are you aware that adolescents who don't go to school - like home-schooled kids, early drop-outs, kids in developing countries with no access to high school - that those adolescents still act out?

Or that adolescents have had a long history of being featured in stories as not behaving 'appropriately' (such as Romeo and Juliet), well before the advent of modern high school?

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#182

Post by nilkn » Mon, Oct 27, 2014, 10:22 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #181

nilkn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't think sticking somebody in an uncomfortable chair for 7-8 hours a day, giving them a desk that's too small to even accommodate the work they're expected to do, telling them to basically shut up all day, and getting on to them for even getting up to take a 3 minute stretch-walk is going to have any impact at all on adolescent behavior? There are reasons that all these things are done, of course. But p…

To quote myself: "Crappy chairs in high school don't help". I'm not 'pretending they don't have an impact'. Mind you, I'm also not pretending that $800+ office chairs are the norm for adult [office] workers, and that it's those chairs that underly the difference between adult and adolescent behaviour. Are you aware that adolescents who don't go to school - like home-schooled kids, early drop-outs, kids in developing…

You're just attacking strawmen. Where did I say the cost of the chair is the determining factor? Where did I say that improving high school conditions would just universally eradicate bad behavior in adolescents? You've made up all this. Go re-read my first post which offended you so and see if you can find any of that in there.

You were upset to some degree that I mentioned an $800 chair and you seemingly won't let go of that even in the face of the broader context of what I clearly meant. All I ever said is that really bad classroom conditions do play a role. You agree with that even, but are still fighting back against an imaginary opponent.

And in my experience, yes, even call centers have more comfortable seats and desks than the typical high school classroom. I certainly didn't always have a full square meter of desk space in high school.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#183

Post by ufmace » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 4:18 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #177

ufmace wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a trip for work, so I was mostly accompanied by people who did speak Spanish.

Ah, people speaking other languages around me annoys me enough that I want to know what they're saying!

Yeah, it could be kind of annoying in a way. I could catch maybe 5-10% of a Spanish conversation. Like I was saying in the original, I think I'd need to boost my vocabulary by at least 10x before listening to spoken Spanish would have much benefit.

Trying to listen actually kinda reminds me of learning Vim, where you spend what feels like forever at first totally lost, and doing the simplest edit seems to require so much mental effort that you can't actually think about the code you're working on.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#184

Post by existencebox » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #108

thirdsun wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I'd say there's actually some value in socializing and the concept of engaging with friends and students on a daily basis - especially outside of class. Aren't you worried that your kid might be missing out on those social interactions? There's a lot more to school life than attending several 90 minute classes in a row and calling it a day.

Everytime someone mentions "homeschool", there are always people asking: but what if the kid is missing out on (insert things). How about another point of view: high school students are (potentially) missing out on the opportunity to not wasting their time, to not being unhappy during the 3 years, to truly reach the potential they can be. I did not study high school in the US, but had I have the chance to be homescho…

I had a rather "terrible" public school social experience (like I'm sure many of the people in our field did, unfortunately, if I may be assumptive) which also failed to teach me much of anything of value. Even with all that time spun out for very little, I mark it as less of a waste than kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. Highschool _forces_ you to some extent to play the social game, if only to survive it; in either case you start to understand the true nature of people far more personally. These are all very important insights, IMO, and have served me well post-factum, both in college and in industry. I think the other posts in these comments indicate the "highschool" in both of those scenarios quite well.

(And to address why I think the prior schoolings are so vapid, all of the lockstep progression through "tasks", gameable metrics, and the sheer environment that felt more like a babysitter than a place of learning removed both any natural drive to learn 'interesting' material AND any opportunity for social growth.)

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#185

Post by colechristensen » Sun, Nov 02, 2014, 11:05 PM UTC

jemfinch wrote: post #89

earino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this, in a nutshell, is why my wife and I let our son "online homeschool" when he asked. He's a freshman in highschool and to quote him: "I'm happy to not have to deal with the arbitrary 'lord of the flies' social structure in High School and just be a normal person."

How does he know what a normal person is?

Nobody does as it doesn't really exist.

Not wanting to participate in the aptly compared Lord of the Flies culture of high school is perfectly understandable, though. Moving from high school to a large university sees most all of that culture evaporate, and that lack of a strong social structure favoring the individual can certainly seem a whole lot more normal considering in the real world a person is much more free to leave rigid social structures if they choose.