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Kids are far behind in school

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Re: Kids are far behind in school

#271

Post by brightball »

taeric wrote: post #230
brightball wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could someone be sidelined by this? EDIT: Since we've hit the reply nesting limit. I still don't see how having an activity that involves so many people sidelines anyone or how a lack of that activity would improve the involvement? I can't think of any school sanctioned activities that discriminated against any student based on their appearance, even cheer. I had giant glasses that slid down my nose, a belly and…

How many ugly people do you remember that excelled at your school? Awkward people? Anyone that didn't have the support of being otherwise successful? Edit: if you click the timestamp on a post, you can reply to it. :) Having an activity vacuum up all the money from any alternative sidelines folks. Did you have a thriving chess club? Go? Math or spelling bee?

Thanks for the reply tip. :-)

I honestly don't remember. I know we did have a chess club. We had "Mathletes" that was very popular. A lot of people were involved in it.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#272

Post by sodality2 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #265
sodality2 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Gifted programs exist and students in it receive more personal and one-on-one support. Personally I didn't pay for my gifted program (or my parents, of course) throughout the entirety of elementary and middle school. Only in high school did I have to pay for the extra exams, which was approximately $400 (I shoveled snow to pay for it).

Kids from poorer households are much less likely to be in these programs. Of course plenty of individuals defy this, but from a broad sociological context mostly kids from wealthier educated backgrounds end up in "gifted" programs. In the US household income is one of the most reliable ways to predict academic success. We're already seeing Covid widen some of these existing gaps. This is also kind of irrelevant to th…

That's very true. I think that having a target that a student or parent can push for, that is independent of wealth (directly, if the program is free), is a really good thing to have.

I don't have any magical solutions other than that. I do understand that being able to provide resources for a student in early life is directly influenced by wealth and greatly improves the odds of success. How do we encourage this among parents who don't have this wealth? My mom used to wake me up early on weekends and put me up on the counter, making me recite times tables. Small things like that, that can help equalize the playing field because they are not directly tied to wealth, should be encouraged for parents.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#273

Post by em-bee »

nemo44x wrote: post #263
em-bee wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what to do about it? we can't just expect parents to get involved. nor does it help to just blame their kids performance on them. the focus really needs to be on a broader level. what changes to our society are needed so that families can thrive so that they can actually focus on the care of their kids? things like higher minimum wage, parental leave, easy access to insurance, etc. all the general needs everyone…

So you're saying it's everything else that's wrong. Not that we accept single motherhood as normal and OK? That's what's wrong here. Rights without responsibility. Stop incentivizing single motherhood, for starters. Encourage men to stick around and for both parents to rely on each other. It feels like you're helping but you're not. You're encouraging futile behavior.

that's not what i meant to say.

what's wrong is that we keep trying to find out who or what is at fault instead of trying to find out how to actually make things better.

the question is: how do you encourage men to stick around? what makes them leave? who or what is incentivizing single motherhood? if it is economical factors, then those factors need to change. those are what i gave as examples.

what i hear is: being a single mother is bad. you shouldn't leave your family. don't do that. but that doesn't help. we need to get a better understanding of what causes families to break apart. we need to provide an environment that supports families.

being a single parent is not a cause, it is an outcome. we need to fix the causes for that outcome, if we want to change that.

encourage parents to rely on each other

what is that supposed to mean? a cynical reading suggests that this means that if only parents would rely on each other they would not have any problems. how about the ability to rely on society? because that is what is lacking. parents are on their own. i don't know, but is that what incentivizes single mothers? because they can get more help that way? if that is the case, yes, that should change, but not by providing less help to single parents, but rather by providing more help to couples, so they can stay together.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#274

Post by mschuster91 »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #207
mschuster91 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness Only partially - only ~40-50% of a person's IQ are a result of parental genetics [3]. The rest is a result of the environment in which the child is raised - and there are very important factors at play that directly correlate with income of the parents: - Does…

If these family-level environmental inputs had substantial effects on adult IQ, we'd see it in the behavioral genetics research. But we don't. The adult IQs of adopted children have very little correlation with those of the adoptive parents who raised them or those of their adopted, non-biological siblings.

> If these family-level environmental inputs had substantial effects on adult IQ, we'd see it in the behavioral genetics research. But we don't.

Actually there is a direct correlation between adult IQ and stress [1], it isn't genetic though.

> The adult IQs of adopted children have very little correlation with those of the adoptive parents who raised them or those of their adopted, non-biological siblings.

To quote [2]: "Studies of mixed-race children and black children adopted by white parents suggest, however, that racial differences in test performance are largely if not entirely environmental in origin."

In any case the question is open if "IQ testing" is actually a decent measure of intelligence, especially with children that suffer from a variety of stuff somewhere on the ADHD/autism spectrum (e.g. selective mutism, anxiety issues), or if it can be used as a metric at all due to disparities in testing incidence between population segments - often enough, it's teachers who recommend IQ and ADHD tests, and there have been a number of suggestions that racial and other discrimination can negatively affect children there.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-h...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-scor...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#275

Post by whateveracct »

lapcat wrote: post #219
jeffbee wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really thinking of the health of the professional music class here, I'm thinking of the mental and social well-being of a generation of people who may never be even moderately proficient at music.

The guitar teacher said some students are "about a year behind where they would normally be after four years of studying". That seems a lot less extreme than "never be even moderately proficient at music".

This sort of extrapolation has been very common re: children and school and the pandemic.

"Who will think of the children??" come to life

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#276

Post by wbsss4412 »

nemo44x wrote: post #231
virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "broken culture?"

That's it's considered acceptable for kids to be born into situations like this. This is "broken" because it reliably leads to failure and undesirable outcomes.

You’re making a lot of strong assumptions when you say that it’s considered acceptable. I strongly doubt that it is normal for anyone to want to be a single parent (there are of course anecdotal exceptions to this, but not on a cultural level).

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#277

Post by philipov »

toast0 wrote: post #202
philipov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being smart and understanding the material are the important endpoints. This statement contains a serious misapprehension and requires revision. My grandfather would often say that "understanding" swimming won't help you when you're drowning. You need to be able to swim. You can't get to a point where you can swim through mathematics without solving a lot of math problems. You don't become good at something by stop…

It's really hard to practice and develop study skills with material that the student is proficient in without effort. You can understand what study skills are, but not really apply them and experience them working. Study skills can be super important, and it's nicer to develop them early rather than just in time in your third year of undergrad, but access to challenging subjects at a challenging pace in high school o…

That is how the school system fails, but it does not justify the mistaken belief common to so many victims of talent that understanding and intellect are the end goal, rather than a starting point. It does not justify avoiding practice.

In deciding how the school system should better serve its function, one must first have a proper apprehension of what that function is. It is harmful to believe this myth that "understanding the material" is the fulfillment of education. It does not identify the correct measure of success.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#278

Post by giantg2 »

lapcat wrote: post #171
jeffbee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning music. It baffles me that anyone would be blind to the idea that children could be "behind" when so much of childhood development involves muscle strength and dexterity that must be practiced. This goes for many musical instruments as well as the voice, all athletics, penmanship, verbal articulation, and so much more.

Is this actually a problem for music though? Who are the future professional musicians? "My most motivated, talented and best supported students are on schedule or slightly ahead." So it's not clear that we're losing any potential virtuosos here. If a generation of amateur musicians end up being a little less proficient in music, that's unfortunate, but hardly worth panicking, I think. I personally started playing gu…

"Who are the future professional musicians?"

By the looks of things, it's the ones that take off the most clothes and do the most scandalous things. But maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old man.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#279

Post by Jensson »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #257
annyeonghada wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures. I had a small that I shared with two brothers. My desk was minuscule. I had top grades. >Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) ha…

"I did it so there is no excuse for anyone else" Your response appears utterly useless in this discussion except to highlight that even those who grew up in poverty cannot be expected to have any empathy for those who share a similar background.

It is an example that nature absolutely can overcome nurture. Kids in similar situations usually fails, yes, but if they were talented enough they would have succeeded just like that guy. You can still have empathy for them and see that they struggle, no kids should have to go through that in an ideal world, but you can't say that those kids fails only because of that situation as we can show plenty of examples where talented kids makes it through.

We should help all kids from poverty, but we shouldn't ignore the huge factor talents plays in how well they will perform in school. Saying things like "rich kids only do well because they get good support" is ignorant. That support helps, but parts of it is genes as well, both are important factors, and understanding how those factors interacts is important to give each kid the best help they can get.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#280

Post by bko »

javajosh wrote: post #193
lapcat wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time there might be a very serious one as quite a few kids basically have missed proper school for about 2 years. Let's not even try to pretend that lockdowns have no negative effects at all. I'm not saying there are no negative effects. What I would say is this: even before the pandemic, many students were not sufficiently "challenged". They were already moving more slowly than they could have moved. I…

Human intelligence is distributed, like everything else, on a normal distribution. Students at either end will have vastly different experiences. The low-end students, sadly, will never catch up. The high-end students will catch up easily, and may even enjoy the challenge. The really bad outcome is if the average student (e.g. +/- one sigma) can't catch up such that when this generation reaches employment age, there…

It's worse than that. I remember bars, restaurants and even sporting events were open prior to schools. Children were an afterthought.
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