Many Japanese children refuse to go to school • Hacker News Board

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#31

Post by connicpu » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

S3an12 wrote: post #6

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

But why did Japan's snap first? North American (NA) schools have bullying, exams, homework, and sleep disruption but our system is still relatively intact. Children aren't much happier here either. Teen depression and teen suicide is rising at a rapid pace as well. The first reason that comes to mind is that there is less of a stigma of leaving these public schools in Japan than in NA. It seems such a common occurren…

In a lot of the United States at least, it's illegal to not have your children in school, and there's a fair bit of paperwork involved for doing homeschooling. The burden is there on the parents to force kids to go to school even if they don't want to.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#32

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:50 AM UTC

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

barry-cotter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means school was irrelevant. The evidence for transfer of learning is weak to the point of non-existence[1]. Even if transfer learning did exist that’s not the reason for school that any substantial portion of people believe in. If we look at the institutional history of school teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school. [1] “Besides just plain forgetting, people commonly fail to mars…

> The evidence for transfer learning is weak to the point of non-existence. Citation needed. But transfer learning is a term specific to the ML field anyway, so I'm not sure why you used it. > teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school I don't think most people believe this is the purpose of school, not even nationalists.

Sorry, meant transfer of learning.

Re: schooling as a means of promoting nationalism

> Education and Military Rivalry

> Using data from the last 150 years in a small set of countries, and from the postwar period in a large set of countries, we show that large investments in state primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. By con- trast, we find that democratic transitions are negatively associated with education investments, while the presence of democratic politi- cal institutions magnifies the positive effect of military rivalries. These empirical results are robust to a number of statistical concerns and continue to hold when we instrument military rivalries with commod- ity prices or rivalries in a certain country’s immediate neighborhood. We also present historical case studies, as well as a simple model, that are consistent with the econometric evidence.

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27759015/educati...

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#33

Post by the8472 » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:51 AM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #19

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

> Maybe there's the benefit of finding friends, but now they have the internet from a young age, and I think the social justification has evaporated. Why bother forming friend circles with people you must talk to, when you can find friend circles from a larger pool with people you want to talk to? I don't know... Aren't relationships with people you see face-to-face generally stronger than those with people you mainl…

It's easier to get to know people in smaller communities where their common communication channel also allows chitchat. E.g. hobbyist forums, game guilds

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#34

Post by cheez » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:52 AM UTC

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

I'm a parent and I think school is a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost. So I spend a lot of time and money to find a school environment that gives them more than I can alone. If at some point I can no longer afford it, I would homeschool.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#35

Post by sdrothrock » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

> If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost.

The benefit of going to school for kids in the US at least is that you get to move a year closer to getting out.

A cost is that if you don't go, you get held back (and get the according social stigma).

Another poster below asked

> But why did Japan's snap first?

I think one of the reasons here is perhaps that kids automatically advance through the public schools system for the first nine grades regardless of whether they actually attend school or not. So people can stay even with their friend groups.

I've known/worked with a few kids who didn't go to school, and while some of them had personal issues of some kind or another, others simply just didn't see any cost to not going to school and hung out with their friends when their friends were out of school and otherwise enjoyed life.

Another difference, I think, is that with bullying in US schools, you can usually escape it to a certain extent through different classes/activities, but in Japanese schools, you tend to stay with your homeroom class for every subject, so there's no chance to get away/make a different friend group except for club activities and the next academic year.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#36

Post by 42droids » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

Do we have resources on alternative school systems? I remember, for example, that Elon Musk runs an alternative school. Anybody ever attended one? Would love to hear experiences.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#37

Post by sametmax » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:02 AM UTC

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

+1.

Even as an adult, If I could do it all again, I would avoid school as much as possible.

School is an upgrade from child labor, but I now have enough experience to know it's a downgrade from what I can learn of my own.

Not saying every kid should do the same of course.

But personnally, after being in 11 schools, including fancy private ones and ones in poor neighbourhoods, I found extremly few decent teachers, a very violent and boring environment, and a culture that killed the best things in young minds while promoting unfairness.

And while I was often top of my class, I didn't learn much. Took me 3 months to learn to read, a bit more to write and count, and after that, everything was just more fun to learn alone than in the depressive and repressive jail of school.

Also, I don't miss having to fight for social acceptance, the bullying, the stress and pressure nor the hypocrisy of the ones in charge. All at an age I didn't have yet the skill and knowldge to deal with it.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#38

Post by paganel » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

barry-cotter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means school was irrelevant. The evidence for transfer of learning is weak to the point of non-existence[1]. Even if transfer learning did exist that’s not the reason for school that any substantial portion of people believe in. If we look at the institutional history of school teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school. [1] “Besides just plain forgetting, people commonly fail to mars…

> The evidence for transfer learning is weak to the point of non-existence. Citation needed. But transfer learning is a term specific to the ML field anyway, so I'm not sure why you used it. > teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school I don't think most people believe this is the purpose of school, not even nationalists.

Nationalists most certainly believe that, for example every small change to our children’s history books that can be seen as not conforming to our glorious past (or what the nationalists see as our “glorious past”) is seen by our local nationalists (I live in a Eastern Europe) as potentially the end of the world as we know it. Europe can be interesting like that, good thing that we (almost) stopped killing each other after WW2 over stupid things like imaginary lines drawn on soil.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#39

Post by sametmax » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:11 AM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #19

oddity wrote: post #5

If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost. What does the student believe they get they out of it? The pathway from school to job is nebulous to young kids who don't yet need money to live. As kids get o…

> Maybe there's the benefit of finding friends, but now they have the internet from a young age, and I think the social justification has evaporated. Why bother forming friend circles with people you must talk to, when you can find friend circles from a larger pool with people you want to talk to? I don't know... Aren't relationships with people you see face-to-face generally stronger than those with people you mainl…

As a kid, it's very easy to make friends. You don't need school for that. Three of my child hood best friends were not in my schools. I sill visit one regularly, 20 years later.

In fact, I'll argue that school distort the child ability to socialize, not improve it. Because it's an artificial setup were the crazy values and rules only exist and make sense in the school. And worst, adults sell you values and rules from the real world while you are stuck in this alternate dimension.

Re: Many Japanese children refuse to go to school

#40

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:17 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #38

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The evidence for transfer learning is weak to the point of non-existence. Citation needed. But transfer learning is a term specific to the ML field anyway, so I'm not sure why you used it. > teaching nationalism is a much easier sell as to the purpose of school I don't think most people believe this is the purpose of school, not even nationalists.

Nationalists most certainly believe that, for example every small change to our children’s history books that can be seen as not conforming to our glorious past (or what the nationalists see as our “glorious past”) is seen by our local nationalists (I live in a Eastern Europe) as potentially the end of the world as we know it. Europe can be interesting like that, good thing that we (almost) stopped killing each other…

> Europe can be interesting like that, good thing that we (almost) stopped killing each other after WW2 over stupid things like imaginary lines drawn on soil.

Yes, that happens when ethnic cleansing is completed so that what were previously multi-ethnic empires are now mono-ethnic nation states.