In my opinion, the issue here isn't virtual learning (the what), the issue is how we are doing virtual learning (the how). We can't use zoom the way we use a physical classroom. It's a totally different medium. I teach a group of kindergarteners online every morning for 3 hours. The first thing we do is make sure their space is set up to allow for movement. They can jump up move, around, wiggle, whatever they want. I also take huge advantage of the screen share feature. If kids have a question about bugs, we look on youtube together for a great bug video. Every morning they get to pick a video on cosmic kids yoga, and then we do cosmic kids together. Considering she's the best kids yoga teacher in the world, we're taking advantage of the online medium to give them the best possible experience. When I read to them, I also screen share, so they can follow along (a much better way to get kids to read a long than in a classroom where I have to hold the book up.). Are there advantages to a physical classroom? Absolutely. Do we live in an age of technology? Yes, this is absolutely true. Let's learn to use these incredible tools well with our kids, rather than just dismissing them because they don't replicate the classroom experience.
My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
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Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#32Wow. Agree with all the other comments. I read the whole article, and there is some next level self-centered entitlement here that has wholly passed on to "Raffi" the 5 year old who is only now learning not to deliberately make his little brother cry, and who has learned that spitting his drink on a laptop makes mommy and daddy take him to the park. While I want to empathize with the parents, the fact that they blame…
> they have raised a hellion
A five year old is far from having been raised. As a parent of a 6 year old I know a bunch of other parents that have similar experiences where their kids are revolting against being forced to sit in front of a virtual teacher for hours every day.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get ahead of what? I’m not convinced any of this remote learning stuff matters that much as long as parents have money to feed their kids and house themselves. Canceling remote learning to spend time with the kids and giving them space to let them learn about something they’re interested in for a year probably does zero harm and might even be beneficial. I would have loved it. Obviously bad family situations, and pov…
I failed 7th grade because my parents were divorcing in the middle of it and literally everybody including my family acted like it was the end of my school career and I'd never recover and get a real job and would be SOO behind my peers. I'm 100% on the "yeah you can take a year off, it'll be ok or better in the end" side of things. I can't imagine myself at 13 having to deal with that + quarantine/2020.
I'm not an expert on education, I'm not going to speculate on the psychological effects of having a year without school on a kid. I don't think I'm qualified to do that.
Outside of developmental effects though, by the time you get to college does it really matter if someone is one year older than another person? Is anyone going to get rejected from a first job interview just because they're 26 instead of 25?
Plenty of people take gap years before they go to college, so my concern with taking a year off school wouldn't be, "but how will they ever catch up?" It would be about the resources that parents are relying on, the developmental effects of having a routine interrupted to that degree, the ability of parents to keep working, early socialization, etc...
I think those are all valid concerns, and (again) I'm not going to pretend that I can speak on them. But I'm not worried about, "some other kid will be one year ahead."
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#34I honestly couldn't get past the first four paragraphs. The author has... issues. Personally I wouldn't write an article like this to let the whole world in on my neuroticism. It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt." It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear neurotic than open it and remove all doubt.
Better to keep your fingers off the keyboard than fail to offer a single point of contention while rather unpleasantly abusing the author. I wonder why you even felt the need to comment. Are perceived neurotics open season?
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#35I just pulled my own kids out of public school because I can't stomach it either. I can't in good conscience subject my kids to 6 hours of online class 5 days a week. Whether or not you want to judge me for feeling this way or call me nasty names, "psychic torture" is exactly how I'd describe the solution these educators have come up with.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
While I 100% agree with the intent of the HN guideline, there are times when calling out crazy as crazy is fully warranted. I believe this is one of those cases. I don’t believe parent comment was a “shallow dismissal”, it was an accurate and “deep” dismissal.
"I honestly couldn't get past the" is an internet trope. "The author has issues" is true of everybody. "Neurotic" is calling names in this context [1]. It seems like a shallow dismissal to me. There's another guideline which applies here too:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Posts about parenting may be the most emotionally triggering of all categories that come up on HN. As readers, we're all responsible for containing the reflexive reactions that come up in us when encountering something intense, and instead of rushing to the comments to dismiss or attack it, waiting awhile until something more reflective emerges, in which case an interesting comment may result.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[1] So is "crazy" for that matter. That's an extreme thing to say, and I'm sure you don't really mean it.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#37Wow. Agree with all the other comments. I read the whole article, and there is some next level self-centered entitlement here that has wholly passed on to "Raffi" the 5 year old who is only now learning not to deliberately make his little brother cry, and who has learned that spitting his drink on a laptop makes mommy and daddy take him to the park. While I want to empathize with the parents, the fact that they blame…
> they have raised a hellion A five year old is far from having been raised. As a parent of a 6 year old I know a bunch of other parents that have similar experiences where their kids are revolting against being forced to sit in front of a virtual teacher for hours every day.
You can't fix much of that stuff after he is 7 years old. Educate the child so you don't have to jail the adult. At least that's the common wisdom grandmothers say in my country.
Some study I found that also mentions the seven-year milestone: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Personality-Is-Fully-Dev...
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#38The 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.
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#39I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here. I read the article and it seems totally normal for a little kid not to be able to do "school" on a laptop. Kindergarten is so much different than later years of schooling. It's not about lectures and subjects, or homework and tests. It's about much more fundamental lessons, interspersed with creativity, socialization, and learning to be separated from your parents.…
Me too! We're jugging 3 kids and working from home, and I thought the article was on point. My guess is that most of the dismissive comments are from people without kids!
Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I
#40All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old. Adults are barely able to make it through a day of Zoom meetings without feeling drained, how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to sit in front of a screen?
The only reasons adults can do it is years and years of learning impulse controls and suppression of bad emotions for everyone's good. A 5 year old does not have these skills, and will obviously act out as they have no other mechanism of dealing with it.
Also, who said that this article has to have a point? The writer never claims to propose a solution, she is simply writing out her emotions for others to hear. Assuming she has been largely isolating, is it all that weird that she would talk about her experiences online?