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Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Kids are far behind in school

#301

Post by AftHurrahWinch »

nemo44x wrote: post #194
jdmichal wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to repost a comment of mine from two years ago. This is not an unknown thing to school boards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 The wife of one of my good friends was on the county school board for 12 years. According to her, it was an unspoken secret was that parental involvement was the biggest predictor of / contributor to student success. The reason it was taboo was because you absolutely c…

The #1 factor in determining if a kid will have a desired outcome is if they have a mom and a dad present. It's really that simple. And that means parental involvement. It's sad one is labeled a racist or anti-feminist or w/e when you point this obvious fact out. ~70% of black kids are born to single mom's. That's a broken culture. White kids are at ~30% and rising and we see the same failure rates. That's a broken c…

If there is a causal relationship between number of parents and children's erudition, then I think you've made a good argument for the nuclear family and a great argument for polygamy. :)

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#302

Post by digisign »

bko wrote: post #280
javajosh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Teachers unions were against it in our area, even after vaccination became available to everyone over 11.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#303

Post by boppo1 »

pjkundert wrote: post #210
lapcat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a concerned parent will wildly outperform a school teacher. A parent teaches maybe 2 students per day. A school teacher teaches maybe 200 students per day. It's an unfair comparison.

I'm struggling to find the purpose of this reply. Do you believe that saying "no fair!" invalidates the superior outcomes for home-schooled children? If billions of dollars of state funding and the teachers' aggregate decades of university education can't overcome this obstacle (which did not seem to be a problem when children in one-room schoolhouses routinely used to learn Latin), I'm wondering what other advantage…

Daycare

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#304

Post by oneoff786 »

carapace wrote: post #126
oneoff786 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of the lockdowns was very, very small for the kids.

Here's the thing about this sort of reasoning that really stumps me: Those kids will, if all goes to plan, grow up and be oldies someday, yes? And if another terrible pandemic like this sweeps the world (which is not unlikely) they will be the ones in the hospitals dying in agony, slowly drowning in their own dissolving lung tissue. It is at that (thankfully theoretical) moment when the FULL benefits of having made t…

Everything is a balance. Are you supportive of china’s ridiculous Shanghai lockdown? Do I not respect my elders if I refuse that?

Everything has costs and efficacy levels. One quality year of life of grandma vs. the economic opportunity of a new grad. It’s not easy at all. It is easy to claim that death outweighs all else and hide behind naive humanism

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#305

Post by spookthesunset »

mort96 wrote: post #11
ovi256 wrote: post #7

I've heard from private school teachers that they expected exactly this to happen, and enrollment in private schools has boomed as parents that could used the schools that cared about staying open (and opened as soon as they could). This was well supported and non-controversial pre-pandemic, where we had research results showing that simply having participation in remote schooling lowers high school graduation rate b…

I don't understand exactly what you're complaining about. Has anyone ignored the cost of closing schools? My impression has always been that everyone has known about the high cost, but, well, millions more dead isn't exactly a small cost either. I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?

I've been called a selfish asshole who just wants to use school as a daycare when I said our school should be open. LOTS of people pulled the wool over their eyes and pretended that "kids are resilient" and "kids will be fine" when they closed schools for more than a full year.

What we did to the young generation the last two years is awful.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#306

Post by xorcist »

carapace wrote: post #126
oneoff786 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of the lockdowns was very, very small for the kids.

Here's the thing about this sort of reasoning that really stumps me: Those kids will, if all goes to plan, grow up and be oldies someday, yes? And if another terrible pandemic like this sweeps the world (which is not unlikely) they will be the ones in the hospitals dying in agony, slowly drowning in their own dissolving lung tissue. It is at that (thankfully theoretical) moment when the FULL benefits of having made t…

What you say makes sense as "don't visit the elderly".

Not as "don't visit school".

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#307

Post by em-bee »

colpabar wrote: post #291
em-bee wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course there are external factors, but if you aren't even going to entertain the idea that the people who decide to live these lifestyles bear some of the responsibility for the outcomes, you are not helping anyone. It seems that as a society we have given up on the idea of personal responsibility/accountability.

i think it is irrelevant who is responsible, what matters is what we can do about it.

i can not force you to change your lifestyle, but i can make the desired lifestyle more economically and socially viable.

but that requires actually helping people instead of lecturing them.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#308

Post by spookthesunset »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #95
nradov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's incorrect. We never had to close schools. Sweden kept primary schools open (without masks) and they did fine. Closing schools was a completely irrational overreaction.

They had vastly more covid deaths than their nordic peers. That's a consequence you can argue is justified, I suppose, but you shouldn't try to dismiss it as "did fine."

When the dust has settled and level heads can do actual good studies on the outcomes of the last two years of mitigations... I'm pretty sure the findings will be that closing schools didn't do a damn thing but screw over kids. Same with virtually every other NPI.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#309

Post by nemo44x »

em-bee wrote: post #273
nemo44x wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a hard question and we have to look at how we got here. Before 1955 or so, we weren't having this problem, for example. We had other problems, yes, but not this disaster. Not so many people were clients of the state.

But for starters at a high level:

- Dismantle any form of welfare; money, food stamps, housing, etc. for anyone of able mind and body and of working age. Children will never be an input for how much welfare you receive so there is no incentive to have kids. Possibly even penalize welfare based on number of kids.

- As a consequence of this, fire most of the welfare administration nationwide

- Build a new Citizen Development Force that takes on children from mothers that can't raise them without benefits. Any mother can drop their kid(s) off here but the mother then loses any rights to the child. These are large camps around the country that offer among the best salaries to qualified care takers, teachers, mentors, etc. Each function has aggressive KPIs (to go with the high salaries) and audits to ensure successful outcomes. There are checks and controls to prevent any type of abuse.

- Citizen Development Force has a mission to nurture, raise, teach, and grow these kids into self sufficient, responsible adults. The top 30% are sent to universities or put into military leadership positions (officers). The rest are taught trades/technical/enlisted after 15 years of age based on their interests and aptitudes. Those with learning disabilities become clients of the state for life.

Ideally, after about 20-30 years this program can begin to be shut down and the funds can be redistributed to finance new social problems. The idea is to break the cycle.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#310

Post by oneoff786 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #164
oneoff786 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents were mostly fine from it in the end. Look by all means lockdowns made a lot of sense early on in the face of an unknown disease. I hope we can all agree they no longer make sense for Covid.

In the US 200,000+ children lost caregivers to covid. So technically most were fine, but that's also not a number to scoff at. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/200000-us-children-lost...

That seems… impossible? There’s been about 70k deaths in the range of 20-49.

What’s a child? What’s a caregiver? I’d also point out it’s not “technically most” it’s 99.7%

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