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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

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Re: School or Prison

#311

Post by jolux »

leephillips wrote: post #260
jolux wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you do that? That doesn't seem very trusting of your students. People need to go to the bathroom several times a day, there's no reason to think that needing to go to the bathroom in your class is an indication of a health issue.

Good question. I tried to treat my students as adults, to the occasional chagrin of the administration, as much as possible. I definitely did not trust them—I knew too much—but I tried to pretend that I did. So my ploy was to discourage the students who would otherwise go hang out in the bathroom every single class. Of course one needs to go several times per day. But that does not translate to every time my class me…

For my context here, I went to a high school that was centered around progressive education principles and I never had to ask to go to the bathroom. There were no disciplinary policies like that. And in fact, everything was fine. We all still worked hard, paid attention, and got our diplomas. I think too many teachers assume students are all malicious gremlins trying as hard as they can to avoid school. Turns out, most adults will start to chafe too if you tell them they have to ask to go to the bathroom after the third time doing so in your presence, let alone if you make them ask every time. And some adults will even use bathroom breaks as an excuse to waste time.

So be it! That's life.

Re: School or Prison

#312

Post by throwaway998662 »

wisty wrote: post #302
throwaway998662 wrote: post #266

As someone who's been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder/rape, you'll prob…

> it doesn't serve as a deterrent (based on talking to ~50 prisoners about this) 1. Talking to prisoners doesn't mean it's not a deterrent for the rest of the population. This is a massive selection bias, it's like saying diet and exercise doesn't work because morbidly obese people say it doesn't work for them. 2. People sometimes lie (often first to themselves), especially about their motivations. This is like an an…

Most people who end up in prisoners in the USA are reoffenders. The USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world and very high crime rates.

So when I talk about deterrence I'm mostly talking about reoffenders. I.e, the prisoners I talked to coming back. I think they're more likely to commit crimes after prison, not less!!

Do you think people would lie, in a heavily monitored prison, about wanting to never come back to prison because they'll "die in glory" in a gun fight against the cops next time so they can't be arrested? Or about becoming a drug kingpin? Sounds like you think I'm saying these people were claiming nice things about themselves, but really they're mostly claiming quite bad things if it makes me think they're going to be back and were strongly negatively influenced by peers in prison.

On the topic of regular people who prison serves as a deterrent for, I'd look at other countries where crime rates are lower without the same hideous institution. Clearly it's not just horrible prisons which prevent noncriminals from committing crime, since so many countries don't have that? I guess that's up for debate.

Re: School or Prison

#315

Post by avs733 »

So...government architecture is hard to place? I feel like this is meant as a commentary on the culture of schools but the outside of the building has nothing to do with the inside and is just designed by the lowest bidder to look fairly generically “place”

Re: School or Prison

#316

Post by joe_the_user »

canofbars wrote: post #61
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

It's part of the larger situation that the buildings created by large bureaucracies all look about the same.

A lot of these images only show a very narrow look at what looks to be the entrance to some front desk style room. I'd be more interested in what the insides look like.

I've seen and been in enough of these kinds of buildings to make them absolute bottom of my list of places to see inside or out.

Re: School or Prison

#317

Post by avs733 »

kiba wrote: post #37
meekrohprocess wrote: post #22

A fun anecdote from my youth near a US seaboard was that our elementary and middle school buildings were designed by the same person who designed a few prisons around the area. When I bounced around cities later in life, I was surprised at how many of my peers said the same thing as a conversation piece. Maybe they used the same governmental bidding process. "Needed: a building. One food preparation and eating area.…

It's a series of boxes. That's the default setting for buildings.

Cheapest as well

Re: School or Prison

#318

Post by escape_goat »

wisty wrote: post #302
throwaway998662 wrote: post #266

As someone who's been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder/rape, you'll prob…

> it doesn't serve as a deterrent (based on talking to ~50 prisoners about this) 1. Talking to prisoners doesn't mean it's not a deterrent for the rest of the population. This is a massive selection bias, it's like saying diet and exercise doesn't work because morbidly obese people say it doesn't work for them. 2. People sometimes lie (often first to themselves), especially about their motivations. This is like an an…

Could we just not do things like this. I'm sorry to be singling anyone out but there is a pattern here. People, the "well actually" rebuttals that you pull out of thin air in two minutes are not a useful or meaningful response to someone's reportage of their lives experience and do not facilitate the quality of discussion that brought you to HN in the first place, and if you do not understand that then consider that perhaps a life in which most problems are inherently tractable, if not an easy search result from Stack Overflow, does not actually leave you with a correct understanding of your ability to understand or solve complex problems in the world.

Re: School or Prison

#319

Post by throwawaygh »

Nextgrid wrote: post #227
throwawaygh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following is specific to the USA: 1. School is not mandatory; education is mandatory. Ask any home schooler. A rare few private schools offer quite different experiences than the typical public school (e.g., the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools). This applies also to "closed confinement" and "control". Of course, opting out requires enlightened parenting and lots of resources. 2. You are constantly told w…

> School is not mandatory; education is mandatory. Ask any home schooler. Home schooling is not a suitable alternative IMO. Social contact with your peers is important too; having to forfeit that just to not be in a prison-like system seems like a bad deal. > Choose some good coding/math/philosophy puzzles during the evening and work on them instead of paying attention in class So in addition to wasting 8 hours per d…

> Home schooling is not a suitable alternative IMO. Social contact with your peers is important too. having to forfeit that just to not be in a prison-like system seems like a bad deal.

This is why above-average students should just go to college after a year or two of high school. 16 year olds and 18 year olds are in fact peers (or can be without drawing arbitrary lines).

> I think in both cases we need to fix the system instead of putting the burden onto students to put up with it or work around it with the solutions that you describe.

The problem is that your suggestion is completely non-actionable for students.

It's also not particularly actionable for a parent trying to help their school-aged child today. Even if a parent does manage to change a huge entrenched institution -- highly unlikely! -- it'll be at least a decade after their own kid is out of the system.

So. Yes, I agree, you too should run for school board. But don't count on systemic change if you're trying to help someone currently in the system.

Re: School or Prison

#320

Post by ralusek »

jolux wrote: post #311
leephillips wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. I tried to treat my students as adults, to the occasional chagrin of the administration, as much as possible. I definitely did not trust them—I knew too much—but I tried to pretend that I did. So my ploy was to discourage the students who would otherwise go hang out in the bathroom every single class. Of course one needs to go several times per day. But that does not translate to every time my class me…

For my context here, I went to a high school that was centered around progressive education principles and I never had to ask to go to the bathroom. There were no disciplinary policies like that. And in fact, everything was fine. We all still worked hard, paid attention, and got our diplomas. I think too many teachers assume students are all malicious gremlins trying as hard as they can to avoid school. Turns out, mo…

Your school sounds like the sort of place that would select for well behaved children whose parents had the ability and wherewithal to select a progressive school. I don't think policies like that work in schools filled to the brim with students who absolutely do not care about school in the slightest.
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