School or Prison • Hacker News Board

Re: School or Prison

#331

Post by Nextgrid » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

MarcScott wrote: post #225

Before I go off topic, very cool and interesting app. I was surprised by the number of times I got it wrong. Now then... There's a lot of people crapping on schools and teachers in this thread, and as a former teacher and spouse of a teacher I'd like to point out a few things: Schools and teachers provide a vital service. Not only do they educate our children, they babysit our children, and the pandemic has shown us…

> vape in the toilets

I am not sure how preventing them from vaping there and then would solve the root cause of the problem; they'll just vape later or learn to hide it better (and focus their resources on breaking the rules and getting away with it, as opposed to learning) and now they have an extra reason to be against you. Also, how is this problem dealt with during recess? Unless there’s someone monitoring them inside the bathroom or searching them to make sure they don’t bring any vaping products I don’t see how you can prevent someone from vaping inside a bathroom stall.

> where I've spent my break cleaning up chewing gum, spilled drinks and crumbs from students sneaking snacks

Why can't whoever made the mess be forced to clean it? That way the system would self-regulate. Those who enjoy their snacks cleanly can keep doing so, those who make a mess have to clean it up and have an incentive to not make a mess in the future if they want their snacks.

> how many of you "adults" have had to sign a code-of-conduct agreement before being allowed admittance to a tech conference or hackathon?

"Codes of conduct" are virtue signalling to appeal to some vocal minorities but I have yet to see evidence of it actually solving the real problem. Someone who wants to behave appropriately doesn't need one, and someone who wants to be a dick already intends to break the (unspoken) rules regardless of a CoC being in place.

Re: School or Prison

#332

Post by escape_goat » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

smbullet wrote: post #327

escape_goat wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rather than personal attacks you should take the time to actually respond to their comment if you feel so strongly against it.

I took the time to respond to what I felt strongly about, and maybe characterizing criticism as a "personal attack" describes how it makes you feel, but that doesn't mean that it describes what it is.

Re: School or Prison

#333

Post by jolux » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #323

jolux wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Look, I’m with you (although nothing can be “centered around” anything). But most schools are not organized that way, and there’s only so much one teacher can do to buck the system. As it was, I got fired from that particular job after two years, and it wasn’t because I was too strict, certainly.

>nothing can be “centered around” anything

Not quite sure what you're getting at here but insofar as progressive education was an explicit philosophy reflected in policies and actions, it was centered.

>But most schools are not organized that way, and there’s only so much one teacher can do to buck the system. As it was, I got fired from that particular job after two years, and it wasn’t because I was too strict, certainly.

No disagreement there, and I'm sorry to hear you got fired. I'm sure your students appreciated you doing your part to make things less shitty.

Re: School or Prison

#334

Post by smbullet » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

escape_goat wrote: post #332

smbullet wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than personal attacks you should take the time to actually respond to their comment if you feel so strongly against it.

I took the time to respond to what I felt strongly about, and maybe characterizing criticism as a "personal attack" describes how it makes you feel, but that doesn't mean that it describes what it is.

Calling somebody sheltered is objectively a personal attack on this forum.

Re: School or Prison

#335

Post by freedomben » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

qwtel wrote: post #306

throwaway998662 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah completely agree that's what it's designed for, but to what end? What goal do we think the punishment achieves? The only useful thing about it IMO is preventing truly dangerous/sick people from interacting with the rest of society. Most prisoners are not that

[flagged]

There are plenty of crimes that are totally victimless for which we as a society "punish" people. I think you're right that the average person wants punishment for someone who has wronged them, but (for reasons only God knows) I think the average person also wants punishment for people that haven't wronged them at all, but just did something they think is immoral. I'll never forget seeing a neighbor call the cops on my friend who was smoking a joint in her own car. He only knew she was doing it because he was trespassing on her property. I couldn't believe someone would be such a dick to another person. I sure hope we can change cause what we do now is sick.

Re: School or Prison

#336

Post by felipemnoa » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

Kluny wrote: post #279

jeena wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it might make sense to do some research about all this snacking all the time. It seems that while in the 50ies people ate 2-3 times a day nowadays its more like 6-8 times a day and we have a huge epidemic of obesity and diabetes. 4 hours without food seems very short, it only would be a problem if the main food source would be fast carbs which let the blood sugar drop very quickly afterwards.

I'm 5'7" and 130lbs (so not fat) and I definitely can't go four hours between meals. I get very angry.

>> I get very angry

Freudian slip?

Re: School or Prison

#337

Post by justinclift » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

escape_goat wrote: post #332

smbullet wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than personal attacks you should take the time to actually respond to their comment if you feel so strongly against it.

I took the time to respond to what I felt strongly about, and maybe characterizing criticism as a "personal attack" describes how it makes you feel, but that doesn't mean that it describes what it is.

> if you do not understand that then it is because you live in a very sheltered world

This is the part which is a personal attack. You have some time to edit your comment to restate that, if you're up for it. :)

Re: School or Prison

#338

Post by jolux » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

smbullet wrote: post #327

escape_goat wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rather than personal attacks you should take the time to actually respond to their comment if you feel so strongly against it.

Responding to somebody's life experience with "maybe the people you spoke to were lying" is more a statement about what your priors are than a substantive contribution to a conversation.

Re: School or Prison

#339

Post by autocorr » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #100

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

Authoritarianism in schools sucks, but bathroom privileges aren't a great comparison.

In the US, most prisons have an open, bare toilet in the cell shared by a few cell mates. Even if one can technically use it whenever, according to what @throwaway998662 says, in practice this means you can only crap during the 1-2 hours a day when your cell mate(s) are gone.

Yeah, you could get a capricious teacher that says "no" when you ask, but that doesn't seem like much in comparison to the degradation and potential for violence of using the toilet in prison...

Re: School or Prison

#340

Post by dionidium » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

escape_goat wrote: post #318

wisty wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What we call “lived experience” today used to be called, “an anecdote,” and what brought me to places like HN, actually, is that the kind of people who came here understood why we distinguish such statements from data. (There’s a pithy aphorism to this effect, which you may be familiar with.)

The grandparent comment here is very good and I agree with all of it — comparing prison to high school is risible, at best — but that doesn’t mean we should fetishize expression of personal experience above any other kind of comment.