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Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

331–340 of 389 posts

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#331

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…

> 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

Where it ventures into racist territory is to present these statistics on their own absent the context of mass incarceration, over policing and manufactured black criminality that play such a large role in the disparity that you’re pointing out. To blame it on culture more so than a correlation with poverty and a cycle of incarceration feels awfully close to blaming black people for the systemic racism to which they’re subjected.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#332
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you have the "batshit insane" side which claimed that masks literally deprived you of oxygen, and then the "somewhat reasonable" side would over-correct and downplay any negative sides to having to wear a mask this seems to be a false dichotomy. you can certainly fit all of the opinions into a binary if you'd like, but nowhere near enough people believed what you are calling "batshit insane" to constitute one side.…

You literally had the president suggesting that wearing surgical masks caused increased transmission and that drinking bleach might cure COVID. And the talking point about how it was no worse than a flu was extremely widespread in one part of the spectrum. It's obviously not a strict binary, but the insane ideas were common enough to talk about them as a "side".

>You literally had the president suggesting ... that drinking bleach might cure COVID

That's at best a huge misuse of the word 'literally', and at worst you're claiming an insane idea. Like you condemn.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#333
post #327

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please tell me you are joking. you want to punish people for having kids? do you think parents are going to give up their children willingly? what you are suggesting sounds like brave new world. that's a horrible vision. children growing up without their own parents is only going to make things worse. i do not believe that any form of institution is going to be more capable to raise children than natural parents. you…

> do you think parents are going to give up their children willingly? No, they won't want to lose their kids. But if they have no means to support them then they will. So because they aren't receiving any financial assistance for shelter, food, and clothing then they will rely on having a partner. We have now incentivized that type of behavior. Failing that, if they can't provide a safe environment for their kids the…

This is the same kind of thinking that lead to the abduction of Native kids, forced sterilizations, etc.: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stol...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you think parents are going to give up their children willingly? No, they won't want to lose their kids. But if they have no means to support them then they will. So because they aren't receiving any financial assistance for shelter, food, and clothing then they will rely on having a partner. We have now incentivized that type of behavior. Failing that, if they can't provide a safe environment for their kids the…

This is the same kind of thinking that lead to the abduction of Native kids, forced sterilizations, etc.: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stol...

Not really. What happened there was an attempt to destroy Native cultures and even reproduction. It's based on a racial trait.

My ideas are to help kids from mothers that can't or won't provide an acceptable environment to grow up in have a chance to grow up in a caring, non-abusive environment that gives them the best chance to have a life. And hopefully reproduce and pass those values on to their own kids! :)

I'm not saying it would be the best implementation, but the idea is to help kids. Not create a client of the state that will vote for a certain political party because they are helpless and dependent. I want to help people. Not hurt them and lie to myself and others and pretend I'm helping when I'm only serving my own agenda.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still think it was the right choice in retrospect? There were no reports of "a mountain of dead children" anywhere in the world.

Again, we should not fall prey to resulting. It's not about what we did know, it's about what we didn't. Early on, we had no idea how the virus was interacting with children and the school system. Being under-cautious would have been the wrong move, because the worst case scenario was horrifying.

Schools didn't close until late March. There was weeks of data from western society by then.

The basic understanding of the contagion, what drove the pandemic, and mortality numbers across age groups was known. The data has become more specific since, but not dramatically different.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same kind of thinking that lead to the abduction of Native kids, forced sterilizations, etc.: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stol...

Not really. What happened there was an attempt to destroy Native cultures and even reproduction. It's based on a racial trait. My ideas are to help kids from mothers that can't or won't provide an acceptable environment to grow up in have a chance to grow up in a caring, non-abusive environment that gives them the best chance to have a life. And hopefully reproduce and pass those values on to their own kids! :) I'm n…

Why do you think the people who stole Native kids didn't want the best for those kids? It's just that in their case, they assumed that Native upbringing == bad parenting. (And I'm sure that the poverty/crime rate/etc. of those communities were also part of that rationalization.)

> Not create a client of the state that will vote for a certain political party because they are helpless and dependent.

I'm pretty sure there's no evidence bearing out that this happens to any significant degree. Moreover, people generally don't enjoy staying on welfare.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#337
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just gonna go ahead and go out on a limb and say that getting hit in the head repeatedly isn’t good for you, especially if you’re a developing child. But to each their own.

It’s just not that simple. You aren’t repeatedly being hit in the head playing football. Even the linemen who have aggressive contact each play aren’t banging their heads together, they are using their hands. The helmets are largely protecting against incidental contact. Head trauma comes from rapid changes in momentum that cause the brain to bounce around inside the skull. Those from “horse collar” tackles, which ar…

FWIW I would also support a ban on headers in soccer.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#338
post #282
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what to do about it? we can't just expect parents to get involved. nor does it help to just blame their kids performance on them. the focus really needs to be on a broader level. what changes to our society are needed so that families can thrive so that they can actually focus on the care of their kids? things like higher minimum wage, parental leave, easy access to insurance, etc. all the general needs everyone…

One thing to do is to stop penalizing family structure through taxes and transfers. > The U.S. tax code, for example, contains a marriage penalty for high-earner, two-income couples. And the earned income tax credit penalizes lower-wage married couples. Moreover, welfare rules have frequently made it harder for married households than for single-parent households to get benefits. Although few couples sit down and cal…

Yes and no. The tax code doesn't punish marriage per se. It punishes financially successful and ambitious couples (and for that matter, financially successful and ambitious individuals). The traditional breadwinner-homemaker relationship is subsidized in all but name by the current tax code.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

We do have a sort of polygamy but the fathers don't stick around! But it's not hard to see why so many cultures had (and still have) this type of arrangement where wealthy men that can support all these women and kids have many wives, average guys have 1, and the bottom of society has none as they can't support them anyways.

Poor men can have multiple girlfriends and one night stands as well. The vast majority of men thrown in jail for failure to pay child support have low paying jobs.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#340
post #139
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people really did pretend that. Here's one example that I remember: https://twitter.com/AmerAcadPeds/status/1425857041457942542 Obviously paediatrics is not the same as schooling, but I recall this sort of attitude being prevalent.

What does that tweet show? Are you suggesting that children are "far, far behind in school" because teachers were masked, and not because schools were closed and classes were remote?

I am claiming that institutions made counterintuitive claims (e.g., seeing only masked faces will not delay babies' speech development) based on no evidence. These claims were made to shore up support for various pandemic response policies, including masking, lockdowns, and remote schooling but have turned out to be false.
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