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My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

theatlantic.com

341–350 of 467 posts

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#341
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day. Wait, hang on, is kindergarten all-day now? I was in kindergarten in... 1992, and it was half a day.

I had all day kindergarten in '83. First half was in English, and the second half was in French. And no, this was not a private school. This was Cincinnati Public.

I'm pretty sure I went to kindergarten all day and that was in the early 1970s.

I remember my mother saying how a neighbour forgot it was his turn to pick up me and my fellow neighbourhood classmates. It was at 4pm after he was off work and I'm pretty sure I would have started at 8am or 9am.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#342

I'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.…

I got similarly dismissive comments once when I pointed to the importance of PE for child development, not just physically but also social dynamics and team aspects, confidence building and so on. HN crowd is a tough audience when it comes to adolescent socialisation, not everyone benefits from sitting in front of a computer from a young age.

Yeah, the lack of social interaction is a killer for a lot of child development. Kids on the spectrum whose primary problem is interaction skills are really getting screwed by the current situation.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#343

My daughter started Kindergarten and we're doing remote learning. She' almost 5 years old and can work a computer for the things she needs. But she can't work a zoom meeting. So I am a teacher's asst. from 8am until 2:30 pm. It's exhausting and sometimes I take a 2 hour nap afterward. It's hard on her because until a few weeks ago she would wake up, come into my office with me and watch shows on a laptop, maybe play…

Our Kindergarten teacher made cut out images of all the buttons and walked each kid how to mute and unmute. It’s been a week and they seem to have gotten the conferencing part down. The other online tools is what we have problems with, they aren’t made for kids who can’t read. They slapped on some click to speak function that doesn’t work. Also all the services are overloaded and always throwing 500s.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#344
our society is now learning to respect sexual orientation, women, trans, other cultures and ethnicities, but children everywhere are just treated like slaves or worst. When I was around 9 I made an oath to never lie to myself and others and pretend "school time" was fun. It was a fucking prison, and I hated it. We are still in Middle Ages.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#345
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 t…

Are you a moderator here Dang? If not how about you simply report and move on ... looking at your posting history a very large percentage of it is you trying to tell others how to use the site. The rules are fine however let those who are charged with enforcing them do so rather than trying to control others.

Yes, dang is a (the?) moderator.

https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac...

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#346

All 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 the…

> All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old.

Everyone knows how fussy 5 year olds are, these readers aren't that stupid.

The thing people usually get wrong is how fussy 6-16 year olds are. That 16 year olds actually don't have that much emotional maturity or know that much practical stuff either, even with 10 more years of life and school.

The biggest crisis isn't parents with young children. It's people realizing how little their teenage kids know and how poorly those teenagers are adjusting.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a curious question, can you speak/do you know French now?

Sadly no. But that's because we moved from the school district the following summer. It's a bit of a sore point for me. I have no doubt if I'd stayed there (K-6), I would have been close to fluent. After lunch was a full immersion in French. My teacher was a native speaker from Belgium. I remember having mastered counting in French, which is quite interesting considering most kindergarteners probably have not mastere…

You must’ve been learning the Belgian version, because French numbers in France are kind of a mess.

Like English there are special words for some of the “teens” numbers, which is the least of the troubles. Compare deux (two) and douze (twelve) to huit (eight) and dix-huit (ten-eight, or eighteen). Mildly annoying, but we have special cases for “eleven” and “twelve” in English too, no big deal.

Then some of the tens are weird too. While quatre (four) and quarante (forty) are clear, six (six) and soixante (sixty) are a bit tricky, while deux (two) and vingt (twenty) don’t seem to be related. These are then combined in uneven ways, with twenty one being “vingt et un” (twenty and one), while other numbers using the hyphenated form of vingt-cinq (twenty-five). Again, annoying, but manageable.

And then there are the extra special case numbers like seventy, which in France is apparently soixante-dix, or literally “sixty ten”. In some countries this is a much more reasonable “septante”, but not in France. The French actually count their seventies like “soixante-dix-sept”, which translates into “sixty seventeen”, or seventy seven in English.

And then there’s eighty. Holy crap, the number eighty. In French eighty is apparently “quatre-vingts”, or “four twenties”. Whoever came up with that was a brilliant sadist. Requiring some basic multiplication just to count to eighty is downright evil stuff, especially for young kids. Ditto for whoever made ninety “quatre-vingts-dix” (four twenties ten).

Note: I am not a native French speaker; I’m just learning.

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#348
post #123
post #97

Kids can't learn all day long in a classroom. I don't know why we expect them to be able to do it remotely. School has always been 1/3 learning 2/3 baby sitting. When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day.

> When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for half a day. Wait, hang on, is kindergarten all-day now? I was in kindergarten in... 1992, and it was half a day.

Interesting. I went to kindergarten in 1986 or so, and it was all day (US, New Jersey).

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition." "No it isn't."

That’s not an argument, that’s simple contradiction!

I disagree. The meta insight of the contradiction elevates it to the level of an argument. The contradiction serves as an argument in this case.

Edit: Interestingly the argument is the antithesis of the contradiction!

Re: My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I

#350
I think quick sessions in smaller groups or even 1:1's are better. Give the kids their tasks/activities to do for the day and get out of their way. Some administrations seem to have ridiculous requirements that say kids have to be glued to a screen for X hours a day.
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