Kids are far behind in school • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#341

Post by em-bee » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #330

em-bee wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But if they have no means to support them then they will.

and as a result you traumatize everyone in that family for life.

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.

no, you haven't.

how do you think this works? all you are doing is forcing people to stay in relationships that are not healthy. do you think people separate because they got bored? they separate because they can't support each other. but you are forcing them to stay together, which creates environments ripe for abuse.

Adopted kids do great.

you were talking about an institution. and where are you going to find all these adoptive parents? already now there are not enough of those.

we incentivize them to create a supportive environment

that's not what i meant by a supportive environment.

a supportive environment is a community that helps families who can't make it on their own.

We will teach them how. They will be so removed from their environment of shattering poverty, drugs, abuse, etc.

they will also be removed from the love of their parents, which is the most important thing that they need.

Or we can continue to double down on the same bad ideas we've been trying for the last 60 or 70 years

we could also look at how other countries do it, and listen to people and learn what they actually need to make this work for them.

The main difference is I'm actually trying to help the kids.

and i am trying to help the parents. so that they can actually take care of their kids themselves.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#342

Post by arrakis2021 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

These kids will grow up remembering that a very specific group of people of a certain ideology kept them out of school, masked, and plugged into a zoom monitor for as long as possible.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#343

Post by mattcwilson » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #260

bigDinosaur wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people have stated that 'the kids will be fine' quite consistently. Also, all costs other than deaths have been underplayed by people in favour of lockdowns. Memory-holing this is literally insane (where insane = disconnected from reality). That's not to say that what was done wasn't the best of a suite of bad options. But I saw nothing but fairly extreme downplaying of the consequences of lockdowns from people…

> people in favour of lockdowns > from people who wanted long (the only effective) ones. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think this kind of wording maybe sets up a straw man. Nobody _wanted_ lockdowns. I know hardly anyone who was genuinely excited and happy about quarantine and stay-at-home. Your wording sounds like there are some significant group of people who want everyone isolated in their homes (for…

I think you’re reading too much into the word “wanted” or the words “in favour of.”

It sounds like, if it had come to a vote, you would have voted for them.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#344

Post by nemo44x » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #331

nemo44x wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

It’s not just a black issue. There’s a ton of white people this applies to. White people are at the same rate blacks were in the 60’s when the Moynihan Report came out. So the trajectory is the same.

Society is far less racist than it was in the 1950’s. However the amount of fatherlessness has exploded. Same with for whites but it started at a different place.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#345

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #160

bombcar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summer school, being about 5 weeks, adding 5 weeks of gain is ... kind of expected.

Which begs the question… why don’t we do it? Summer break is fun and all, but far to long for most students.

I am a fan of switching to school years with 10 weeks on, 3 week off quarters. I think a couple of the summer breaks staggered across the nation would be even better so that not all kids are on vacation at the same time.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#346

Post by mattcwilson » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

ryanklee wrote: post #320

xorcist wrote: post #318

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.

If you can’t evaluate decisions or experiments on outcome, what can you measure them on? And why would you bother to? How would you learn from those decisions?

The worst case scenario is bound to be horrifying, by definition. That’s not an excuse for waffling out of making a tough call.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#347

Post by nemo44x » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #336

nemo44x wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

I mean, we already pull a ton of kids out of abusive homes today. The difference is there has to be a case that the child is in an unsafe environment. In the case of Native kids it was simply their race.

The problem today is the kids stay in or close to the negative environment. There’s no one to teach them. My idea is to simply close the loop and give them essentially boarding school.

People may not enjoy being on welfare but the data shows that generational welfare is a thing.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#348

Post by mattcwilson » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #17

mattcwilson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to see the data you have showing that private schools that stayed open, or public schools that fought to stay open, contributed significantly to additional deaths, such that “millions more dead” would even be a fair comparison to the impact of schools choosing to go virtual instead.

You're arguing for data examining something that has happened, while all decisions regarding a new virus act on data only available prior. Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one. I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.

I would change “doesn’t” to “didn’t”. Hopefully, going forward, acting from such an assumption would be seen as exactly that - uninformed by past events.

You’re also talking like we only get one chance to make the decision, rather than update that decision as facts roll in and more is known; as assumptions become proven unfounded and wrong.

So, yes, let’s see that data.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#349

Post by mattcwilson » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #51

croon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing for data examining something that has happened, while all decisions regarding a new virus act on data only available prior. Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one. I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.

It is not possible to have all the data in time to make decisions. We didn't know how covid spread in the early days, just that it was spreading fast in China, killing a lot of people (we didn't know what a lot was), and popping up all over the world. 3 Months after the decisions needed to be made we had a lot more data.

... and twelve or more months after that, many schools were still fully virtual.

What’s your point?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#350

Post by nemo44x » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #341

nemo44x wrote: post #330

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…

But if they have no means to support them then they will. and as a result you traumatize everyone in that family for life. 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. no, you haven't. how do you think this works? all you are doing is forcing people to stay in relationships that are no…

I think all your ideas are great and I’d be all for them if they weren’t just completely unrealistic and ineffective.

I grew up around those environments and was immersed in them. My experience as well as analyzing what we have done to “fix it” have led me to believe that a radical breaking of the wheel is necessary. And not only necessary but moral.

It’s time to put kids first.