My kid can’t handle a virtual education, and neither can I • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by scottlamb » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #372

scottlamb wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it sad that as a society, it has come down to schools to provide security to children, as opposed to their own family. It hasn't. Families _are_ the primary way we provide security for children. No family is perfect but most keep their kids safe. Some don't, all over the world, so we have checks and balances. People trained to fill that role are called "mandated reporters". Teachers are arguably the most impo…

> No family is perfect but most keep their kids safe Curious, what percentage of families, on average, do you think are "Not perfect"?

When I say "no family is perfect", I mean just that: exactly 100% of families are "not perfect" in how we raise our kids. But I don't mean abuse; I mean we all make mundane mistakes in how we handle situations rather than being like the grown-ups on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, maybe that we plunk the kids down in front of the TV sometimes when we should spend more quality time with them, etc.

Keeping kids safe from child abuse is a pretty low bar and most families meet it. According to one stat I found [1], at least 1% of kids are abused every year. That's horrible and would be even worse if not for mandated reporters, but it doesn't mean that schools provide security for kids and families don't.

[1] https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/nationa...

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

#382

Post by ayyy » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #193

nradov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindergarten in the US became far more academically focused after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the adoption of Common Core curriculum. Most schools also changed the age cutoff date for kindergarten so the average student is now slightly older.

Sounds really crazy to me, here in Hungary most kids start structured classes at 6 or 7 years old. Before that it's just playing outside, singing, listening to fairy tales, going to hiking trips, to the zoo etc. This tight grip on American kids looks extremely stressful and harmful (helicopter/bubble wrap parenting, structuring every waking hour with classes and extracurriculars, driving them everywhere, never leavin…

Odd. How does Hungary break their children down for a lifetime of labor?

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

#383

Post by toast0 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

einarfd wrote: post #105

A lot of people complain about Zoom fatigue, and while on one hand I'm fairly happy that it is a competitors offering that has ended up with being a part of that moniker, and not the product I'm working on, it is somewhat unfair to blame Zoom or the software stack for that. The main culprit for messing up meetings are the cameras and the microphones on laptops. I'm not sure if there are any vendors at all, including…

I'm sure better equipment and software helps, but there's all sorts of mostly unavoidable issues [1] that make a video call harder than meeting in person. If your school is replacing several hours a day of in person meeting with several hours a day of video calls, it's going to be awful.

You absolutely need to do things differently, but kindergarden is not going to work with look at the morning message, do tasks from a list, including watching some videos, and do a check-in call once or twice a week.

[1] like latency and a/v sync. You could get pretty low latency if everyone was on land lines and called into a conference hosted at the school. But, nobody has land lines, so we're doing audio with the video over the internet. So we have the delay for the encoder, we have delay to get a big enough packet to send over IP, we've got last mile network delay (I'm at 20 ms to get out of my provider's network), plus network delay to wherever the conference server is, plus processing time, and then all that on the way back. If you're on congested wifi because nobody runs wired ethernet anymore, but you've got two kids and two adults all having to do this, that ads inconsistent delay, so now you need a jitter buffer. That is a reminder to try to set up my kid with wired networking though, thanks.

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

#384

Post by andreareina » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #248

Shared404 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well clearly you are incorrect because all of the smart people said we have to test to make sure that the kids are learning and we can only make sure that the kids learn by sitting them down and making sure they know the trivia for the test to make sure their learning, because the smart people said the test will make them learn, by making sure their learning. /s On the bright side, for every one of the above administ…

You make fun of the educational structure, but it's base structure can clearly succeed if given the right support from the family and the correct budget. Japan has done exceedingly well (though a little over stressed - there can be balance) with a very similar base model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Japan I understand that bashing all things American has become en vogue, but some things have just becom…

Anecdote and first-hand experience deny the claim that they're doing well. The criticisms section on the wiki cites a lot more than just stress and bullying:

> The Japanese educational system has also been criticized for failure to foster independent thinkers with cultural and artistic sensibility. Japanese students that attend schools overseas often face difficulty adapting and competing in that environment due to lack of international viewpoints.

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

#385

Post by dirtnugget » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

dgut wrote: post #369

ashtonkem wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The French use the vigesimal system (base-20). I learned this fact while learning Norwegian, which doesn't use a base-20 system anymore, expect almost everybody above 50y still use the Danish system (also base-20, like French), which was indeed very confusing. In Spanish it's more or less the same as French when it comes to naming numbers, except more predictable spelling and it's base-10: dos (two), doce (twelve), o…

Why isn’t 60 in French something like tres-vingt? French is a language full of exceptions which need to be memorised and which are rather random.

Excuse me but I understand vigesimal (base-20) like a potency. The French are not following through on that at all.

If you have a look at Mayan math you will understand how to do "proper" vigesimal.

With proper I mean that what we consider single digit numbers (0-9) which is a range of ten, to be the basis of single digits.

The Mayans actually could represent first twenty (0-19) as one "single digit".

Their idea of numbers was just much more composable than ours is.

I’ll try to give a short explanation:

There are three "words" which make Mayan numbers. A dot, a line and a shell.

The dot represents a one, the bar represents a five, the shell represents a zero.

5 dots make a line (similar to Roman)

One dot above one shell makes twenty. (1 * 20). Like we consider a one and a zero (10) to be greater than 9.

One dot above one shell above one shell makes 400 (1 * 20 * 20)

One dot above one dot above one dot makes 421 ((1 * 20 * 20) + (1 * 20) + (1 * 1))

Compared to the potency of this mathematical language the idea that French are using vigesimal is laughable, because they only denote their 80 like this.

It’s quite fascinating how logical and functional their math was, they were using the potency of zeros long before we Europeans discovered that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F53HuD2lcb8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals

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

#386

Post by barry-cotter » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

mordymoop wrote: post #297

grahamburger wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be weird to expect young children to sit in long Zoom meetings. Are people actually doing that? I have 3 kids, the oldest two are elementary-school age. So far virtually none of their online learning has been video conference based. The younger one would sometimes do Zoom calls with his pre-k class at the end of last year, but it was just a few minutes to see his friends and sing some songs, not really about…

In the spring, my five year old, who I would call unusually patient for his age, would sometimes break down crying and beg the teacher to let him leave the meeting. One thing that I’m not seeing discussed much is that these meetings are objectively a dehumanizing waste of the children’s time. Ten minutes to take roll, while everyone just sits there? If someone did something this pointless in a meeting of adults, they…

But it’s not pointless. Teaching children to sit still and do what they’re told by authority figures is what school is for. Pointless busywork is at minimum half of all schooling. See Unschooling Society, The Underground History of American Education or any of the many other books taught in education schools that have had no effect on the practice of education.

School is to submit.

https://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/04/school-is-to-submit.h...

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

#387

Post by asdff » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #112

einarfd wrote: post #105

A lot of people complain about Zoom fatigue, and while on one hand I'm fairly happy that it is a competitors offering that has ended up with being a part of that moniker, and not the product I'm working on, it is somewhat unfair to blame Zoom or the software stack for that. The main culprit for messing up meetings are the cameras and the microphones on laptops. I'm not sure if there are any vendors at all, including…

You can buy a top-of-the-line $3,000 16" Macbook Pro and it comes with a garbage-tier 720p webcam that has terrible dynamic range and low-light performance. It's embarrassing . Most Windows laptops at a third of the price have significantly better webcams.

Am I going crazy or is the webcam in my 2012 macbook pro better than the new one?

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

#388

Post by barry-cotter » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #51

function_seven wrote: post #26

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.

PE is not important for child development. Exercise is. PE is a shitty kind of torture, a crappy simulacrum of doing some kind of physical activity you actually enjoy and would do voluntarily. In thought I hated sports, in part because of PE. Exercise is great. PE is an abomination.

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

#389

Post by throwaway5792 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #282

asldkjaslkdj wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You essentially work a half day. Burying the lede here a bit.

I never get to stop working, but thanks. Every day, all day, I get email and have to respond to a vast customer base. While I may not be coding away at my computer, I have to stop about 10 times a day to respond to customers, help them solve a problem, make an update, etc. It never ends, I never get vacation, I never get a weekend, I never get a holiday. I literally had a customer call me on Christmas last year becau…

Sure, but some parents don't have the luxury of doing fewer hours at their job during the day like you. Weekends and vacations don't count.

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

#390

Post by throwaway5792 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #50

coderholic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too! We're jugging 3 kids and working from home, and I thought the article was on point. My guess is that most of the dismissive comments are from people without kids!

I have 4 kids. I work from home. My wife works 11 hours a day away from the house. I feel like this world is full of "can't" people who aren't willing to do the extra work. We seem to have enough time to comment on Hacker News. To argue about masks on Facebook. To watch every TikTok, and spend hours on Twitter. But put in the necessary work to make learning at home productive. Nope, can't do that. We have put in the…

Even time off work? Do you have no understanding of other people? How can you assume that's an option for people?!