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Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

wired.co.uk

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Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#61

Post by ghaff »

Frondo wrote: post #47
merpnderp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary? How could that being public serve the public's interest? As a privacy advocate that does pique my curiosity.

I would ask the opposite question -- why is that an important number to conceal? (Please no "it's none of your business" replies, that doesn't really answer the question and it's not an interesting direction to go.)

At some point though, not making personal information public does come down to societal norms of what is other people's business. While the cost/benefit tradeoffs may be different, I could argue that making individual health records public probably has some benefits with respect to understanding health and health outcomes at a more granular level than aggregated data. (Which also present issues with de-anonymization anyway.)

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#63

Post by nivenkos »

silicon2401 wrote: post #31
rockbruno wrote: post #5

Funny that they were so concerned about GDPR violations given that in Sweden everyone's address/job/phone/salary is public and easily accessible. I like it that every time a foreigner joins my company (I live in Sweden) it's a matter of time before they post a message in our Stockholm channel saying "guys... what the hell is this website and why am I in it?". Then the swedes mention that they see nothing wrong with i…

Places like Sweden, Japan, Taiwan are often touted as examples of why XYZ works. However people often fail to mention that these places are, relative to many countries like the US, extremely homogenous in culture and ethnicity. Certain things that work in those countries will fall apart when attempted in a more diverse country.

What does this have to do with ethnicity?

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#65

Post by Symbiote »

wonderwonder wrote: post #50
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting problems to solve, works together with them on extra-curricular projects, obtains materials and resources related to the child’s personal interests, ... Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.

I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people a…

Active involvement would be talking to your children and asking them what they have for school.

Looking up their schedule on a website is passive involvement.

I'm relieved these systems didn't exist when I was a child.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#66

Post by ghaff »

Loughla wrote: post #58
ghaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic with the public sector is that "the people" are paying for it so it's their business where the money is going. I'm not personally much of a fan of private sector salaries, income tax paid, etc. being a matter of public record but it's also not obviously "crazy" either. There are reasonable debates about transparency at the margins and this is a margin.

I genuinely do not see a downside of publicly available salary information. What am I missing and/or not thinking about?

So I make $50K more than you. And, in your opinion, you're a harder worker than me, are more valuable, etc. On the one hand, yes, that is perhaps fodder for you to have a conversation with your manager. On the other hand, it's also fodder to go home and grumble about how underappreciated you are because your coworker who doesn't do crap as far as you're concerned but makes a bunch more than you do.

Not saying either approach is necessarily wrong. But it probably works better in public sector which tends to be very seniority based. In the US, it would breed a lot of resentment towards people who you thought were overpaid relative to yourself for many people.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#67

Post by redis_mlc »

wonderwonder wrote: post #50
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting problems to solve, works together with them on extra-curricular projects, obtains materials and resources related to the child’s personal interests, ... Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.

I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people a…

Yeah, that's micromanaging.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#68

Post by jacobolus »

wonderwonder wrote: post #50
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting problems to solve, works together with them on extra-curricular projects, obtains materials and resources related to the child’s personal interests, ... Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.

I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people a…

My oldest kid is 5, but I hope when he is older I can leave him to handle his own schoolwork (offering help if he wants it).

> study for their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a day

Aside: Spending 1.5+ hours per week between home and school studying spelling per se in the way students typically study spelling is an outrageous waste of time.

Arguably studying spelling per se is a waste of time in any quantity (as compared to spending that time on intrinsically motivated reading and writing, and learning how to spell as a side effect), but anyone who cares enough about this to devote hundreds of hours to it should set up some kind of spaced repetition system.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#69

Post by whatshisface »

silicon2401 wrote: post #31
rockbruno wrote: post #5

Funny that they were so concerned about GDPR violations given that in Sweden everyone's address/job/phone/salary is public and easily accessible. I like it that every time a foreigner joins my company (I live in Sweden) it's a matter of time before they post a message in our Stockholm channel saying "guys... what the hell is this website and why am I in it?". Then the swedes mention that they see nothing wrong with i…

Places like Sweden, Japan, Taiwan are often touted as examples of why XYZ works. However people often fail to mention that these places are, relative to many countries like the US, extremely homogenous in culture and ethnicity. Certain things that work in those countries will fall apart when attempted in a more diverse country.

I've heard this argument before, but is there any reason to believe it? What exactly about diversity stops social programs from working?

Also, if diversity is the problem (hypothetically) why can't we implement Swedish/Japanese/Taiwanese stuff in those American towns with no diversity?

Without any more explanation this sounds like one of those things where you find two statistics about two countries and say "this explains the difference."

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#70

Post by Loughla »

ghaff wrote: post #66
Loughla wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely do not see a downside of publicly available salary information. What am I missing and/or not thinking about?

So I make $50K more than you. And, in your opinion, you're a harder worker than me, are more valuable, etc. On the one hand, yes, that is perhaps fodder for you to have a conversation with your manager. On the other hand, it's also fodder to go home and grumble about how underappreciated you are because your coworker who doesn't do crap as far as you're concerned but makes a bunch more than you do. Not saying either…

I still don't see a downside.

If I know I am a better employee than you, and you make that much more, if I am unwilling to do anything about it but grumble, that's a personal problem. I would argue that anyone who is willing to stay in a shit situation without trying to remedy said situation (being underpaid and knowing it for a fact) sort of brought those problems on themselves. It's a problem to complain about only if you have tried to fix it and couldn't.

Systematically, it would allow people to see which businesses pay best, where their particular skills would be best reimbursed. Therefore, anyone in that shit situation who wants to grumble would have even more information available to them to be able to shop for jobs.

I still don't see a downside.

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