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We can start moving toward an education system that works once we agree on some core values. Someone else said that the goal of education is to produce factory

by Kluny 10y ago

We can start moving toward an education system that works once we agree on some core values. Someone else said that the goal of education is to produce factory workers. I disagree. I think the goal of education is to allow one teacher to effectively babysit up to 30 children at once. With both parents working, it simply isn't possible for them to give kids the attention they need to keep them healty and sane, let alone educate them on how to be part of society. Schools are supposed to do this instead, but the primary goal is training the children to be manageable at a ratio of 30 to 1. Before we can do anything else, we have to acknowledge that the first goal is getting the kids out of their parents hair. This is the fundamental truth that everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge when they're debating policy. After that, we can make other decisions that make more sense. The lecture-hall format really only makes sense when the number of students is unmanageable for a single adult. If was only 10 kids per teacher, they would actually have time for more useful activities, applying knowledge, giving guidance to students who are ready to strike out on their own. Tripling the number of teachers is going to cost some money, and application-type lessons costs more than lecture-type lessons. Some ways to deal with this - as a society, acknowledge that creating educated, well informed citizens is not a fuzzy, feel-good liberal goal, but a necessary factor for everyone's safety, including the permanently child-free. I think most people agree with that already, but since many people voting are full grown adults who still aren't properly educated, not everyone will come to the same conclusion, and therefore a massive infusion of public money for this idea isn't likely to happen. So I think a successful, disruptive idea will be one that gets around the cost problem of a much lower student-to-teacher ratio. I don't think remote teaching is going to be the answer here.

DougN7 10y ago
I've rewritten my comment three times so far ... My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky. So from my perspective, having both parents working is the root issue. It's an economic necessity for probably 80+% of the country, which I suppose is really the root issue. Ultimately it all boils down to resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around. I don't have an answer for that :(
- Kluny 10y ago
  I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible.
  - 3825 10y ago
    > I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible. I think it goes back to what you said first. We need to agree on some core values. I don't want any more of my money going to people who mocked the MSNBC host[0] when she said "children belong to the collective". It seems pretty obvious to me. If we are all paying for your children, I better have a say in how we raise OUR children. Clearly, a lot of people do not see it that way. Why should we have tax deductions for people to have children? Why should we have tax breaks for people to put money away for their children to go to college? I for one support an end to these tax breaks. Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison. [0] https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg
    - literallycancer 10y ago
      >"children belong to the collective" I grew up in post-communist Europe. In the past, we had state propaganda that told children to turn in their parents[1], among other wonderful products of that line of thinking. So I'd be very careful with ideas like this one. (I still support mandatory vaccinations and/or sane defaults.) >Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison. This would undo a lot of progress that has been made on the human rights front in the past century. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov
Strom 10y ago
I don't think the 30-to-1 ratio is the problem. From my own experience the main problem is grouping by age. Children should be grouped by skill instead. [1] I was always top of the class in math and held back by the slow pace dictated by the national education plan for my age. At the same time there were other topics like Russian language where I didn't learn as fast as was expected of my age. This meant that as the years went by I understood less and less of the new material that was being taught because my Russian fundamentals were weak. I imagine other children experienced something similar in math. I think we could do much better if children advance in classes based on how much they've learned, not based on when they were born. Also advancement in different topics need to be decoupled from eachother as much as possible [2], because I think it's completely expected that everyone will have their own personal strong topics and weak topics. -- [1] I think schools teach much more than just what's on the national education plan. Making friends, making enemies, dealing with puberty etc are all valuable lessons that have less friction when the group of people you're around have similar amount of experience with those things. Thus being grouped with people with wildly different experience levels in these areas can be detrimental. While the primary grouping factor should be skill, there's probably a good case for secondary range limits by age, which is a decent estimative measurement of children's experience in these social areas. [2] I understand that full isolation isn't possible, because physics requires math knowledge, which in turn requires writing & reading skills. Still, even with these dependencies we could do a lot more decoupling than what is being currently done.
fpig 10y ago
This is a fallacy inherent to the modern mentality of obsessing over your child's safety that is likely counterproductive on average. Children of school age DO NOT need babysitting. When I was a kid, everyone's mom worked and we kids just stayed at home or played together and were perfectly fine. There were zero kids who had a babysitter when they were 7 years old. Zero. Never heard of it. This was the late 80s / early 90s during the breakup of socialism. There was even a war going on for a few of those years. I can't even imagine the level of ridicule a child would have endured if their friends had found out they had a babysitter. Children don't just randomly burst into flames if they're left alone. And I seriously doubt 30:1 is a significant part of the problem. Look at countries with successful school systems. Ours also used to be, but slowly got worse with time as we adopted western attitudes towards children and parenting. The schools themselves didn't change significantly, yet the outcomes became worse.
- Kluny 10y ago
  True, but you were still in school for most of the day, right? You were probably alone for a couple hours in the evening and busy doing stuff with friends on the weekends, but don't you think it would have gone all Lord of the Flies if you were alone all the time? I remember staying home alone from age 10 or so and I was fine, but I also remember that bullying seemed to be a much more serious problem then than it is now.
  - fpig 10y ago
    Parents would be away for 4-5 hours at most while I was at home I guess, but we'd be without parents for more than that because we'd go out and do stuff with friends even when parents were home. Parents were kind of there to fulfill your basic needs, not your social needs. I think my parents would have probably loved to spend more time with me but kids prefer to be with other kids. To be fair, it did go a bit lord of the flies on occasion, in the sense that we engaged in "wars" with kids from different streets and so on, sometimes someone would get a thrown rock to their head or get a beating, but nothing too serious. Also we were constantly getting injured while playing from falling, stepping on sharp shit, etc but kids are incredibly resilient, they recover from anything and quickly. The important thing is to teach the kid not to fuck around in traffic, that's where the real danger is. And if there is a war not to pick shit up that might be explosive.

by Kluny 10y ago

DougN7 10y ago

I've rewritten my comment three times so far ... My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky. So from my perspective, having both parents working is the root issue. It's an economic necessity for probably 80+% of the country, which I suppose is really the root issue. Ultimately it all boils down to resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around. I don't have an answer for that :(

Kluny 10y ago
I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible.
- 3825 10y ago
  > I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible. I think it goes back to what you said first. We need to agree on some core values. I don't want any more of my money going to people who mocked the MSNBC host[0] when she said "children belong to the collective". It seems pretty obvious to me. If we are all paying for your children, I better have a say in how we raise OUR children. Clearly, a lot of people do not see it that way. Why should we have tax deductions for people to have children? Why should we have tax breaks for people to put money away for their children to go to college? I for one support an end to these tax breaks. Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison. [0] https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg
  - literallycancer 10y ago
    >"children belong to the collective" I grew up in post-communist Europe. In the past, we had state propaganda that told children to turn in their parents[1], among other wonderful products of that line of thinking. So I'd be very careful with ideas like this one. (I still support mandatory vaccinations and/or sane defaults.) >Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison. This would undo a lot of progress that has been made on the human rights front in the past century. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

Strom 10y ago

I don't think the 30-to-1 ratio is the problem. From my own experience the main problem is grouping by age. Children should be grouped by skill instead. [1] I was always top of the class in math and held back by the slow pace dictated by the national education plan for my age. At the same time there were other topics like Russian language where I didn't learn as fast as was expected of my age. This meant that as the years went by I understood less and less of the new material that was being taught because my Russian fundamentals were weak. I imagine other children experienced something similar in math. I think we could do much better if children advance in classes based on how much they've learned, not based on when they were born. Also advancement in different topics need to be decoupled from eachother as much as possible [2], because I think it's completely expected that everyone will have their own personal strong topics and weak topics. -- [1] I think schools teach much more than just what's on the national education plan. Making friends, making enemies, dealing with puberty etc are all valuable lessons that have less friction when the group of people you're around have similar amount of experience with those things. Thus being grouped with people with wildly different experience levels in these areas can be detrimental. While the primary grouping factor should be skill, there's probably a good case for secondary range limits by age, which is a decent estimative measurement of children's experience in these social areas. [2] I understand that full isolation isn't possible, because physics requires math knowledge, which in turn requires writing & reading skills. Still, even with these dependencies we could do a lot more decoupling than what is being currently done.

fpig 10y ago

This is a fallacy inherent to the modern mentality of obsessing over your child's safety that is likely counterproductive on average. Children of school age DO NOT need babysitting. When I was a kid, everyone's mom worked and we kids just stayed at home or played together and were perfectly fine. There were zero kids who had a babysitter when they were 7 years old. Zero. Never heard of it. This was the late 80s / early 90s during the breakup of socialism. There was even a war going on for a few of those years. I can't even imagine the level of ridicule a child would have endured if their friends had found out they had a babysitter. Children don't just randomly burst into flames if they're left alone. And I seriously doubt 30:1 is a significant part of the problem. Look at countries with successful school systems. Ours also used to be, but slowly got worse with time as we adopted western attitudes towards children and parenting. The schools themselves didn't change significantly, yet the outcomes became worse.

Kluny 10y ago
True, but you were still in school for most of the day, right? You were probably alone for a couple hours in the evening and busy doing stuff with friends on the weekends, but don't you think it would have gone all Lord of the Flies if you were alone all the time? I remember staying home alone from age 10 or so and I was fine, but I also remember that bullying seemed to be a much more serious problem then than it is now.
- fpig 10y ago
  Parents would be away for 4-5 hours at most while I was at home I guess, but we'd be without parents for more than that because we'd go out and do stuff with friends even when parents were home. Parents were kind of there to fulfill your basic needs, not your social needs. I think my parents would have probably loved to spend more time with me but kids prefer to be with other kids. To be fair, it did go a bit lord of the flies on occasion, in the sense that we engaged in "wars" with kids from different streets and so on, sometimes someone would get a thrown rock to their head or get a beating, but nothing too serious. Also we were constantly getting injured while playing from falling, stepping on sharp shit, etc but kids are incredibly resilient, they recover from anything and quickly. The important thing is to teach the kid not to fuck around in traffic, that's where the real danger is. And if there is a war not to pick shit up that might be explosive.