4 ms·

Some of these will be 100% true as well. But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it

by harry8 7y ago

Some of these will be 100% true as well. But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. So how many are true and how many false? I have no clue. Literally none. And no it doesn't make me feel any better about the screams of existential agony even if that were a low percentage. Could be high too.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
> But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. In the US, school funding is based upon standardized test results, and bad results can shut a poorly performing school down. It's drilled into every kid's head that these tests are very important, super strict and if they accidentally mess up, it can ruin their academics, because retesting and regrading are expensive.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  As a kid I would go out of my way to fail those tests. The whole curriculum was designed around them, meaning that even if we did score high, any funding gains would just be put towards training us to take the test. I thought the state was holding the school hostage, threatening to cut funds or shut them down if they ever stopped. We never learned anything about civics or American history. Until I was out of highschool, content regarding atrocities like slavery and the trail of tears was not on the test and that was enough to whitewash the whole curriculum. Standardized testing is to the U.S. what lead waterpipes were to the roman empire.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Your school didn't teach slavery? What state?
    - stochastic_monk 7y ago
      It’s possible that there’s a difference between admitting it happened and an honest portrayal of the institution.
mxcrossb 7y ago
I don’t know about calling it manipulative. I remember taking the ACT, and struggling to plan out one of my essays. It was something like “tell us about a book that inspired you”. So I changed details about the plot so it all fit nicely and was easy to write. I can see something similar here, where someone takes on a persona when writing in order to effectively communicate.
- harry8 7y ago
  That's entirely fair. Manipulation is kind of what a writer does yet the word manipulative has perjoritive connotations. Many types of writing don't have literal truth as any kind of pre-requisite. Others make a pretence of literal truth to achieve greater effect then basically lie, many autobiographies fall into this trap to some degree. All these things. Differential empathy. Data quality matters.
- manfredo 7y ago
  This is absolutely the case. In fact, my SAT prep class taught us that the factual veracity of our essays is irrelevant. Essay scores are almost entirely correlated with essay length as long as spelling, grammar, and basic paragraph structure (intro, body paragraphs, conclusion) is followed.
inimino 7y ago
Of course some kids are manipulative, going for shock value, continuing an "in-joke", or just plain trolling. But would a teacher just look the other way, or would they talk to the kid? What would you want for your kids? This is why teachers assigning homework like "what do you want your teacher to know about you" and then not even seeing it is dehumanizing.
dmoy 7y ago
For the not eating, it's pretty easy to get data. It's like 1 in 5 children live in food-insecure households in the US and maybe 1 in 20 of those very insecure, so not eating before school provided lunch is common enough that if you're grading tons of papers you'll run into kids like that.
- stochastic_monk 7y ago
  It could also be a student suffering from anorexia nervosa, which the confessional aspects of the essay would fit well with.
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    I'm confident that your example would of a less percentage than those mentioned in dmoy's comment.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... Food Security Status of U.S. Households with Children in 2017 Among U.S. households with children under age 18: 84.3 percent were food secure in 2017. In 8.0 percent of households with children, only adults were food insecure. Both children and adults were food insecure in 7.7 percent of households with children (2.9 million households). Although children are usually protected from substantial reductions in food intake even in households with very low food security, nevertheless, in about 0.7 percent of households with children (250,000 households), one or more child also experienced reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at some time during the year.
manfredo 7y ago
When I was a high school student, we had some state administered test in health class that tasked us with analyzing advertisements for liquor and tobacco and seeing if we could recognize harmful behavior that the ads might be promoting. This test had no impact on our class grade... ..which means students wrote whatever the hell we wanted. I was assigned a Captain Morgan (rum) ad. I wrote that the ad was glorifying maritime piracy and was likely responsible for pirate activity in Somalia.
7952 7y ago
False accusations can actually be the result of prior abuse. They may substitute one person for another. Or do things as a result of mental illness caused by abuse. Kids think differently to adults and may behave inexplicably. And unfortunately that means that an abused child is a terrible witness.
- aspaceman 7y ago
  I was abused as a child (not sexually however) and I can attest to this. Many of my memories are highly charged and don't really hold up - they're very confused. Some of the scariest stuff that happened to me I don't even remember, and my siblings have had to let me in on it (and they were even younger at the time). As a child you're really not prepared for the concept that your parents are treating you badly. So that realization doesn't come until much later.

by harry8 7y ago

fucking_tragedy 7y ago

> But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. In the US, school funding is based upon standardized test results, and bad results can shut a poorly performing school down. It's drilled into every kid's head that these tests are very important, super strict and if they accidentally mess up, it can ruin their academics, because retesting and regrading are expensive.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
As a kid I would go out of my way to fail those tests. The whole curriculum was designed around them, meaning that even if we did score high, any funding gains would just be put towards training us to take the test. I thought the state was holding the school hostage, threatening to cut funds or shut them down if they ever stopped. We never learned anything about civics or American history. Until I was out of highschool, content regarding atrocities like slavery and the trail of tears was not on the test and that was enough to whitewash the whole curriculum. Standardized testing is to the U.S. what lead waterpipes were to the roman empire.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Your school didn't teach slavery? What state?
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    It’s possible that there’s a difference between admitting it happened and an honest portrayal of the institution.

mxcrossb 7y ago

I don’t know about calling it manipulative. I remember taking the ACT, and struggling to plan out one of my essays. It was something like “tell us about a book that inspired you”. So I changed details about the plot so it all fit nicely and was easy to write. I can see something similar here, where someone takes on a persona when writing in order to effectively communicate.

harry8 7y ago
That's entirely fair. Manipulation is kind of what a writer does yet the word manipulative has perjoritive connotations. Many types of writing don't have literal truth as any kind of pre-requisite. Others make a pretence of literal truth to achieve greater effect then basically lie, many autobiographies fall into this trap to some degree. All these things. Differential empathy. Data quality matters.
manfredo 7y ago
This is absolutely the case. In fact, my SAT prep class taught us that the factual veracity of our essays is irrelevant. Essay scores are almost entirely correlated with essay length as long as spelling, grammar, and basic paragraph structure (intro, body paragraphs, conclusion) is followed.

inimino 7y ago

Of course some kids are manipulative, going for shock value, continuing an "in-joke", or just plain trolling. But would a teacher just look the other way, or would they talk to the kid? What would you want for your kids? This is why teachers assigning homework like "what do you want your teacher to know about you" and then not even seeing it is dehumanizing.

dmoy 7y ago

For the not eating, it's pretty easy to get data. It's like 1 in 5 children live in food-insecure households in the US and maybe 1 in 20 of those very insecure, so not eating before school provided lunch is common enough that if you're grading tons of papers you'll run into kids like that.

stochastic_monk 7y ago
It could also be a student suffering from anorexia nervosa, which the confessional aspects of the essay would fit well with.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  I'm confident that your example would of a less percentage than those mentioned in dmoy's comment.
jcranberry 7y ago
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... Food Security Status of U.S. Households with Children in 2017 Among U.S. households with children under age 18: 84.3 percent were food secure in 2017. In 8.0 percent of households with children, only adults were food insecure. Both children and adults were food insecure in 7.7 percent of households with children (2.9 million households). Although children are usually protected from substantial reductions in food intake even in households with very low food security, nevertheless, in about 0.7 percent of households with children (250,000 households), one or more child also experienced reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at some time during the year.

manfredo 7y ago

When I was a high school student, we had some state administered test in health class that tasked us with analyzing advertisements for liquor and tobacco and seeing if we could recognize harmful behavior that the ads might be promoting. This test had no impact on our class grade... ..which means students wrote whatever the hell we wanted. I was assigned a Captain Morgan (rum) ad. I wrote that the ad was glorifying maritime piracy and was likely responsible for pirate activity in Somalia.

7952 7y ago

False accusations can actually be the result of prior abuse. They may substitute one person for another. Or do things as a result of mental illness caused by abuse. Kids think differently to adults and may behave inexplicably. And unfortunately that means that an abused child is a terrible witness.

aspaceman 7y ago
I was abused as a child (not sexually however) and I can attest to this. Many of my memories are highly charged and don't really hold up - they're very confused. Some of the scariest stuff that happened to me I don't even remember, and my siblings have had to let me in on it (and they were even younger at the time). As a child you're really not prepared for the concept that your parents are treating you badly. So that realization doesn't come until much later.