3 ms·

Sometimes we draw a bad hand, and no amount of parenting can save some of the mentally disturbed, like Commodus -- you can't read Meditations, though, and say i

Sometimes we draw a bad hand, and no amount of parenting can save some of the mentally disturbed, like Commodus -- you can't read Meditations, though, and say it's not full of startlingly relevant advice to modern life. From education to work ethic to reflective, thoughtful consideration of one's actions, to coping with trauma. Also, that isn't Marcus Aurelius theory on parenting, he said he learned it from his grandfather, which eventually led to him being one of the Five Good Emperors, so how does that change our analysis? Anyway, pretty much every single study ever done says the smaller the class, the more direct the instruction, the better the academic result, from 0AD til 2020AD, the way we're wired hasn't really changed. It's not likely that receiving 1/30th of the attention of your teacher is going to be as valuable to you as 100% attention, or 50% attention, or 25% attention, vs 3% in a normal school. If kids raising themselves and each other was reliable, we wouldn't have disadvantaged youth. Poverty means busy parents (2 jobs, etc), busy parents mean less time with the kids. It's going to be hard to convince anyone that more time with your kids is going to be anything but beneficial.

Balgair 6y ago
Commodus was not the only sibling with a checkered life, the family was wracked against wealth and privilege. Again, the parenting advice of Roman patricians is not necessarily wise advice. And yes, some of Meditations is great stuff, but some of it is also mediocre, and some of it is bad or just wrong. We've had 2k+ years of new work done in stoicism and other philosophies. Each family is unique and spending more time with a tutor or parent is not always the best. There are ~7.5m reports for abuse of children in the US annually and ~65k cases of sexual abuse of children. There are ~75m children in the US total. Each one of those cases, horrible as they are, are real and society needs to take them into account. It's nearly 10% of kiddos that get abuse reported annually. Digging into these grim statistics is very worthwhile. [0] Hand-waving them off is not helpful or realistic to most educators, parents, or policy makers. I'm not saying that larger or smaller classes are more or less ideal or that abuse is related to stoicism or families. I am saying the solution is unique to each child and that many solutions exist simultaneously. Each family and each person is unique. [0] https://americanspcc.org/child-abuse-statistics/ https://americanspcc.org/child-abuse-statistics/ EDIT: Another post on HN pointed to some of pg's comments on parenthood here: https://www.unclepaul.io/ https://www.unclepaul.io/

Balgair 6y ago

Commodus was not the only sibling with a checkered life, the family was wracked against wealth and privilege. Again, the parenting advice of Roman patricians is not necessarily wise advice. And yes, some of Meditations is great stuff, but some of it is also mediocre, and some of it is bad or just wrong. We've had 2k+ years of new work done in stoicism and other philosophies. Each family is unique and spending more time with a tutor or parent is not always the best. There are ~7.5m reports for abuse of children in the US annually and ~65k cases of sexual abuse of children. There are ~75m children in the US total. Each one of those cases, horrible as they are, are real and society needs to take them into account. It's nearly 10% of kiddos that get abuse reported annually. Digging into these grim statistics is very worthwhile. [0] Hand-waving them off is not helpful or realistic to most educators, parents, or policy makers. I'm not saying that larger or smaller classes are more or less ideal or that abuse is related to stoicism or families. I am saying the solution is unique to each child and that many solutions exist simultaneously. Each family and each person is unique. [0] https://americanspcc.org/child-abuse-statistics/ https://americanspcc.org/child-abuse-statistics/ EDIT: Another post on HN pointed to some of pg's comments on parenthood here: https://www.unclepaul.io/ https://www.unclepaul.io/