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I failed 7th grade because my parents were divorcing in the middle of it and literally everybody including my family acted like it was the end of my school care

by mjayhn 6y ago

I failed 7th grade because my parents were divorcing in the middle of it and literally everybody including my family acted like it was the end of my school career and I'd never recover and get a real job and would be SOO behind my peers. I'm 100% on the "yeah you can take a year off, it'll be ok or better in the end" side of things. I can't imagine myself at 13 having to deal with that + quarantine/2020.

fossuser 6y ago
Yeah - I’d argue that social response and the psychological toll from it does ten times more damage than the actual “failure” of seventh grade. People can spend decades afraid to learn because some shitty teacher made them feel dumb when they were young.
danShumway 6y ago
I'm not an expert on education, I'm not going to speculate on the psychological effects of having a year without school on a kid. I don't think I'm qualified to do that. Outside of developmental effects though, by the time you get to college does it really matter if someone is one year older than another person? Is anyone going to get rejected from a first job interview just because they're 26 instead of 25? Plenty of people take gap years before they go to college, so my concern with taking a year off school wouldn't be, "but how will they ever catch up?" It would be about the resources that parents are relying on, the developmental effects of having a routine interrupted to that degree, the ability of parents to keep working, early socialization, etc... I think those are all valid concerns, and (again) I'm not going to pretend that I can speak on them. But I'm not worried about, "some other kid will be one year ahead."
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- treis 6y ago
  You can't push pause on human development, though. Having your first job interview at 26 instead of 25 doesn't matter. Missing out on a year of socialization when you're 6 almost certainly does.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    You're still taking in input and experiencing the world. I was really young for the grade I was in which made things harder than necessary. It would have been easier to be a year older. You'd still get the socialization anyway, you'd just have one year with a little less (and I'm not really convinced that remote socialization via remote learning is particularly helpful, whatever alternative socialization outside of remote learning is probably just as good or better).
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by mjayhn 6y ago

fossuser 6y ago

Yeah - I’d argue that social response and the psychological toll from it does ten times more damage than the actual “failure” of seventh grade. People can spend decades afraid to learn because some shitty teacher made them feel dumb when they were young.

danShumway 6y ago

I'm not an expert on education, I'm not going to speculate on the psychological effects of having a year without school on a kid. I don't think I'm qualified to do that. Outside of developmental effects though, by the time you get to college does it really matter if someone is one year older than another person? Is anyone going to get rejected from a first job interview just because they're 26 instead of 25? Plenty of people take gap years before they go to college, so my concern with taking a year off school wouldn't be, "but how will they ever catch up?" It would be about the resources that parents are relying on, the developmental effects of having a routine interrupted to that degree, the ability of parents to keep working, early socialization, etc... I think those are all valid concerns, and (again) I'm not going to pretend that I can speak on them. But I'm not worried about, "some other kid will be one year ahead."

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treis 6y ago
You can't push pause on human development, though. Having your first job interview at 26 instead of 25 doesn't matter. Missing out on a year of socialization when you're 6 almost certainly does.
- fossuser 6y ago
  You're still taking in input and experiencing the world. I was really young for the grade I was in which made things harder than necessary. It would have been easier to be a year older. You'd still get the socialization anyway, you'd just have one year with a little less (and I'm not really convinced that remote socialization via remote learning is particularly helpful, whatever alternative socialization outside of remote learning is probably just as good or better).
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  [deleted]