8 ms·

> First off, they are more motor-hyperactive, they move, fidget, get out of their chairs: their very neurochemistry develops differently, making them less adept

• skulk 6y ago
  Montessori had the right idea here, but goes pretty much ignored by the mainstream. It's a travesty, really. I think it has to do with scalability; our current education system scales much better within the ridiculous budget constraints education faces (in the US).
  • JPKab 6y ago
    Ridiculous budget constraints? Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). The spending efficiency of public schools in US is horrible, and they tend to focus on quantity over quality with teachers, due to a misguided idea of reducing student teacher ratios that Malcolm Gladwell has written about. This constant excuse repeated everywhere about not enough funding isn't backed up by data. I spent my entire childhood in public schools. 3/4 of my teachers were lazy shitbags who treated it like a govt job. The other 1/4 were punished every time they broke the mold in any way to fix things. The day public schools realize that their primary role is educating kids OVER providing jobs to as many teachers union members as possible, we can start fixing them.
    • __MatrixMan__ 6y ago
      Public schools like the one you describe exist, but they're on one end of a spectrum. My wife teaches English at a pubic school on the other end. Their student body is mostly minorities. The library contains only books written by dead white men which the students are inherently mistrustful of. They can't afford new novels, so the teachers print excerpts at home and bring them to class. In 2017 they blew their printing budget. In 2018 and 2019 we printed more than 35k pages at home because the school couldn't afford more toner. In 2021 they'll be in the black re: toner again, so my home printer will get a break until they blow the budget again. Public schools are funded based on property taxes of the surrounding neighborhoods. Some of them have money to burn, others can't afford books. My wife's school has the best teachers in town. Nobody goes into teaching for the money, and nobody teaches as a school like hers because they think it's gonna be an easy job--those sorts gravitate to the schools with money to burn and students that aren't also homeless. More important than fixing the absolute amount of funding that public schools have is fixing the way it's distributed. It should a flat rate per-student, adjusted only for cost of living at a city-by-city granularity, not a neighborhood-by-neighborhood granularity. Once the public school experience is more equal across the board it will be easier to distinguish the good teachers that lack supplies from the bad teachers with resources to waste.
    • TMWNN 6y ago
      >Ridiculous budget constraints? >Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. NYC public schools are #1; DC isn't in the top ten (https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-city-spend-on-each-student.html https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...). Baltimore is #3, though, and four DC suburbs are also in the top ten, all no doubt offering much better education than the Baltimore (or DC) schools. >My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). Private schools pay teachers less money than public schools, too.
      • JamisonM 6y ago
        I would add to this that the presumption that private school tuition reflects the cost of private school on a per student basis in its entirety and can be fairly compared to per-student funding of schools is probably incorrect. (Even more so if only comparing based on the tuition of one particular kid.)
  • orwin 6y ago
    Montessori is not ignored in my country, but: - Cost more money for the state - Cost more time to the teacher (its an issue since early grade teachers are already swamped) - is in "testing" since the late 90's at least and is not quite there yet. So we took another approach, more like germans. Reduced schools hour and add 2x2 hours of learning something else. Woodworking, board game, wird sports, anything the teacher can put in place (often boring stuff tbh, but i heard really good initiatives from friends that stayed in the social "business"). Well, in the end, it costed more money, took more time from the teachers anyway, was poorly implemented all around and was rolled back in some areas. But weirdly, while rural areas often get the short end of the stick when this kind of change rolls out, in this case, this created a lot of social link and learning opportunities (as they got no money, they had to ask parent/grandparents and people living around for help and this often was a success)
• mberning 6y ago
  My son was just born and we are already looking at alternatives to the public education system. Guys I work with that have school age children are constantly at odds with teachers and school administrators. Of course the kids hate it as well.
• dolni 6y ago
  Couldn't disagree more. Humanity has developed a society with acceptable norms to make life more enjoyable for everybody. One of the important things school does is socialize kids. If a stranger breaks into your home and kills your kid, the natural response for a lot of people is to kill the person that did it. There are a lot of reasons why we _don't_ allow that in civilized countries. People have to be socialized to reject that natural behavior. More to school children, they as adults will not be successful if they frequently act impulsively. Adulthood in society is finding a fulfilling career, maintaining healthy relationships, paying your bills on time, and setting fulfilling long term goals for yourself. None of those things are helped by impulsive behavior.
  • meatandcheese 6y ago
    * There's a massive gulf between revenge killing and boys fidgeting. * Development is different than adulthood. Your argument is like saying breast feeding a child is crippling it's ability to integrate into society later in life. * I haven't seen any compelling evidence that you can train impulsiveness out of a child. You have a lot more faith in public schools than I do if you think language arts workbooks have that effect.
    • dolni 6y ago
      > There's a massive gulf between revenge killing and boys fidgeting. I mean... no shit? The point wasn't to compare revenge killing to fidgeting. The point was to illustrate that impulse control is necessary for a civilized society to function. > Development is different than adulthood. Your argument is like saying breast feeding a child is crippling it's ability to integrate into society later in life. It's frankly insulting that you would take the stupidest possible interpretation of my argument, make a counterargument, and claim slam dunk. How do you think it is that kids become adults? Do you just let kids run wild, controlling none of their impulses, and then they turn 18 and suddenly they're in full control of themselves? That's absolutely laughable. It's development for a reason: you're _developing_ the kids. They are going to be at a lower level of ability than an adult with regards to impulse control. That's why you start to teach them. Babies can't chew hard food. It's impossible. So you don't give them hard food. It's _NOT_ impossible to teach a kid to control some of their undesirable impulses. > I haven't seen any compelling evidence that you can train impulsiveness out of a child. You have a lot more faith in public schools than I do if you think language arts workbooks have that effect. Uh... wat? No, you can't train _all_ impulsiveness out of anybody. But you can absolutely train people to recognize and mitigate negative impulses. Almost the very first skill any kid learns is to control the impulse of blurting out when they want to speak in a classroom. They are taught that they should raise their hand and wait to be called on. And lots of parents have to teach their kids that they can't hit other kids.
• mminer237 6y ago
  It's hard to learn math, history, science, and literature running around playing. Changing school to be what kids want compromises the school. Kids don't want to study. Boys may have a harder time staying still and paying attention, but that isn't just a school thing. Doing any sort of research for any sort of theoretical learning in life requires those same things. You'll never get to fulfill your every desire in life. Learning the discipline to control yourself now and have fun later is just as important a life skill to learn as any. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
  • jdsalaro 6y ago
    > It's hard to learn math, history, science, and literature running around playing Citation, desperately, needed. The anecdotal evidence available to me from my experiences and my social circle strongly contradicts that.
  • TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    You seem to believe that boys never grow up - and a hyperactive 14 year old in need of both intellectual and physical competitive challenges will inevitably be unable to do the steady work required to gain a PhD as a 24 year old. You may want to reconsider that assumption.
  • throwaway201103 6y ago
    It doesn't have to be as extreme as you imply. Just getting away from "butts in seats" can make a big difference. Think learning stations/areas in the room where the kids move around from one to the next. Learning games that involve physical movement. Breaks every few hours to go outside and run around -- used to be called recess, and many schools have eliminated it.
• tw25594396 6y ago
  > Our approach is completely backwards. "This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function. "At work, people have to do what they are told to do, when they are told to do it and in the way they are told to do it, otherwise production would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracies HAVE TO be run according to rigid rules. To allow any substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to differences in the way individual bureaucrats exercised their discretion. "The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires of us. (Propaganda, educational techniques, "mental health" programs, etc.)"