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> In some cases, people’s personal information could be accessed from Google searches. SEO providers should take a note here. > It warned parents to stop usin

> In some cases, people’s personal information could be accessed from Google searches. SEO providers should take a note here. > It warned parents to stop using the app and alleged that it might be illegally accessing people’s personal information If your API allows data extraction, it probably isn't a fault of any client. Perhaps they meant that creators could steal credentials. A problem with any software. I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. I would have hated to give my parents access to anything like this. Kids will of course learn from how their parents behave... An open API is a must in my opinion, but the rest of the App should be open source too. That said, I don't really see the Swedish strategy as a model for other countries to follow. You don't need to give children chromebooks to learn. These are skills they have already mastered far better than their parents. They will learn about domain specific apps and there are indeed some really good ones, but such platform can also limit creativity because they are essentially sandpits. Depending on age that might be appropriate, but kids may have greater ambitions than their parents.

wonderwonder 5y ago
"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves. It also allows me to check their grades. Its not so much a "child managing system" as a way for the parents to be empowered to ensure their kids are doing well and what is going on in their school lives. As a parent, my kids are my responsibility, any tool I can use to be better at that is a good thing.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would have broken out of there as quickly as possible.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    I can understand personal preference of a child but study after study show that children whose parents are actively involved with their education and schooling get better results.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting problems to solve, works together with them on extra-curricular projects, obtains materials and resources related to the child’s personal interests, ... Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.
      - wonderwonder 5y ago
        I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people are for some reason assuming the worst from this app and more so the parents that use it and it seems very odd to me. I ensure my kids study for their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a day, and review with them before tests and that is seen as micromanaging and negative? Strange times.
        redis_mlc 5y ago
        Yeah, that's micromanaging.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        Active involvement would be talking to your children and asking them what they have for school. Looking up their schedule on a website is passive involvement. I'm relieved these systems didn't exist when I was a child.
- tata71 5y ago
  > its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter skills and mental models, besides experiencing things like the (comparatively low-impact!) consequences of not handing in your 5th grade homework....? Hopefully you're going full parabola and also providing disproportionately strong incentives to do the "right" behaviors, because otherwise it's as likely they'll succeed as they'll become sand through your tight grasp.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    The reactions people are expressing to a parent stating they like to know what their kids are up to in school and what assignments are due is pretty odd. "it's as likely they'll succeed as they'll become sand through your tight grasp" lol, I have no idea how my statement on working with my kids on their homework and liking to know what is going on has evolved into an image of me being some sort of god king in my house, but hey whatever makes you happy. My kids have homework, I sit down with them and work on it with them, we bond, we joke around, they learn and they turn it in the next day. The horror. Edit: "How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter skills" To add some color, my 9 year old decided at the spur of the moment while they were asking who wanted to stand up and give a speech to be on student council to do it and he won. I had no input and he just made the decision in the moment so I very much don't think sitting down with kids and doing homework with them or keeping an eye on their schedule kills any self-starter skills. There are always extremes but the overall reaction to this is a bit silly.
  - pawelmurias 5y ago
    Migrate them to keeping their own calendar, rather then using the old fashioned way of a mixture of scribbling stuff in random places and not giving a shift
  - watwut 5y ago
    What you propose is to not teach them nor give them gradually more responsibilities. You literally demand the system in which kids are expected to be well organized. If they are not they will be punished until they learn to be organized. If they don't despite punishments in school, parents won't be told until end of year. Then they get the surprising final report and only thing they can do is to yell at kids or something. That is rather poor pedagogy.
- antihero 5y ago
  > it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in I swear we just had an A4 piece of paper with my lessons on it on the fridge.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Wut? Does the school do anything that involves stuff that you need to dress differently for? Even when doing PE I’d always bring a separate bag of gym clothes.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    And printing out a schedule for every child is a bit silly when there is calendaring software... Everything once done on paper is now done electronically - and revisions (fixes) happen much more quickly to boot.
    - alibarber 5y ago
      You're not wrong, but, my school timetable changed once every quarter, that was sort of feature. It's not work, no one is flying in from $city on $day to kick off a project, students and teachers would follow a routine, it was easy. Frankly there are some aspects of it I miss...
  - watwut 5y ago
    It is literally the same thing then. If one is not causing outrage, nor should the other.
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  Back when I was in school we had a schedule, for the semester. That worked perfectly well for me and my parents. Our kitchen had a pin board with these schedules pinned to it. After a month or so we all had a new schedule internalized anyway. As for food, we had a cafeteria which served warm meals, usually at least two different options, and various other things like sandwiches, along with two "kiosks" where the janitors's wives sold some more snacks and sandwiches. And there was a supermarket across the street. I never had a packed lunch, ever, simply because there was no need for it. If I really hated the hot meals of the day, I would get a sandwich. We kids didn't really keep to the schedules anyway, we sometimes went early or stayed late to make use of the table tennis, foosball (or "kicker" as it's called in Germany) or billard tables, or play board games (our school had a sizable collection of these), or play soccer (or "football" as it is called correctly) outside on the school's fields. Mom's only order was to call her (from a pay phone inside the school) if we stayed longer than 1h, so she didn't need to worry (dad was at work). Pickups weren't a problem in this system, as we would always take the public bus or bike when it was warm enough. Our school had something like 1200-1500 students, and about only 30-50 were dropped off and picked up by parents regularly, simply because they lived in some tiny villages somewhere with shitty bus service. Homework and test prep was supposed to be managed by the students, not their parents, anyway, but most classes had just printed exercises and/or a sheet of what to expect in tests, so parents could always just check that. Test were also in about the same weeks of every semester, so my parents might not have known the exact dates unless they asked and I told them, but they knew that tests were happening. My parents kept interest, asked me how it was going regularly, if I needed help with something, when the tests are and what my results were, and so on. I think so it makes a big difference in the kid's experience if the parent asks them, or if the parent essentially goes over their head and consults some online resource. I personally was too proud to want help with school work from my parents from an early age on, and even felt that it only slowed me down; I wanted to be outside with my friends not slowly working through the homework as a team exercise. My grades were good, so my parents let me do my stuff. My sisters (they are twins) needed some help in some areas (they are very likely partially dyslexic), and got it. Should the grades of a student change abruptly for the worse or remain at a low level, teachers would just call up parents and discuss the situation and suggest ways to improve, and the semester reports had to be signed by a parent anyway, and that signature had to be presented at school. This was mid to late 90s by the way, my mid and "high" school time. In elementary school my parents were still more hands-on, of course. I too find "digital child managing systems" rather dystopian, enabling parents to micro-manage their kids even more, which I am convinced is not good for the kid's overall development. There has to be a balance between the parents need to care for a kid (and the care a kid actually needs, of course) and letting the kid grow up, and I feel such systems push that balance too much away from teaching kids self-reliance and let them make minor "educational" mistakes on their own. Then again, I of course realize that each kid has it's own needs, and some need a fair bit of micro-management at times. >what to dress them in May I ask, how old are your kids? Sounds like they are still young, if you dress them? Then of course, more micro-managing makes more sense. The younger the more care kids need.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  I'm not against the app, but the use cases you gave sound like things the child needs to learn to do. If they have gym, they need to be responsible for remembering their stuff. If the cafeteria has food they don't like, maybe they learn to develop new tastes that day. And most importantly, I'd they have homework or tests that are due, the child should 1000% be solely responsible for this. As you mention, I guess it can be a useful tool for a parent to keep their kid on track, because yeah obviously they're learning and they'll be forgetful. But IMO it would also make it too easy for an overbearing parent to prevent their child from learning important life skills, thinking they're helping.
- kwdc 5y ago
  I'd also say that a school denying access to this information should rightly expect pointy and sharp questions coming at them. Parents being part of the education system shouldn't come as a surprise to a school. It would be like hiding the school timetable. Usual common sense caveats still apply: Privacy and authentication are still valid aspects but not to block those who could reasonably expect to successfully authenticate, eg a parent of a kid in school.
striking 5y ago
It appears to manage attendance and grades among other things. I'm not sure what this has to do with Chromebooks.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Such devices are part of their strategy for digitization as is this school app. Sweden spends a decent amount of money on education. But if look at a purely educational value any notebook beats a tablet aside for art. Purely technical knowledge is also better gained in more open environments. Depends on age I guess.
- soco 5y ago
  There are different schools of thought, some people would rather have the kids home-schooled or completely different like Montessori, Steiner... so maybe the critique comes from that direction.
  - striking 5y ago
    Yeah, but what does that have to do with a school app?
JackFr 5y ago
> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. I think you misunderstand the point of the system. It's much more mundane than that. The system just replaces paper notices going home with kids and getting lost in their book bags, looking phone numbers to report you child out sick, etc. It's not brave new world, it's simply replacing paper and phone tasks with an app.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Yes! I recall all of these kinds of things being available and used when I was a child well before cell phones existed. Photocopied calendars. Sheets of paper a reticent child would carry around to their teachers for weekly reports. Report cards. Teachers calling parents when more attention was needed.
nineplay 5y ago
> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. I would have hated to give my parents access to anything like this. Kids will of course learn from how their parents behave... I don't really disagree but we are in an era where children's academic outcomes are based entirely on parental involvement. Scratch any surface of any under-performer lightly and the cry will go up "The schools can't be blamed for poor parenting!" I think we rarely acknowledge that this is a recent development. Ask most Gen-Xers ( me ), ask boomers, ask greatest generationers if you know any. "How involved were your parents in your schoolwork?". You'll probably get a blank stare - "None?". I suspect it started with the "Asians are going to beat us" panic from the 80s. They were killing us in math scores and if we weren't careful we'd all be working for them someday. In retrospect the danger was exaggerated. Now, however, heavy parental involvement is required for kids to succeed. If the kids don't finish their homework - could it be that they are getting to much homework? Nah, it must be bad parents. If they can't pass the tests, could it be their teachers have not prepared them? Nope - the parents should have been spending their evenings going though flash cards. It only exacerbates the difference between that haves and have nots. If you don't have a parent who can devote time every day to overseeing your education, you're out of luck.
burnished 5y ago
This is all information that the parent would have anyway. Lunch isn't private information, the curriculum isn't private information, tests and homework as well isn't private, its just that it was all a shit ton of minutia that typically didn't get memorized by any individual. Part of being a parent is helping your child navigate and learn about the world. Having this sort of information - what are the details about what this institution is offering on a daily basis - sounds invaluable.
beyondzero 5y ago
> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. A lot of the reactions and rebuttals to this comment are from HN childless people, whose perspective is their memory of being a child age 12-17, talking past HN people with children, whose perspective is about their kids age 5-12. At one end of the range you are educating about drugs and sex and good decisions, on the other end of the range you are worried about clean butts and walking across busy streets. The method of CREATING an older child who can be an independent and functional adult is by "MICROMANAGING" early-on so they develop good habits (especially good habits of independence!). And I am a Montessori parent which is fairly radical compared to the normal US system.
- ajhurliman 5y ago
  Thank you for making this comment, it very much rings true as a parent whose child is far to young to ever be thinking about planning her own day.

wonderwonder 5y ago

"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves. It also allows me to check their grades. Its not so much a "child managing system" as a way for the parents to be empowered to ensure their kids are doing well and what is going on in their school lives. As a parent, my kids are my responsibility, any tool I can use to be better at that is a good thing.

raxxorrax 5y ago
As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would have broken out of there as quickly as possible.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  I can understand personal preference of a child but study after study show that children whose parents are actively involved with their education and schooling get better results.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Active involvement = parent teaches child various skills and ideas, reads books aloud, suggests interesting problems to solve, works together with them on extra-curricular projects, obtains materials and resources related to the child’s personal interests, ... Micromanaging the completion of their school-assigned busywork is something different.
    - wonderwonder 5y ago
      I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people are for some reason assuming the worst from this app and more so the parents that use it and it seems very odd to me. I ensure my kids study for their weekly spelling tests for 10 minutes a day, and review with them before tests and that is seen as micromanaging and negative? Strange times.
      - redis_mlc 5y ago
        Yeah, that's micromanaging.
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        Active involvement would be talking to your children and asking them what they have for school. Looking up their schedule on a website is passive involvement. I'm relieved these systems didn't exist when I was a child.
tata71 5y ago
> its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter skills and mental models, besides experiencing things like the (comparatively low-impact!) consequences of not handing in your 5th grade homework....? Hopefully you're going full parabola and also providing disproportionately strong incentives to do the "right" behaviors, because otherwise it's as likely they'll succeed as they'll become sand through your tight grasp.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  The reactions people are expressing to a parent stating they like to know what their kids are up to in school and what assignments are due is pretty odd. "it's as likely they'll succeed as they'll become sand through your tight grasp" lol, I have no idea how my statement on working with my kids on their homework and liking to know what is going on has evolved into an image of me being some sort of god king in my house, but hey whatever makes you happy. My kids have homework, I sit down with them and work on it with them, we bond, we joke around, they learn and they turn it in the next day. The horror. Edit: "How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter skills" To add some color, my 9 year old decided at the spur of the moment while they were asking who wanted to stand up and give a speech to be on student council to do it and he won. I had no input and he just made the decision in the moment so I very much don't think sitting down with kids and doing homework with them or keeping an eye on their schedule kills any self-starter skills. There are always extremes but the overall reaction to this is a bit silly.
- pawelmurias 5y ago
  Migrate them to keeping their own calendar, rather then using the old fashioned way of a mixture of scribbling stuff in random places and not giving a shift
- watwut 5y ago
  What you propose is to not teach them nor give them gradually more responsibilities. You literally demand the system in which kids are expected to be well organized. If they are not they will be punished until they learn to be organized. If they don't despite punishments in school, parents won't be told until end of year. Then they get the surprising final report and only thing they can do is to yell at kids or something. That is rather poor pedagogy.
antihero 5y ago
> it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in I swear we just had an A4 piece of paper with my lessons on it on the fridge.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Wut? Does the school do anything that involves stuff that you need to dress differently for? Even when doing PE I’d always bring a separate bag of gym clothes.
- falcolas 5y ago
  And printing out a schedule for every child is a bit silly when there is calendaring software... Everything once done on paper is now done electronically - and revisions (fixes) happen much more quickly to boot.
  - alibarber 5y ago
    You're not wrong, but, my school timetable changed once every quarter, that was sort of feature. It's not work, no one is flying in from $city on $day to kick off a project, students and teachers would follow a routine, it was easy. Frankly there are some aspects of it I miss...
- watwut 5y ago
  It is literally the same thing then. If one is not causing outrage, nor should the other.
rndgermandude 5y ago
Back when I was in school we had a schedule, for the semester. That worked perfectly well for me and my parents. Our kitchen had a pin board with these schedules pinned to it. After a month or so we all had a new schedule internalized anyway. As for food, we had a cafeteria which served warm meals, usually at least two different options, and various other things like sandwiches, along with two "kiosks" where the janitors's wives sold some more snacks and sandwiches. And there was a supermarket across the street. I never had a packed lunch, ever, simply because there was no need for it. If I really hated the hot meals of the day, I would get a sandwich. We kids didn't really keep to the schedules anyway, we sometimes went early or stayed late to make use of the table tennis, foosball (or "kicker" as it's called in Germany) or billard tables, or play board games (our school had a sizable collection of these), or play soccer (or "football" as it is called correctly) outside on the school's fields. Mom's only order was to call her (from a pay phone inside the school) if we stayed longer than 1h, so she didn't need to worry (dad was at work). Pickups weren't a problem in this system, as we would always take the public bus or bike when it was warm enough. Our school had something like 1200-1500 students, and about only 30-50 were dropped off and picked up by parents regularly, simply because they lived in some tiny villages somewhere with shitty bus service. Homework and test prep was supposed to be managed by the students, not their parents, anyway, but most classes had just printed exercises and/or a sheet of what to expect in tests, so parents could always just check that. Test were also in about the same weeks of every semester, so my parents might not have known the exact dates unless they asked and I told them, but they knew that tests were happening. My parents kept interest, asked me how it was going regularly, if I needed help with something, when the tests are and what my results were, and so on. I think so it makes a big difference in the kid's experience if the parent asks them, or if the parent essentially goes over their head and consults some online resource. I personally was too proud to want help with school work from my parents from an early age on, and even felt that it only slowed me down; I wanted to be outside with my friends not slowly working through the homework as a team exercise. My grades were good, so my parents let me do my stuff. My sisters (they are twins) needed some help in some areas (they are very likely partially dyslexic), and got it. Should the grades of a student change abruptly for the worse or remain at a low level, teachers would just call up parents and discuss the situation and suggest ways to improve, and the semester reports had to be signed by a parent anyway, and that signature had to be presented at school. This was mid to late 90s by the way, my mid and "high" school time. In elementary school my parents were still more hands-on, of course. I too find "digital child managing systems" rather dystopian, enabling parents to micro-manage their kids even more, which I am convinced is not good for the kid's overall development. There has to be a balance between the parents need to care for a kid (and the care a kid actually needs, of course) and letting the kid grow up, and I feel such systems push that balance too much away from teaching kids self-reliance and let them make minor "educational" mistakes on their own. Then again, I of course realize that each kid has it's own needs, and some need a fair bit of micro-management at times. >what to dress them in May I ask, how old are your kids? Sounds like they are still young, if you dress them? Then of course, more micro-managing makes more sense. The younger the more care kids need.
teawrecks 5y ago
I'm not against the app, but the use cases you gave sound like things the child needs to learn to do. If they have gym, they need to be responsible for remembering their stuff. If the cafeteria has food they don't like, maybe they learn to develop new tastes that day. And most importantly, I'd they have homework or tests that are due, the child should 1000% be solely responsible for this. As you mention, I guess it can be a useful tool for a parent to keep their kid on track, because yeah obviously they're learning and they'll be forgetful. But IMO it would also make it too easy for an overbearing parent to prevent their child from learning important life skills, thinking they're helping.
kwdc 5y ago
I'd also say that a school denying access to this information should rightly expect pointy and sharp questions coming at them. Parents being part of the education system shouldn't come as a surprise to a school. It would be like hiding the school timetable. Usual common sense caveats still apply: Privacy and authentication are still valid aspects but not to block those who could reasonably expect to successfully authenticate, eg a parent of a kid in school.

striking 5y ago

It appears to manage attendance and grades among other things. I'm not sure what this has to do with Chromebooks.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Such devices are part of their strategy for digitization as is this school app. Sweden spends a decent amount of money on education. But if look at a purely educational value any notebook beats a tablet aside for art. Purely technical knowledge is also better gained in more open environments. Depends on age I guess.
soco 5y ago
There are different schools of thought, some people would rather have the kids home-schooled or completely different like Montessori, Steiner... so maybe the critique comes from that direction.
- striking 5y ago
  Yeah, but what does that have to do with a school app?

JackFr 5y ago

> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. I think you misunderstand the point of the system. It's much more mundane than that. The system just replaces paper notices going home with kids and getting lost in their book bags, looking phone numbers to report you child out sick, etc. It's not brave new world, it's simply replacing paper and phone tasks with an app.

falcolas 5y ago
Yes! I recall all of these kinds of things being available and used when I was a child well before cell phones existed. Photocopied calendars. Sheets of paper a reticent child would carry around to their teachers for weekly reports. Report cards. Teachers calling parents when more attention was needed.

nineplay 5y ago

> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. I would have hated to give my parents access to anything like this. Kids will of course learn from how their parents behave... I don't really disagree but we are in an era where children's academic outcomes are based entirely on parental involvement. Scratch any surface of any under-performer lightly and the cry will go up "The schools can't be blamed for poor parenting!" I think we rarely acknowledge that this is a recent development. Ask most Gen-Xers ( me ), ask boomers, ask greatest generationers if you know any. "How involved were your parents in your schoolwork?". You'll probably get a blank stare - "None?". I suspect it started with the "Asians are going to beat us" panic from the 80s. They were killing us in math scores and if we weren't careful we'd all be working for them someday. In retrospect the danger was exaggerated. Now, however, heavy parental involvement is required for kids to succeed. If the kids don't finish their homework - could it be that they are getting to much homework? Nah, it must be bad parents. If they can't pass the tests, could it be their teachers have not prepared them? Nope - the parents should have been spending their evenings going though flash cards. It only exacerbates the difference between that haves and have nots. If you don't have a parent who can devote time every day to overseeing your education, you're out of luck.

burnished 5y ago

This is all information that the parent would have anyway. Lunch isn't private information, the curriculum isn't private information, tests and homework as well isn't private, its just that it was all a shit ton of minutia that typically didn't get memorized by any individual. Part of being a parent is helping your child navigate and learn about the world. Having this sort of information - what are the details about what this institution is offering on a daily basis - sounds invaluable.

beyondzero 5y ago

> I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest. A lot of the reactions and rebuttals to this comment are from HN childless people, whose perspective is their memory of being a child age 12-17, talking past HN people with children, whose perspective is about their kids age 5-12. At one end of the range you are educating about drugs and sex and good decisions, on the other end of the range you are worried about clean butts and walking across busy streets. The method of CREATING an older child who can be an independent and functional adult is by "MICROMANAGING" early-on so they develop good habits (especially good habits of independence!). And I am a Montessori parent which is fairly radical compared to the normal US system.

ajhurliman 5y ago
Thank you for making this comment, it very much rings true as a parent whose child is far to young to ever be thinking about planning her own day.