6 ms·

I am very thankful that my youngest graduated high school in 2020. The last couple of months were screwed up, but there wasn't much real education lost by then;

• swayvil 5y ago
  • crummy 5y ago
    what was your nephews mask made out of? that sounds very unusual
    • swayvil 5y ago
  • throwaway75787 5y ago
    Seeing the lower face is important to reading emotion. The masks muffle speech as well. I wonder if children, especially in that critical 2-4 year-old period, will have stunted language and interpersonal skills. It's not right.
    • buscoquadnary 5y ago
      So personal anecdote our two year old is behind on speech, we had someone come in to evaluate him and he mentioned that he has been seeing it a lot, citing that because so many people are wearing masks, and the kids weren't spending more time around other people it had created a trend he had noticed.
      • swayvil 5y ago
        That reply you replied to got flagged, downvoted, murdered. And it was an extremely tame reply. Is it just me or is the intolerance for dissent ramping up?
        • throwaway75787 5y ago
          It's not just you.
        • Syonyk 5y ago
          It is exceedingly hard to find places on the internet anymore where one can have a conversation between a range of viewpoints without it turning into an absolute shitshow, or the minority viewpoint being downvoted to oblivion. It's one of many reasons I find myself using the internet less and less. Even the old forums I used to frequent and have the usual sparring conversations that were fun on the internet have fallen to one side or another, and anything outside the orthodoxy of the forum is treated with absolute hostility, "You are evil for evil's sake, I wish you dead" grade responses. There's no spirit of debate anymore, just a spirit of "Dogpile everyone who thinks differently." From any perspective! It was a good 25 year run of internet, but I'm pretty much over the place. HN was one of the last sane places and it's been interesting seeing what sort of stuff gets flagged/killed. More and more, it's "That which isn't the groupthink." Which is sad. I'd rather read books from people I disagree with strongly than participate in an echo chamber. At least I'll have to either sharpen my ability to defend my views, or consider points of view I'd not considered before. Even if I decide they're junk, it's useful to understand how people get there and the viewpoints in more depth than shallow internet stuff.
      • earthboundkid 5y ago
        Why is your two year old seeing a lot of people with masks? Kids aren't expected to wear masks until they turn two, and for under twos, most people I know just have nannies or relatives take care of them, maskless of course. I guess you could do center based care instead because it's sometimes cheaper, but even then the other under 2s will be maskless. My 1 yo doesn't like when I wear a mask, because it is an unusual thing to him. To be clear, where I am I wear masks indoors all the time, but I typically don't take the kids indoors with me, so he only sees it when I run into a cafe or something.
• criddell 5y ago
  Did your kid go on to college? My two kids did and it's a pretty lousy experience. Classes are mostly online still, cafeterias are take out only, socialization opportunities are mostly gone.
  • tester756 5y ago
    My last year of higher edu was remote and I really loved it in 80% Finally I didn't have to waste time on commute and it was way easier to ignore doubtful profs/useless courses and focus on the right things. but yea, things may be harder if you don't know people you're studying with
    • WalterBright 5y ago
      Why did you take useless classes? Colleges give students great leeway in course selection.
      • tester756 5y ago
        (not US) I couldn't I could only take "specialisation" - a few courses at the last year or something like that. It could be software engineering / cybersecurity / something else
      • cjaybo 5y ago
        I'm sure you've heard of prerequisites, but maybe you haven't encountered any questionable requirements in the classes you took at the schools you attended? Personally, I had to take classes like "Ancient Eastern Civilizations" while pursuing a degree in Audio Production. So while the term "useless" is a bit strong, I understand where they're coming from.
        • WalterBright 5y ago
          Caltech had a requirement for classes in social studies. This was a rather broad category, and included things like language, history, and even accounting. So there wasn't any reason for me to select a useless class. There were specific required classes that I didn't like, but they weren't useless. Prerequisites, of course, prevent one from wasting the professor's time from unprepared students.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• WalterBright 5y ago
  Decades? I missed 3 months of 4th grade. The teacher said I should be stuck back in 3rd because 4th grade had moved along so quickly. My mom said no, and put me in the 4th grade class around Christmastime. I wasn't a day behind. The class had not advanced at all. But I'm sure the pandemic will be blamed for school unachievement for decades. It's a godsend to the school industrial complex.
• barry-cotter 5y ago
  > The effects of this are going to be with us for decades. Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a grade level behind average children[1]. The last historically comparable school closures, for the 1918 flu pandemic, had no detectable long run effects[2]. [1] The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence From Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students http://zoleerjemeer.nl/files/1313/9109/4391/The_Impact_of_Schooling_on_Academic_Achievement_-_onderzoek_effecten_unschooling_en_gestructureerd_onderwijs_sept_2011.pdf http://zoleerjemeer.nl/files/1313/9109/4391/The_Impact_of_Sc... [2]School Closures During the 1918 Flu Pandemic https://www.nber.org/papers/w28246 https://www.nber.org/papers/w28246
  • Jensson 5y ago
    > The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Is this really true if the entire class missed a few years? It is very different having one kid who missed a lot and then later interacts with kids who all didn't miss a lot, and a class where every kid is behind a couple of years.
    • asdff 5y ago
      It's not like every kid is falling behind though. Plus you only need to look at history, and probably within your own family to find a few examples, of generations of children who are educated throughout hard truths and stressful times like war or famine and go on to be alright. Zoom and a mask isn't ideal, but a lot less stressful in comparison to something that could easily have given you significant PTSD.
      • colinmhayes 5y ago
        > It's not like every kid is falling behind though. I wouldn't be surprised if kids who fell behind during remote school are clustered at the same schools.
• halostatue 5y ago
  Highly unlikely. My wife taught children who came out of Sarajevo in the mid-90s and many of them have gone on to excel in life. Children are resilient. What is _hurting_ them is not the school closures, but the panic and uncertainty that some people have put around this.
  • empressplay 5y ago
    That panic and uncertainty is hurting all of us.
    • geoduck14 5y ago
      >uncertainty is hurting all of us Simply by observing those around me, I have learned SO much about humans. We hate uncertainty. I hate it. I remember worrying myself into a frenzy looking at all of these tables predicting exposure and risk. "If we go to the grocery store, we can't see X friend... but if YOU go to the store and spend less than 15 minutes getting peanut butter and bread..." it was a mess. I also learned that humans are bad at responding to highly unlikely events. All throughout this pandemic, I remind myself that people are making emotional decisions not logical - and they are doing that because we all are really bad at making logical decisions. And then I remind myself to show them love and grace. What can I do to make your experience a little less frantic? Even if only for 1 minute.
• cm2187 5y ago
  It always surprises that left-leaning politicians and media were the most fervent advocates of school closures, because it has disproportionately affected kids from the poorest backgrounds. What I see around me is that educated couples invested the time to make up for the lack of school education (and were typically home working themselves), so those kids will probably do OK, other kids were left on their own all day. I think it is more of a relative problem than an absolute problem.
  • another_story 5y ago
    Left leaning politicians were pushed by teachers unions whose job is to advocate for the safety of the teachers.
    • Drunk_Engineer 5y ago
      Left leaning politicians also send their kids to private schools which did not shut down.
      • walshemj 5y ago
        They did in the UK
      • supernovae 5y ago
        they did on the US
  • watwut 5y ago
    The pandemic is also affecting kids from poorest backgrounds. They are the most likely to loose caregiver due to it. They are more likely to be cared for by grandparents too. 1 in 500 kids lost caregiver overall. That affects them too.
• tschwimmer 5y ago
  I have some bad news for you: if your child is college bound then they are about to go into another environment that has been profoundly damaged by the pandemic: a college campus. Students at my university are angry and depressed about the fact that they're paying thousands of dollars for glorified university of Phoenix. The college social scene is also obviously heavily disrupted, which is probably an underappreciated factor in the development of young people. If I were of college age and was able, I'd take a gap year or two without any hesitation.
  • rdtwo 5y ago
    You but how long… gap year seemed like a good move at pandemic start but is been 2 years now with no End in sight
    • tschwimmer 5y ago
      I think you can start college pretty much at any age as long as you don't already have a degree. It's obviously a huge luxury to do so, but I think you're missing out on so much social and intellectual development if you do college now that it may be worth holding out for 3 years (or maybe more). I'm not saying that college now is completely worthless, but looking from the outside and listening to what students are saying, it seems severely diminished.
      • rdtwo 5y ago
        At some point you get too old and you outgrow your college peer group. I think 2 years is the most id recommend. College is like 30% study 30% social and 40% getting the initial experience that you can use to start that first job.
        • tschwimmer 5y ago
          This doesn't pass the smell test to me. Plenty of seniors were friends with freshman and sophomores at my university. Maybe it's a bit rare to see an outgoing senior hanging out with a fresh out of high school freshman but less extreme examples were super common.
• walshemj 5y ago
  Well HR and universities are going to you know actually do their damm job and make adjustments