7 ms·

We are willing to spend endless trillions on administrators, elaborate facilities, tablet computers, tutoring, lowering student-teacher ratios... But not willi

by nwah1 4y ago

We are willing to spend endless trillions on administrators, elaborate facilities, tablet computers, tutoring, lowering student-teacher ratios... But not willing to spend any time or money figuring out how to provide kids with fresh air, nutritious food, sunlight, and adequate sleep. It almost seems like the lack of need to spend a lot of money on these effective interventions is precisely why they are given no attention. Advocates should pitch people on overpriced solutions to these.

culi 4y ago
I think it's just that we try to be data-driven about what we spend on. Unfortunately the first set of variables you mentioned we already have good data on and can study easily. The latter set of variables can be more complex to measure the impact of and so the science lags behind
jeff_carr 4y ago
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/11/administrators-have-seized-the-ivory-tower/ https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/11/administrators-have-...
simonsarris 4y ago
> figuring out how to provide kids with fresh air, nutritious food, sunlight, and adequate sleep Most of these are already known, which is the more frustrating thing. The 1001st paper on teenage sleep isn't going to suddenly make schools change their tune. They simply do not care. In the US it is illegal to offer whole milk in elementary school because the USDA says so because of completely insane rules from the 1980's when nutrition science was at its worst. The only way you can really fight these forces is by exiting (homeschooling, private schooling).
- apocalypstyx 4y ago
  As a former home-schooled child, don't do this.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    Could you elaborate?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - apocalypstyx 4y ago
      Most people are not going to have the requisite knowledge of pedagogy. We think we know X, Y, Z, or we actually know X, Y, Z, but teaching that (especially to children) is a whole other ballgame. When your parents are your teachers, the disappointment quotient to your failure isn't double but a power of 2 because, whether they know it or not, their ego is on the line twice over as both teacher and parent. They tend to start telling you or others that 'you're so mature for your age', where you are expected to be adult in mentality but without the actual ability to act upon that mentality (that is, they want to reference how 'adult' you are --- because of their parenting/education style --- and by definition of being underage, you have no autonomy. So have all the expectations of being or interacting like an adult without any of the autonomy, so you end up in your 20s feeling closer to 40 --- most especially if there is a lack of socialization with children your own age, and you the vast majority of the first two decades of your life around people your parents' or grandparents' age. So when you're in college, you feel alien from everyone who is your own age.) All of this goes double if the reasons for homeschooling are religious fundamentalism, or add a disbelief in autism or ADHD into the mix. My experience is that the vast majority of people who homeschool their kids don't do so because the education system is 'failing' but because of control --- my kid isn't going to be infected by evolution, etc (and transness nowadays). This is, of course, not all homeschools, but it remains by far the majority of what I have seen in person and online. Also there is a sense of illegitimacy. When your high-school diploma is just a sheet signed by your father stuck in a folder that you have to send out when official transcripts are required, it's a constant worry of if these records are going to be accepted or not, or that this school has no XYZ ID number because there was never any such thing back then, etc. All of the educational records that would you would normally request to be transferred between institutions, you have to manage.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Just because we know certain things, doesn't mean we know how to apply those things to maximum benefit. Yes, starting school after 9am could be better for some kids. It could be worse for some others. Then the main issue is that the majority of adults are at work prior to 8am, making schools essentially babysitters. We'd have to change a lot about society to really make later start times work well for everyone. I haven't really seen good solutions in practice so far since the solutions are usually one size for all, or ignore the effects of socital factors. Perhaps the common issue at the center of most school complaints is that it's essentially authoritarian imposition of what someone thinks is best for the child. Whether that's low fat milk and cardboard "whole wheat", or whitelisting approved snacks (down to the brand) for personal snacks, or when to start classes, or what speech and images are allowed.
- azemetre 4y ago
  No, the only way you can truly fight these issues is running for local office, getting on school boards, townships, and development boards and actually pushing for this. Just giving up and doing your own thing is a complete antithesis to democracy and modern society. You act like these institutions are set in stone when it doesn't make much force to enact local change at all. We're talking about positions of power that get decided in an election of maybe 300-600 voters.
  - zamfi 4y ago
    No, the only way you can truly fight these issues is by convincing parents not only that these issues matter, but that the conventional thinking is wrong. You won't be able to do that from a school or township board. Get on a school board, try to push for whole milk in schools, and you'll see how quickly ill-informed parents and vested interests fight back. School starts early because most adults work, and their kids can't leave home after they do. It's easy to think that each of these issues continues to be an issue because someone "doesn't care", but the reality in many cases is the much more challenging "someone cares a lot, but has the opposite opinion."
    - azemetre 4y ago
      There's always challenges for everything in life, and wanting to give up at the slightest bit of hardship is so odd. I've done zero research on this, but I have to assume societal movements have a much much shorter shelf life since the advent of modern social media. But hey it's okay, by not caring about these local institutions or political races just means people that don't agree with do care and are actively showing up and making changes.
      - zamfi 4y ago
        O...kay? No one's saying to "give up" here -- I'm just saying a local leadership post is not typically the position of influence you're implying: an elected representative who is consistently pushing an agenda that's unsupported by constituents isn't going to last very long, and is certainly not going to change many minds. Frankly you'd have better luck as an "influencer"...
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Walling yourself from societal problems generally is not a long term solution in any way, neither for you/your kids nor for society. You harm your kids in myriad other ways, while you keep pounding your chest how great parent you are. So you are not fighting anything, you just gave up. Great example for kiddos. Look at society with similar approach to even greater issues - South Africa. Everybody rich walled away from everybody else, moving around only in cars, praying not that they aren't robbed as much as not catching thieves at their houses. No personal freedom at all, a sad place.
- robocat 4y ago
  > exiting (homeschooling I imagine that there is a bimodal distribution of ability in parents because of the different reasons parents choose to homeschool. Blanket advice also captures unwise parents who nurture badly, and lack the wisdom to understand the negative parts of the compromises.
jeffbee 4y ago
Well, my kids go to a school where sunlight and nutritious food are revered ... there is a kitchen garden managed by Alice Waters and half the rooms have so much sunlight that they can't be cooled to a reasonable temperature even in the winter. But the big problem is I also live in one of those frozen-in-amber American cities that hasn't built a new building since Eisenhower. The school I mentioned was built in 1920 and has no good ventilation, and the local attitude is so opposed to modernization and replacement that there are not any prospects for having well-ventilated schools at any point in the foreseeable future. I am actually quite jealous of the schools studied in the paper with an average building age of 29 years. In my city you'd need to walk pretty far to find a building less than 30 years old. The vast majority of existing buildings in America need to be replaced in the next 50 years on efficiency grounds, and now with what we learned from the pandemic we also know that most buildings are underventilated, and we've learned a lot about noise impacts on health, too. But we are stuck with this attitude that old buildings are somehow good. I don't understand it.
abadger9 4y ago
There was a phrase in the recent Netflix show "Recruit" - everything in America tastes like sugar and everyone's struggling. Having lived in Finland, SE Asia, and Calfornia it's completely true. We mask our real issues and replace them with processed foods, drugs, and entertainment. I hope as a society we wake up to our coping mechanisms and lift up our communities, I can teach good values to my kids as my parents taught me but it'll get lost eventually.
danhon 4y ago
Oh, we have figured out that we should provide kids with nutritious food. It's also that many, or enough, people believe that not every kid deserves nutritious food, and that if they don't have it, they're to be punished for the actions or lack thereof of their parents -- even if it isn't the parents' fault.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Are we talking about the same thing here? A lot of the complaints about the stuff like the whole milk mentioned is that someone has set rules about what is nutritious and what is not, or what food is allowed for personal snacks etc. The USDA has a free lunch program for disadvantaged kids. They recently did away with the free lunch for everyone program. Even under these programs, it's debatable whether or not the food is really nutritious or even appetizing.
sssilver 4y ago
Having to wake up every morning at 0645 for my daughters school is wreaking havoc on my family’s health. We will never get used to it. It’s insanely inhuman.
- papito 4y ago
  I wake up at 4-5 in the morning to see my wife out the door. She comes home early. We still get our 8 hours of sleep because we start winding down at around 19:00 and are in bed by 20:00-21:00. I live in the U.S. so perhaps you can appreciate me using what we call "military time" ;) 6:45 sounds like a reasonable time IF you don't try to juice another extra hour at night and go to sleep around 22:00 (10PM). People very often go all they way to midnight and later to squeeze in that one more Netflix show episode, and then they feel like a drunken fly all day the next day. It's not worth it. BTW, I had to wake up to go to school at 5:45 every morning, but I did not have that sleep discipline. It's a miracle that Sony alarm clock survived without deadly injuries.

by nwah1 4y ago

culi 4y ago

I think it's just that we try to be data-driven about what we spend on. Unfortunately the first set of variables you mentioned we already have good data on and can study easily. The latter set of variables can be more complex to measure the impact of and so the science lags behind

jeff_carr 4y ago

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/11/administrators-have-seized-the-ivory-tower/ https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/11/administrators-have-...

simonsarris 4y ago

> figuring out how to provide kids with fresh air, nutritious food, sunlight, and adequate sleep Most of these are already known, which is the more frustrating thing. The 1001st paper on teenage sleep isn't going to suddenly make schools change their tune. They simply do not care. In the US it is illegal to offer whole milk in elementary school because the USDA says so because of completely insane rules from the 1980's when nutrition science was at its worst. The only way you can really fight these forces is by exiting (homeschooling, private schooling).

apocalypstyx 4y ago
As a former home-schooled child, don't do this.
- omginternets 4y ago
  Could you elaborate?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - apocalypstyx 4y ago
    Most people are not going to have the requisite knowledge of pedagogy. We think we know X, Y, Z, or we actually know X, Y, Z, but teaching that (especially to children) is a whole other ballgame. When your parents are your teachers, the disappointment quotient to your failure isn't double but a power of 2 because, whether they know it or not, their ego is on the line twice over as both teacher and parent. They tend to start telling you or others that 'you're so mature for your age', where you are expected to be adult in mentality but without the actual ability to act upon that mentality (that is, they want to reference how 'adult' you are --- because of their parenting/education style --- and by definition of being underage, you have no autonomy. So have all the expectations of being or interacting like an adult without any of the autonomy, so you end up in your 20s feeling closer to 40 --- most especially if there is a lack of socialization with children your own age, and you the vast majority of the first two decades of your life around people your parents' or grandparents' age. So when you're in college, you feel alien from everyone who is your own age.) All of this goes double if the reasons for homeschooling are religious fundamentalism, or add a disbelief in autism or ADHD into the mix. My experience is that the vast majority of people who homeschool their kids don't do so because the education system is 'failing' but because of control --- my kid isn't going to be infected by evolution, etc (and transness nowadays). This is, of course, not all homeschools, but it remains by far the majority of what I have seen in person and online. Also there is a sense of illegitimacy. When your high-school diploma is just a sheet signed by your father stuck in a folder that you have to send out when official transcripts are required, it's a constant worry of if these records are going to be accepted or not, or that this school has no XYZ ID number because there was never any such thing back then, etc. All of the educational records that would you would normally request to be transferred between institutions, you have to manage.
giantg2 4y ago
Just because we know certain things, doesn't mean we know how to apply those things to maximum benefit. Yes, starting school after 9am could be better for some kids. It could be worse for some others. Then the main issue is that the majority of adults are at work prior to 8am, making schools essentially babysitters. We'd have to change a lot about society to really make later start times work well for everyone. I haven't really seen good solutions in practice so far since the solutions are usually one size for all, or ignore the effects of socital factors. Perhaps the common issue at the center of most school complaints is that it's essentially authoritarian imposition of what someone thinks is best for the child. Whether that's low fat milk and cardboard "whole wheat", or whitelisting approved snacks (down to the brand) for personal snacks, or when to start classes, or what speech and images are allowed.
azemetre 4y ago
No, the only way you can truly fight these issues is running for local office, getting on school boards, townships, and development boards and actually pushing for this. Just giving up and doing your own thing is a complete antithesis to democracy and modern society. You act like these institutions are set in stone when it doesn't make much force to enact local change at all. We're talking about positions of power that get decided in an election of maybe 300-600 voters.
- zamfi 4y ago
  No, the only way you can truly fight these issues is by convincing parents not only that these issues matter, but that the conventional thinking is wrong. You won't be able to do that from a school or township board. Get on a school board, try to push for whole milk in schools, and you'll see how quickly ill-informed parents and vested interests fight back. School starts early because most adults work, and their kids can't leave home after they do. It's easy to think that each of these issues continues to be an issue because someone "doesn't care", but the reality in many cases is the much more challenging "someone cares a lot, but has the opposite opinion."
  - azemetre 4y ago
    There's always challenges for everything in life, and wanting to give up at the slightest bit of hardship is so odd. I've done zero research on this, but I have to assume societal movements have a much much shorter shelf life since the advent of modern social media. But hey it's okay, by not caring about these local institutions or political races just means people that don't agree with do care and are actively showing up and making changes.
    - zamfi 4y ago
      O...kay? No one's saying to "give up" here -- I'm just saying a local leadership post is not typically the position of influence you're implying: an elected representative who is consistently pushing an agenda that's unsupported by constituents isn't going to last very long, and is certainly not going to change many minds. Frankly you'd have better luck as an "influencer"...
saiya-jin 4y ago
Walling yourself from societal problems generally is not a long term solution in any way, neither for you/your kids nor for society. You harm your kids in myriad other ways, while you keep pounding your chest how great parent you are. So you are not fighting anything, you just gave up. Great example for kiddos. Look at society with similar approach to even greater issues - South Africa. Everybody rich walled away from everybody else, moving around only in cars, praying not that they aren't robbed as much as not catching thieves at their houses. No personal freedom at all, a sad place.
robocat 4y ago
> exiting (homeschooling I imagine that there is a bimodal distribution of ability in parents because of the different reasons parents choose to homeschool. Blanket advice also captures unwise parents who nurture badly, and lack the wisdom to understand the negative parts of the compromises.

jeffbee 4y ago

Well, my kids go to a school where sunlight and nutritious food are revered ... there is a kitchen garden managed by Alice Waters and half the rooms have so much sunlight that they can't be cooled to a reasonable temperature even in the winter. But the big problem is I also live in one of those frozen-in-amber American cities that hasn't built a new building since Eisenhower. The school I mentioned was built in 1920 and has no good ventilation, and the local attitude is so opposed to modernization and replacement that there are not any prospects for having well-ventilated schools at any point in the foreseeable future. I am actually quite jealous of the schools studied in the paper with an average building age of 29 years. In my city you'd need to walk pretty far to find a building less than 30 years old. The vast majority of existing buildings in America need to be replaced in the next 50 years on efficiency grounds, and now with what we learned from the pandemic we also know that most buildings are underventilated, and we've learned a lot about noise impacts on health, too. But we are stuck with this attitude that old buildings are somehow good. I don't understand it.

abadger9 4y ago

There was a phrase in the recent Netflix show "Recruit" - everything in America tastes like sugar and everyone's struggling. Having lived in Finland, SE Asia, and Calfornia it's completely true. We mask our real issues and replace them with processed foods, drugs, and entertainment. I hope as a society we wake up to our coping mechanisms and lift up our communities, I can teach good values to my kids as my parents taught me but it'll get lost eventually.

danhon 4y ago

Oh, we have figured out that we should provide kids with nutritious food. It's also that many, or enough, people believe that not every kid deserves nutritious food, and that if they don't have it, they're to be punished for the actions or lack thereof of their parents -- even if it isn't the parents' fault.

giantg2 4y ago
Are we talking about the same thing here? A lot of the complaints about the stuff like the whole milk mentioned is that someone has set rules about what is nutritious and what is not, or what food is allowed for personal snacks etc. The USDA has a free lunch program for disadvantaged kids. They recently did away with the free lunch for everyone program. Even under these programs, it's debatable whether or not the food is really nutritious or even appetizing.

sssilver 4y ago

Having to wake up every morning at 0645 for my daughters school is wreaking havoc on my family’s health. We will never get used to it. It’s insanely inhuman.

papito 4y ago
I wake up at 4-5 in the morning to see my wife out the door. She comes home early. We still get our 8 hours of sleep because we start winding down at around 19:00 and are in bed by 20:00-21:00. I live in the U.S. so perhaps you can appreciate me using what we call "military time" ;) 6:45 sounds like a reasonable time IF you don't try to juice another extra hour at night and go to sleep around 22:00 (10PM). People very often go all they way to midnight and later to squeeze in that one more Netflix show episode, and then they feel like a drunken fly all day the next day. It's not worth it. BTW, I had to wake up to go to school at 5:45 every morning, but I did not have that sleep discipline. It's a miracle that Sony alarm clock survived without deadly injuries.