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You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative gu

You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative guilt: Why don’t kids who have a terrible home life, but are studying diligently to better themselves and improve their lives equally deserve our help?

civilized 3y ago
Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".
busterarm 3y ago
Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. Too many people are in their own bubble about how the world works. For this same reason I've always hated (since a kid) the way anti-drug education has been presented to children. It's not taken seriously and doesn't present the reality of how prevalent drug (even prescription) use is among adults in society. It doesn't treat prescription drug use, alcohol, nicotine or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever and doesn't prepare children for the reality of having to deal with people who are on drugs.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  All you’re teaching is that adults lack empathy towards them: Adults are intentionally victimizing the majority of students to cater to their own shallow virtue signaling.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Everyone votes too. The government lacks empathy towards me by forcing me to have an equal vote with morons and criminals. There are scenarios in life where we're all in this together and excising people for their inconvenience isn't what's best for society. You don't just cast off disabled people into the void, for example. Unless you have a solution for where to put these problem public school kids that isn't juvenile detention, I don't want to hear it.
    - vacuity 3y ago
      I hear you. It's no good for chronically disruptive kids to be in juvie all the time, but it's also no good for them to remain in classrooms. Any amount of pay won't salve the sheer stress of attempting to teach those who won't learn. It would be great if someone could just snap their fingers and give those kids stable homes or something. Unfortunately, I suspect the solution requires efforts on multiple fronts (ample food, housing, social support, etc.) and will be expensive, difficult, and slow.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        The callousness of the HN commentariat towards those who "don't behave according to the rules" is off the charts these days. We're talking about children here. They don't know how to behave like adults yet. Cutting them out of society where they fail to meet expectations is cruelty.
        civilized 3y ago
        It seems to me that you recognize one kind of cruelty but not another, forcing innocent bystanders to have their education heavily disrupted.
        busterarm 3y ago
        No, it's just that "disruptive" is a pretty broad and subjective spectrum of behavior and a lot of kids get a raw deal from school administrators for really harmless shit. See zero-tolerance policies. Everyone in this thread is using broad weasel language with a blanket response of "expulsion" when really that should be reserved for heinous offenses.
        vacuity 3y ago
        By "weasel language", you make it seem as if we're intentionally lumping in kids who aren't really problematic and being sneaky about it. We could all stand to be more nuanced, and there may be some people here who are just that harsh, but I think you're reading too much into our intentions. I doubt most of us support zero-tolerance policies (if informed about it). Frankly, I think administrators have to be willfully perverse to actually enforce such policies.
- civilized 3y ago
  Where does this end? Are people with a pattern of disruptive, dysfunctional behavior allowed to be present in your workplace? Is this something you would see as desirable to experience, for the same reasons you've given that children should experience it?
  - busterarm 3y ago
    > Are people with a pattern of disruptive, dysfunctional behavior allowed to be present in your workplace? Yes, actually. The standard to fire people is high and HR wants these people constructively managed out rather than fired. This is incredibly common in large corporations. Had a bad hire once that abused an entire engineering department for 2 years while they had no responsibilities and did no work until they were finally bored enough to quit.
    - civilized 3y ago
      What about the second question? Is it desirable to tolerate abusive employees? Should managers who do something about it be considered problematic because they're shielding people from the real-life learning experience of being bullied? These are not gotcha questions. I'm honestly trying to understand your worldview here.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        It's not desirable, no, but there are other employers to go work for. If you get expelled _by a public school system_ you may not have another option. My worldview is that all kids have the right to an education, regardless of how "manageable" adults interpret their behavior. "Disruptive children" are more often a failure of the adult to meet the needs of the child. Also they're children. They haven't learned how to behave like adults yet. Expecting them to do so is cruel.
        civilized 3y ago
        But you've defined education as learning how things are out there in the real world, including bullying which prevents children from getting what people traditionally called education. What if most people don't want this type of education? Are they wrong? Do you have the moral authority to force it on them?
- Simulacra 3y ago
  Nah, looking back on it, there was no learning about dysfunctional lives, it was just absolutely misery. Emotional and physical bullying, fear, intimidation, and misery. If a child is disruptive to other students and impinging on their opportunity to learn they should be removed from the classroom. It's not the school's job to teach discipline. Removing them from the class puts the burden on the parents and the administration, instead of the kids.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    School isn't really just there to teach you facts, it's to prepare you for life as an adult. You are going to deal with bullies your whole life and you'd better be well prepared for it before you're out on your own as an adult.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      > You are going to deal with bullies your whole life Never dealt with them again once I left high school. Not even any close calls. That shit's like living in a war zone. No one sends their kids to a war zone so they can "learn to survive". No good lessons exist in a war zone, not even in between people stepping on landmines or getting pulverized by airstrikes. All that exists in such a place is a bunch of trauma, and yes, debilitating/mutilative injuries, for those that somehow manage to get sneak back out of them. Bullying is like this too, though obviously to a lesser degree. I strongly suspect that most people get their ideas about what bullying is from the same half-dozen made-for-tv movies and other narrative fragments thereof on the subject.
      - Simulacra 3y ago
        Cannot echo this enough. Not once in the 20 years since high school have I had to deal with with the same kind of bullies, intimidation, and violence. School was like a prison and going each day, steeling myself to deal with misbehaving kids, apathetic teachers, and an administration that thought ignoring the problem, social promoting, and punishing anyone who fights back was the best strategy. It's not just the constant picking and poking that bullies do, it's the way they make the entire school environment like a prison yard. You never know when someone is going to do something to you, or how a teacher (guard) would react. Teachers exacerbating the problem because, while powerless, they mostly threw up their hands because they were not allowed to send the student out of the class. Public school in America is, in a word, prison.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  > Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. They should learn by being subjected to the effects of their dysfunction? I honestly don't grasp this strategy. It's like saying that we should learn that some people are psychopaths by going to live with them..
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. You say children should learn this, and then you say that this is because they will have some new capacity for empathy they wouldn't otherwise have. I see no reason to believe this proposition is true. What if instead, when they learn this, it just makes them more vulnerable to various kinds of dysfunction themselves? What if, even if learning about this is a good thing, it's only a good thing when they're well on their way to adulthood? You have no real evidence of cause and effect here. Just a lazy asumption. "But when I learned of this, I immediately had intense feelings of empathy!" doesn't mean much because you're not even a single data point, but an anecdote. Self-reported. And not a young child. > or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever This is coming from someone who would legalize heroin, cocaine, and meth and sell it from liquor stores: no one ever sucked cock in the alley behind the pawn shop for a hit of caffeine. It's not in the same category.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    You say children should learn this, and then you say that this is because they will have some new capacity for empathy they wouldn't otherwise have. Public education is like Lord of the Flies. There is no room for empathy, only survival.
afavour 3y ago
I literally said “I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too” but I feel like you have a point you want to make irrespective of anything I’m saying so go on.
- civilized 3y ago
  And I agree with you. It's right to recognize that there are no good options here. In such situations, it's important to consider the bad effects and victims on both sides, not fixate on one as the only morally correct one to consider.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
This is life though, that spillover doesn't disappear when you're an adult. You will always be subject to someone else's dysfunctional life unless you isolate yourself from society completely. We need to have structures that can address this behavior in a way that fosters societal integration. This "spillover" might not be a problem given proper staffing... but a 1:25 ratio is never enough to handle problems and never will be.

civilized 3y ago

Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".

busterarm 3y ago

Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. Too many people are in their own bubble about how the world works. For this same reason I've always hated (since a kid) the way anti-drug education has been presented to children. It's not taken seriously and doesn't present the reality of how prevalent drug (even prescription) use is among adults in society. It doesn't treat prescription drug use, alcohol, nicotine or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever and doesn't prepare children for the reality of having to deal with people who are on drugs.

zmgsabst 3y ago
All you’re teaching is that adults lack empathy towards them: Adults are intentionally victimizing the majority of students to cater to their own shallow virtue signaling.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Everyone votes too. The government lacks empathy towards me by forcing me to have an equal vote with morons and criminals. There are scenarios in life where we're all in this together and excising people for their inconvenience isn't what's best for society. You don't just cast off disabled people into the void, for example. Unless you have a solution for where to put these problem public school kids that isn't juvenile detention, I don't want to hear it.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    I hear you. It's no good for chronically disruptive kids to be in juvie all the time, but it's also no good for them to remain in classrooms. Any amount of pay won't salve the sheer stress of attempting to teach those who won't learn. It would be great if someone could just snap their fingers and give those kids stable homes or something. Unfortunately, I suspect the solution requires efforts on multiple fronts (ample food, housing, social support, etc.) and will be expensive, difficult, and slow.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      The callousness of the HN commentariat towards those who "don't behave according to the rules" is off the charts these days. We're talking about children here. They don't know how to behave like adults yet. Cutting them out of society where they fail to meet expectations is cruelty.
      - civilized 3y ago
        It seems to me that you recognize one kind of cruelty but not another, forcing innocent bystanders to have their education heavily disrupted.
        busterarm 3y ago
        No, it's just that "disruptive" is a pretty broad and subjective spectrum of behavior and a lot of kids get a raw deal from school administrators for really harmless shit. See zero-tolerance policies. Everyone in this thread is using broad weasel language with a blanket response of "expulsion" when really that should be reserved for heinous offenses.
        vacuity 3y ago
        By "weasel language", you make it seem as if we're intentionally lumping in kids who aren't really problematic and being sneaky about it. We could all stand to be more nuanced, and there may be some people here who are just that harsh, but I think you're reading too much into our intentions. I doubt most of us support zero-tolerance policies (if informed about it). Frankly, I think administrators have to be willfully perverse to actually enforce such policies.
civilized 3y ago
Where does this end? Are people with a pattern of disruptive, dysfunctional behavior allowed to be present in your workplace? Is this something you would see as desirable to experience, for the same reasons you've given that children should experience it?
- busterarm 3y ago
  > Are people with a pattern of disruptive, dysfunctional behavior allowed to be present in your workplace? Yes, actually. The standard to fire people is high and HR wants these people constructively managed out rather than fired. This is incredibly common in large corporations. Had a bad hire once that abused an entire engineering department for 2 years while they had no responsibilities and did no work until they were finally bored enough to quit.
  - civilized 3y ago
    What about the second question? Is it desirable to tolerate abusive employees? Should managers who do something about it be considered problematic because they're shielding people from the real-life learning experience of being bullied? These are not gotcha questions. I'm honestly trying to understand your worldview here.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      It's not desirable, no, but there are other employers to go work for. If you get expelled _by a public school system_ you may not have another option. My worldview is that all kids have the right to an education, regardless of how "manageable" adults interpret their behavior. "Disruptive children" are more often a failure of the adult to meet the needs of the child. Also they're children. They haven't learned how to behave like adults yet. Expecting them to do so is cruel.
      - civilized 3y ago
        But you've defined education as learning how things are out there in the real world, including bullying which prevents children from getting what people traditionally called education. What if most people don't want this type of education? Are they wrong? Do you have the moral authority to force it on them?
Simulacra 3y ago
Nah, looking back on it, there was no learning about dysfunctional lives, it was just absolutely misery. Emotional and physical bullying, fear, intimidation, and misery. If a child is disruptive to other students and impinging on their opportunity to learn they should be removed from the classroom. It's not the school's job to teach discipline. Removing them from the class puts the burden on the parents and the administration, instead of the kids.
- busterarm 3y ago
  School isn't really just there to teach you facts, it's to prepare you for life as an adult. You are going to deal with bullies your whole life and you'd better be well prepared for it before you're out on your own as an adult.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > You are going to deal with bullies your whole life Never dealt with them again once I left high school. Not even any close calls. That shit's like living in a war zone. No one sends their kids to a war zone so they can "learn to survive". No good lessons exist in a war zone, not even in between people stepping on landmines or getting pulverized by airstrikes. All that exists in such a place is a bunch of trauma, and yes, debilitating/mutilative injuries, for those that somehow manage to get sneak back out of them. Bullying is like this too, though obviously to a lesser degree. I strongly suspect that most people get their ideas about what bullying is from the same half-dozen made-for-tv movies and other narrative fragments thereof on the subject.
    - Simulacra 3y ago
      Cannot echo this enough. Not once in the 20 years since high school have I had to deal with with the same kind of bullies, intimidation, and violence. School was like a prison and going each day, steeling myself to deal with misbehaving kids, apathetic teachers, and an administration that thought ignoring the problem, social promoting, and punishing anyone who fights back was the best strategy. It's not just the constant picking and poking that bullies do, it's the way they make the entire school environment like a prison yard. You never know when someone is going to do something to you, or how a teacher (guard) would react. Teachers exacerbating the problem because, while powerless, they mostly threw up their hands because they were not allowed to send the student out of the class. Public school in America is, in a word, prison.
boeingUH60 3y ago
> Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. They should learn by being subjected to the effects of their dysfunction? I honestly don't grasp this strategy. It's like saying that we should learn that some people are psychopaths by going to live with them..
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> Kids should learn that other people have dysfunctional lives early so that they grow up with the capability of empathy towards others. You say children should learn this, and then you say that this is because they will have some new capacity for empathy they wouldn't otherwise have. I see no reason to believe this proposition is true. What if instead, when they learn this, it just makes them more vulnerable to various kinds of dysfunction themselves? What if, even if learning about this is a good thing, it's only a good thing when they're well on their way to adulthood? You have no real evidence of cause and effect here. Just a lazy asumption. "But when I learned of this, I immediately had intense feelings of empathy!" doesn't mean much because you're not even a single data point, but an anecdote. Self-reported. And not a young child. > or caffeine abuse with any weight whatsoever This is coming from someone who would legalize heroin, cocaine, and meth and sell it from liquor stores: no one ever sucked cock in the alley behind the pawn shop for a hit of caffeine. It's not in the same category.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  You say children should learn this, and then you say that this is because they will have some new capacity for empathy they wouldn't otherwise have. Public education is like Lord of the Flies. There is no room for empathy, only survival.

afavour 3y ago

I literally said “I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too” but I feel like you have a point you want to make irrespective of anything I’m saying so go on.

civilized 3y ago
And I agree with you. It's right to recognize that there are no good options here. In such situations, it's important to consider the bad effects and victims on both sides, not fixate on one as the only morally correct one to consider.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

This is life though, that spillover doesn't disappear when you're an adult. You will always be subject to someone else's dysfunctional life unless you isolate yourself from society completely. We need to have structures that can address this behavior in a way that fosters societal integration. This "spillover" might not be a problem given proper staffing... but a 1:25 ratio is never enough to handle problems and never will be.