4 ms·

>The primary function of state funded K-12 is childcare to enable two parents to work. That's the PRIMARY function, eh?

by macspoofing 3y ago

panzagl 3y ago
Its not the stated function, but does appear to be the primary function.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I think that is a cynical and incorrect take. If babysitting was the primary function, there are much cheaper and easier ways to achieve it. Given that the vast majority of cost and effort is spent on the educational aspect, I would argue that is indeed the primary function. Additionally, if you look to history, schooling originated long before the need for babysitting.
  - whythre 3y ago
    Baby-sitting has always existed as a need; in the past it may have been done by various family members, but the modern ‘daycare’ model has its roots in the Industrial Revolution: as long as there have been machines for both parents to work, there has been someone offering to watch their kids for Money. Industrializing England had ‘baby mills’ where working class mothers could leave their kids (often in appalling conditions). The initial argument for public education was civics- if you want a nation of competent and driven citizens, they need to be armed with a good, comprehensive education. A lot changed in the Post-War era. Women entered the workforce, and the role of the public school has mutated to the point that many families depend upon it as the primary caregiver for non infant children (hence the complaints when the school week gets shortened from 5 days to 4). Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      >Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there. Indeed, I am making a cost based case to define the ordering of goals. Education, or even the wasteful pretext of education, is the primary driver of cost. Therefore, it is clearly the focus of our spending. Education is also the primary driver of the structure and form of our schools. If the primary goal was just daycare, they would look very different. California, for example, spent ~$24k/student in 2023. For that cost, you could pay for a home babysitter.
      - panzagl 3y ago
        For that cost you could get a highly qualified elementary school teacher for every 3-4 kids. But instead you get 1 per 25-30. Schools would be structured very differently if the primary focus was education.
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Those are real costs. If it isn't babysitting and isn't education, then what is it?
        whythre 3y ago
        In the majority of cases it’s a shitty ineffective compromise that does neither well.
andrewvc 3y ago
Whether we want that to be true or not it is. If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  We actually have strong, immediate evidence of this as a result of COVID, where a prominent issue that even parents working from home encountered was a sudden new need to find stable work-life balance in an environment where the two had been ram-rodded together, happening in the same room. For a lot of parents, it was a disaster.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ysavir 3y ago
  True, but the purpose of schools isn't the immediate problems/outcomes. It's the long term outcomes of having an educated society. We could argue about whether the schooling system is sufficiently meeting those long term goals, but that doesn't mean they take a back seat to the immediate consequences of school closures.
- gretch 3y ago
  > If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids. If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding. That doesn't mean that the primary purpose of your life is a pipe-fixer. I think you made the classic mistake of confusing urgency with importance.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > pipes in your house burst right now > primary purpose of your life In this thread, we're not talking about the primary purpose of one's life, we're talking about the primary purpose of school as it relates to parents. In that way, the pipes are analogous to the school and, as you said: > If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding. Just like > If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids. Specifically because the schools are as important to watching kids as pipes are to moving and containing water.
shadowgovt 3y ago
There is an old Paul Graham essay to that effect (https://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html https://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html). It's a pretty good essay (though I think there's plenty of room to argue the finer points). The tl;dr of how it applies is tht industrialization mandates finding something for young people to do (that isn't working) in a way that previous eras did not. In the era of, say, sail, you could be a 14-year-old sailor. A 14-year-old in a factory was decided (over years and lessons paid in blood) to be not only counter-productive, but dangerous for the 14-year-old. We outlawed it. But that does cause the demographic problem: you can't have these young folks roaming free getting into trouble, so what do you do with them? The hypothesis that forms is high school is less about education and more about containment (making sure, essentially, that we babysit / warehouse our young adults until they ripen enough to be productive industrial-society members).
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > you can't have these young folks roaming free getting into trouble Why should that be self-evident? What is wrong with kids 'roaming free'?
khazhoux 3y ago
Well, that and brainwashing young minds into bowing down to the almighty dollar so they can subjugate themselves to The Man and become another grazing sheep, meat for the grinder of the Capitalism Uber Alles machine and the military-enslaverist complex! I might be wrong though. I haven’t completed my Cynicism 101 course yet.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  be a good little cog-in-training and sit your child butt in that seat for 8 hours-- DON'T!! TALK!!! (you're never gonna finish Cynicism 101 if you don't get your act together!)
  - khazhoux 3y ago
    Joking aside, though, Cynicism 101 would be an awesome class to take.
bhpm 3y ago
Imagine for a moment you are on half of the earners in a median-income household. You make $37,290 a year (the median household income in the US is $74,580). You have two kids: 7 and 10. The school they go to announced that, due to constant feedback from parents about the curricula and teacher performance, all education will need to be supervised by one of the child's primary guardians. This means that from 7:30-3:10, Monday-Friday, either you or your spouse must sit in an observation room and monitor your children through specially installed video surveillance. You are not allowed to work during this time. Your earnings will be $0. There's an alternative, though. Instead of monitoring your child for the entire school day, the school will put your child in a room with all the other children of parents too busy to monitor them. They'll be given an iPad, Wi-Fi, access to a bathroom, and a reasonably nutritious meal. They will receive no formal education, but the staff will make sure they don't hurt themselves or anyone else. This will enable you to go to work. Your earnings will be $37,290 a year. These are your only two options. The state requires you to choose one of them, or you'll go to jail. Also, if you choose the second option, your taxes won't go up next year. Which would you choose? Which would people in your demographic choose?

>The primary function of state funded K-12 is childcare to enable two parents to work. That's the PRIMARY function, eh?

panzagl 3y ago

Its not the stated function, but does appear to be the primary function.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
I think that is a cynical and incorrect take. If babysitting was the primary function, there are much cheaper and easier ways to achieve it. Given that the vast majority of cost and effort is spent on the educational aspect, I would argue that is indeed the primary function. Additionally, if you look to history, schooling originated long before the need for babysitting.
- whythre 3y ago
  Baby-sitting has always existed as a need; in the past it may have been done by various family members, but the modern ‘daycare’ model has its roots in the Industrial Revolution: as long as there have been machines for both parents to work, there has been someone offering to watch their kids for Money. Industrializing England had ‘baby mills’ where working class mothers could leave their kids (often in appalling conditions). The initial argument for public education was civics- if you want a nation of competent and driven citizens, they need to be armed with a good, comprehensive education. A lot changed in the Post-War era. Women entered the workforce, and the role of the public school has mutated to the point that many families depend upon it as the primary caregiver for non infant children (hence the complaints when the school week gets shortened from 5 days to 4). Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    >Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there. Indeed, I am making a cost based case to define the ordering of goals. Education, or even the wasteful pretext of education, is the primary driver of cost. Therefore, it is clearly the focus of our spending. Education is also the primary driver of the structure and form of our schools. If the primary goal was just daycare, they would look very different. California, for example, spent ~$24k/student in 2023. For that cost, you could pay for a home babysitter.
    - panzagl 3y ago
      For that cost you could get a highly qualified elementary school teacher for every 3-4 kids. But instead you get 1 per 25-30. Schools would be structured very differently if the primary focus was education.
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Those are real costs. If it isn't babysitting and isn't education, then what is it?
        whythre 3y ago
        In the majority of cases it’s a shitty ineffective compromise that does neither well.

andrewvc 3y ago

Whether we want that to be true or not it is. If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.

shadowgovt 3y ago
We actually have strong, immediate evidence of this as a result of COVID, where a prominent issue that even parents working from home encountered was a sudden new need to find stable work-life balance in an environment where the two had been ram-rodded together, happening in the same room. For a lot of parents, it was a disaster.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ysavir 3y ago
True, but the purpose of schools isn't the immediate problems/outcomes. It's the long term outcomes of having an educated society. We could argue about whether the schooling system is sufficiently meeting those long term goals, but that doesn't mean they take a back seat to the immediate consequences of school closures.
gretch 3y ago
> If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids. If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding. That doesn't mean that the primary purpose of your life is a pipe-fixer. I think you made the classic mistake of confusing urgency with importance.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > pipes in your house burst right now > primary purpose of your life In this thread, we're not talking about the primary purpose of one's life, we're talking about the primary purpose of school as it relates to parents. In that way, the pipes are analogous to the school and, as you said: > If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding. Just like > If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids. Specifically because the schools are as important to watching kids as pipes are to moving and containing water.

shadowgovt 3y ago

There is an old Paul Graham essay to that effect (https://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html https://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html). It's a pretty good essay (though I think there's plenty of room to argue the finer points). The tl;dr of how it applies is tht industrialization mandates finding something for young people to do (that isn't working) in a way that previous eras did not. In the era of, say, sail, you could be a 14-year-old sailor. A 14-year-old in a factory was decided (over years and lessons paid in blood) to be not only counter-productive, but dangerous for the 14-year-old. We outlawed it. But that does cause the demographic problem: you can't have these young folks roaming free getting into trouble, so what do you do with them? The hypothesis that forms is high school is less about education and more about containment (making sure, essentially, that we babysit / warehouse our young adults until they ripen enough to be productive industrial-society members).

Eisenstein 3y ago
> you can't have these young folks roaming free getting into trouble Why should that be self-evident? What is wrong with kids 'roaming free'?

khazhoux 3y ago

Well, that and brainwashing young minds into bowing down to the almighty dollar so they can subjugate themselves to The Man and become another grazing sheep, meat for the grinder of the Capitalism Uber Alles machine and the military-enslaverist complex! I might be wrong though. I haven’t completed my Cynicism 101 course yet.

soupfordummies 3y ago
be a good little cog-in-training and sit your child butt in that seat for 8 hours-- DON'T!! TALK!!! (you're never gonna finish Cynicism 101 if you don't get your act together!)
- khazhoux 3y ago
  Joking aside, though, Cynicism 101 would be an awesome class to take.

bhpm 3y ago

Imagine for a moment you are on half of the earners in a median-income household. You make $37,290 a year (the median household income in the US is $74,580). You have two kids: 7 and 10. The school they go to announced that, due to constant feedback from parents about the curricula and teacher performance, all education will need to be supervised by one of the child's primary guardians. This means that from 7:30-3:10, Monday-Friday, either you or your spouse must sit in an observation room and monitor your children through specially installed video surveillance. You are not allowed to work during this time. Your earnings will be $0. There's an alternative, though. Instead of monitoring your child for the entire school day, the school will put your child in a room with all the other children of parents too busy to monitor them. They'll be given an iPad, Wi-Fi, access to a bathroom, and a reasonably nutritious meal. They will receive no formal education, but the staff will make sure they don't hurt themselves or anyone else. This will enable you to go to work. Your earnings will be $37,290 a year. These are your only two options. The state requires you to choose one of them, or you'll go to jail. Also, if you choose the second option, your taxes won't go up next year. Which would you choose? Which would people in your demographic choose?