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The customers are captive (pay or sheriff with guns show up to toss your ass out), the employer is spending OPM (largely funded to administration or special int

by ty6853 2y ago

The customers are captive (pay or sheriff with guns show up to toss your ass out), the employer is spending OPM (largely funded to administration or special interest segments or overhead), and the student consuming has essentially no say since his parents have no money left to choose somewhere else after paying already for the public school. What could possibly go wrong where the only person with any real choice is an administrator who doesn't bear the cost or benefit of his own actions? The incentives could hardly be more misaligned.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Precisely. I moved around quite a bit as a kid, so I got a more wholistic picture of the public education system than most. I’m not sure I met a single teacher that wasn’t overworked. In the richer areas teachers typically wanted to teach; in the poorer areas even that often wasn’t true (An issue of filtering and work environment, not a personal failing thing). I once had a history teacher who only showed movies for the entire year I had her. With us placated, she’d go lounge in the corner. But even the teachers who gave a damn couldn’t do much with the absurd ratios; it was impressive they even managed to keep kids in their seats and fights from breaking out. Any time the instinct to further police kids in schools arises, I get defensive. I know what that environment is like for the kids in it, and anyone would look for an escape while trapped in there. Schools right now function as weird little child prisons, somewhere to put kids while their parents (those who aren’t rich enough to do otherwise) go to work. If the schools aren’t gonna get any better (certainly not under this administration), then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available?
- jmye 2y ago
  > then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available? If the kids won’t learn anyways, we might as well give them their dopamine and depression machines so they can really double down on not learning? Calling schools prisons? Sorry, this is ridiculous. Learning isn’t always fun and it’s unfortunate that, as a child, you were asked to do things that weren’t 100% the most fun thing you could be doing at any given time, but it turns out playing video games all day has no value. It turns out, simply being a student with some anecdata gives one no insight into actual teaching. This just reads as angsty teenage frustration.
  - floren 2y ago
    > This just reads as angsty teenage frustration. And it's a hacker news standby. Any discussion of schools will have at least one commenter calling them prisons.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      I regret this because it makes for such an easy attack. Not an entirely unjustified comparison though.
      - jmye 2y ago
        It is entirely unjustified. Schools are nothing like prison.
        BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
        This is sometimes too dramatic but does alright: https://www.historytools.org/school/why-do-schools-look-like-prisons-an-expert-analysis-on-a-troubling-trend https://www.historytools.org/school/why-do-schools-look-like... >During the 19th century Industrial Revolution, reformers explicitly modeled public schools after factories to habituate youth to regimented workplace environments. >Cell-like classrooms with regimented rows of desks >Rigid schedules and rules to control movement >Obedience to authority figures >Conformity and standardization >In the 20th century, disciplinary issues led architects to also incorporate prison elements >Enclosing perimeter fences up to 10 feet high >Locked or monitored gates limiting entrance/exit >Surveillance cameras blanketing hallways and grounds >Metal detectors >Mesh covered windows preventing exit attempts >Sparse and durable interior materials resistant to damage >Currently over 17% of schools possess 10 or more of these. Their prevalence continues rising yearly. The article goes on but this should hopefully be illustrative of my point.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      What is it about primary and secondary educate discussions that always bring out the doomers on HN? And, for most people, their sample size is very, very small, but they paint generalisations with a wide brush.
- dns_snek 2y ago
  > then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available? Firstly, I use TikTok myself so this isn't coming from a place of "old man yells at clouds", but why does it have to be smartphones and addictive algorithms? There's a practically unlimited number of ways to cope, they can daydream about their interests, draw and sketch things, read, interact with others, at least that's what we used to do, but just about anything that doesn't involve algorithmic content is practically harmless in comparison. When overused, streams of dopamine such as TikTok can completely drain your desire to do anything creative, productive, to learn things, to experiment, to be curious, to do anything that delivers less than immediate, consistent reward (even video games can be low-reward in comparison). I've been on both sides of this. I've gone years without engaging with these algorithms at all while harnessing my creative energy, and I've gotten stuck in the depths of these algorithms for weeks at a time. It's questionable whether they're going to be able to get out of it, much like kids who start doing drugs in their tween years. It may be a coping mechanism, but in kids and teenagers it's probably about as healthy as daily cannabis consumption.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and I more or less completely agree with you about the harms. Regarding your weed comparison, I knew kids in middle school smoking tons of pot to get through the day; no doubt they were messing themselves up for life (at least a bit) with that habit. I hope social media isn’t quite so harmful, but I bet it’s not a ton better. The weed example is a good comparison though. I view kids smoking lots of weed as a failure of a system. Knowing some of them, we’re usually talking about shitty family situations on top of a shitty school they’re made to attend for a solid amount of their waking life. The school should take their pot, of course it should, but it’s a marker far down a road that shouldn’t have been started along to begin with. There’s an enormously complicated set of social reasons that those kids’ schools, and their families, are messed up, but it’s as though there’s no will to tackle these issues. It’s much easier to attack the simple things you can see, the smoking and the phone use, with bandaid solutions that ignore the underlying causes. I almost see it as a distraction from really fixing anything. That’s where my frustration comes from, I really have no problem with the banning of the phones itself.
  - 2y ago

by ty6853 2y ago

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

Precisely. I moved around quite a bit as a kid, so I got a more wholistic picture of the public education system than most. I’m not sure I met a single teacher that wasn’t overworked. In the richer areas teachers typically wanted to teach; in the poorer areas even that often wasn’t true (An issue of filtering and work environment, not a personal failing thing). I once had a history teacher who only showed movies for the entire year I had her. With us placated, she’d go lounge in the corner. But even the teachers who gave a damn couldn’t do much with the absurd ratios; it was impressive they even managed to keep kids in their seats and fights from breaking out. Any time the instinct to further police kids in schools arises, I get defensive. I know what that environment is like for the kids in it, and anyone would look for an escape while trapped in there. Schools right now function as weird little child prisons, somewhere to put kids while their parents (those who aren’t rich enough to do otherwise) go to work. If the schools aren’t gonna get any better (certainly not under this administration), then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available?

jmye 2y ago
> then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available? If the kids won’t learn anyways, we might as well give them their dopamine and depression machines so they can really double down on not learning? Calling schools prisons? Sorry, this is ridiculous. Learning isn’t always fun and it’s unfortunate that, as a child, you were asked to do things that weren’t 100% the most fun thing you could be doing at any given time, but it turns out playing video games all day has no value. It turns out, simply being a student with some anecdata gives one no insight into actual teaching. This just reads as angsty teenage frustration.
- floren 2y ago
  > This just reads as angsty teenage frustration. And it's a hacker news standby. Any discussion of schools will have at least one commenter calling them prisons.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    I regret this because it makes for such an easy attack. Not an entirely unjustified comparison though.
    - jmye 2y ago
      It is entirely unjustified. Schools are nothing like prison.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
        This is sometimes too dramatic but does alright: https://www.historytools.org/school/why-do-schools-look-like-prisons-an-expert-analysis-on-a-troubling-trend https://www.historytools.org/school/why-do-schools-look-like... >During the 19th century Industrial Revolution, reformers explicitly modeled public schools after factories to habituate youth to regimented workplace environments. >Cell-like classrooms with regimented rows of desks >Rigid schedules and rules to control movement >Obedience to authority figures >Conformity and standardization >In the 20th century, disciplinary issues led architects to also incorporate prison elements >Enclosing perimeter fences up to 10 feet high >Locked or monitored gates limiting entrance/exit >Surveillance cameras blanketing hallways and grounds >Metal detectors >Mesh covered windows preventing exit attempts >Sparse and durable interior materials resistant to damage >Currently over 17% of schools possess 10 or more of these. Their prevalence continues rising yearly. The article goes on but this should hopefully be illustrative of my point.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    What is it about primary and secondary educate discussions that always bring out the doomers on HN? And, for most people, their sample size is very, very small, but they paint generalisations with a wide brush.
dns_snek 2y ago
> then why bother taking away the coping mechanisms people have available? Firstly, I use TikTok myself so this isn't coming from a place of "old man yells at clouds", but why does it have to be smartphones and addictive algorithms? There's a practically unlimited number of ways to cope, they can daydream about their interests, draw and sketch things, read, interact with others, at least that's what we used to do, but just about anything that doesn't involve algorithmic content is practically harmless in comparison. When overused, streams of dopamine such as TikTok can completely drain your desire to do anything creative, productive, to learn things, to experiment, to be curious, to do anything that delivers less than immediate, consistent reward (even video games can be low-reward in comparison). I've been on both sides of this. I've gone years without engaging with these algorithms at all while harnessing my creative energy, and I've gotten stuck in the depths of these algorithms for weeks at a time. It's questionable whether they're going to be able to get out of it, much like kids who start doing drugs in their tween years. It may be a coping mechanism, but in kids and teenagers it's probably about as healthy as daily cannabis consumption.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and I more or less completely agree with you about the harms. Regarding your weed comparison, I knew kids in middle school smoking tons of pot to get through the day; no doubt they were messing themselves up for life (at least a bit) with that habit. I hope social media isn’t quite so harmful, but I bet it’s not a ton better. The weed example is a good comparison though. I view kids smoking lots of weed as a failure of a system. Knowing some of them, we’re usually talking about shitty family situations on top of a shitty school they’re made to attend for a solid amount of their waking life. The school should take their pot, of course it should, but it’s a marker far down a road that shouldn’t have been started along to begin with. There’s an enormously complicated set of social reasons that those kids’ schools, and their families, are messed up, but it’s as though there’s no will to tackle these issues. It’s much easier to attack the simple things you can see, the smoking and the phone use, with bandaid solutions that ignore the underlying causes. I almost see it as a distraction from really fixing anything. That’s where my frustration comes from, I really have no problem with the banning of the phones itself.
- 2y ago