6 ms·

It's worse than this. I have kids in school. Our school system is one of the top in Connecticut, which is the quintessential "school" state (if any rich kid on

• s5300 4mo ago
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• an0malous 4mo ago
  Devil’s advocate: what’s the point? Is it important to have reading and writing skills if everything can be transcribed through AI? Or maybe it’s not directly important, but the ability to hold your attention on something for 30-60 minutes is? Is reading the best medium for education, or something more like Kahn Academy videos? I also wonder how the Montessori schools are doing, since I believe they focus less on rote skill acquisition and more on creativity.
  • larrik 4mo ago
    The point is that "doing hard things" is required to be a successful adult. Meanwhile, the bar for what constitutes a "hard thing" is dropping fast.
    • an0malous 4mo ago
      I mean it’s obviously not just that otherwise we’d make every kid play the original Donkey Kong and call that a success
      • throwawayAAUGGH 4mo ago
        The original donkey kong is pretty difficult compared to some of the wide-audience games that have been coming out. As far as I can tell, if the audience of a particular franchise includes younger generations as a majority or near-majority, the difficulty plummets. I don't think "plummets" is even that sensational. See pokemon, kingdom hearts, mario games, final fantasy games. Some franchises and genres have survived but not all of them. I might be missing some other reasons why this could be happening, like increases in game balance and coordination. Play Mario Odyssey for an hour or two then play Super Mario Bros 1, 2, or 3 as one startling example.
        • somenameforme 4mo ago
          That's mostly the MBAification of games that I think is completely disconnected from what most kids want. But the MBA logic is about maximizing market reach. Relatively few people will choose not to play a game because it's too easy, but ostensibly the same isn't true of games that are seen as difficult. Of course Elden Ring, Dark Souls, et al completely proved this to be nonsense (to say nothing of pvp games), but who's gonna let a bit of reality get in the way of pie charts, bar graphs, and powerpoints? In the world of games outside the big money AAA MBA stuff, there's plenty of highly challenging franchises that maintain true to themselves and thrive, even with plenty of kids playing. E.g. - I suspect the median age for Binding of Isaac is well below the age of consent.
        • toast0 4mo ago
          Mario games have reduced the difficulty a lot, although you should probably compare Mario Wonder with SMB 1-3. Odyssey is more comparable with Mario 64. One of the things though is when most peopley play SMB 1-3 today, they're playing with input lag. Mario Wonder was designed with input lag in mind, SMB 1 was not and it increases the difficulty. Mario Wonder lets you choose to use invulnerable characters, etc. There was only one level I remember needing to try many times to beat. OTOH, there's lots of difficult levels in smb 1...
    • watwut 4mo ago
      When I used to read for pleasure, I did it because it was pleasurable. Not because it would be the hard thing. It was fun and easy. What this particular chain of thoughts shows is that adults don't read for pleasure either, they associate it with an uncomfortable hard thing one should to do "build character".
      • ambicapter 4mo ago
        Everything is easy when you've done a lot of it, that's how the brain works.
        • andrew_lettuce 4mo ago
          That's coasting though, or at best flow. Neither state makes you better. The entire point of making something easy is to be able to build on it.
          • somenameforme 4mo ago
            I don't think this is accurate. In basically every single game or sport with measurable outcomes, doing things are relatively simple to you (and often enjoyable) endlessly - drives improvement. If you want to make the argument that it's muscle memory in e.g. shooting freethrows in basketball, then you can see the exact same thing in doing chess tactical puzzles. There's even one successful learning method called the Woodpecker Method where you endlessly repeat over the same series of tactics working to get the time it takes you to do them down to essentially instantaneous. And it works excellently for improvement, and I obviously don't just mean improvement at doing that set of tactics.
      • hgoel 4mo ago
        This is conflating hard with unpleasant. A child just learning to read is going to find it hard to do, yet through adults pushing them to do the hard thing, they learn to read and sometimes begin to find it to be pleasurable. Building most skills is hard, yet that doesn't exclude taking pleasure in it. Many of us taught ourselves to code, the fact that we enjoyed it doesn't mean it wasn't also hard. We've all learned the lesson that sometimes you have to struggle through something hard, to be able to access better pleasure.
    • seventytwo 4mo ago
      The bar isn’t dropping, it’s shifting.
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      • andrew_lettuce 4mo ago
        Shifting to a position below where it previously was? I don't get your point... Is there's a new bar? What would you say the new expectation is that doesn't build on previous core skills?
        • boothby 4mo ago
          As in, these kids are crushing tiktok reels?
  • AngryData 4mo ago
    In my opinion it is. Reading can convey information faster than even sped up videos, is easier to skim, and has high precision. Im not saying it is the best for everyone, but it has been proven repeatedly to beat out any other method in the majority of the population. Plus its time stability and storage is much easier and reliable. It also could have other side benefits like focus or perhaps something like visual acuity, much like how writing by hand can develop good hand-eye coordination. If someone struggled to write with a pencil for example I would be very wary about handing them sharp tools or knives.
  • hgoel 4mo ago
    Reading/writing is a much more dense and navigable way of taking in and recording information than speech. Efficient use of AI requires being very good at reading quickly and having the comprehension skills to pick up on nuances that suggest a hole in the AI's work. In a world where AI is empowering existing experts while risking junior hiring, the young should be aiming to be competitive with those experts, not aiming below even current juniors. If, as a human, you're just acting as a glorified harness around an LLM, you're more replaceable.
  • seventytwo 4mo ago
    What an asinine take.
  • teeray 4mo ago
    My pen weighs in at 10g in my backpack and is capable of durably recording information for thousands of years. No battery to charge, cheap, and plentiful.
    • eru 4mo ago
      I use my fingers to interact with computers, and they don't have any extra weight at all, as they are already attached to me. You need to also count the weight of the paper. And, no, your pen and paper are not able to durably record information for thousands of years. Unless you have some really bespoke setup.
      • mrob 4mo ago
        Acid-free paper and a carbon-black ink, or a modern neutral pH iron-gall ink, should last 1000 years if stored correctly. 2000 might be pushing it, but under a controlled atmosphere it should be possible.
    • RobotToaster 4mo ago
      Only if you're writing on parchment, paper only lasts a few hundred years.
  • stogot 4mo ago
    This has been tested: human instructor vs video, and the human instruction provides measurably better outcomes by an order of magnitude
  • snayan 4mo ago
    I am not sure what to make of this devils advocate comment. Are you just throwing opposites at the wall? I genuinely don't know how to interpret the query about attention span? Are you suggesting that a lower attention span has no impact? I don't know how I would learn things if my attention span was shit, or even sit with difficult problems or emotions and resolve them. Even just general productivity, which, sure there are some arguments about good vs bad productivity, but in general, any form of productivity will benefit from better attention span I think?
  • kelnos 4mo ago
    I think a world where people are just automatons who ask AIs to do things for them is a pretty bleak world. Reading, writing, being able to focus on things... these are healthy things that healthy brains do. And I don't think that's just a case of it always being that way in the past, so any change to that is bad. I think humans as a species will die if we give this sort of thing up, and I don't think I'm exaggerating or engaging in AI doomerism here. Not to mention that AI isn't that good. Maybe it will be, but I'm skeptical. Human progress will basically stop if we lose a generation of kids to this brainrot, with barely-capable AIs that can't even design their successors and move humanity forward. Who else will push humanity forward, if the next several generations of kids are intellectually incapable of doing so?
    • keybored 4mo ago
      What kind of world are we building where advanced technology is just used to stop living as full human beings? Where’s the desire to self-actualize? Did it start dying when people got glued to the idiot box?
      • cindyllm 4mo ago
        [dead]
  • failbuffer 4mo ago
    Why learn arithmetic when we have calculators? Reading, writing, and math are foundational skills that, aside from having enormous utility in their own right, are also crucial for developing sharp, creative, and analytical minds. Take writing as an example: it challenges you to organize your thoughts, patch up the weaknesses of your arguments, and find effective means of connecting with your audience. In so doing, you restructure your own understanding of the world, deepening your expertise and mental schemas. That's something an LLM can't do.
  • sersi 4mo ago
    At the Montessori school my kid goes to, children read a lot. They have access to the Library, can ask the teacher to go there when they need/want to. The school has a no phone policy, children are not allowed to bring them to school. Computers are only in the computer room for children to access when they want to do research and there are no laptops in the class room. It works well and the children are both happy and do well academically
  • GJim 4mo ago
    Those downvoting you appear unaware what 'Devils Advocate' means. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/devil-s-advocate https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/devil-s-... How sad it has come to this.
• helterskelter 4mo ago
  I read an Economist article a few years ago that mentioned a literature professor at Columbia who said that most his undergrad freshmen students have never read a book cover to cover. Of those that have, their favorites were young adult fiction. Most of his students couldn't even focus on a single sonnet. Apparently kids nowadays are having difficulty focusing on individual sentences, and a lot of them are just effectively illiterate. This just blows me away. I'm roughly your age and sometimes as a kid, during the summer, I'd do nothing for days but read nonstop, sunrise to sunset if I liked the book, and I knew a bunch of kids who would do the same thing. They weren't even what you'd call huge readers. It's just what you did if you were bored, or had an okay book with nothing else to do.
  • kelnos 4mo ago
    > as a kid, during the summer, I'd do nothing for days but read nonstop Same! Our local library had a thing where you'd keep a list of all the books you read over the summer, and the week before school started you could turn the list in for a prize. I don't at all remember anything about the prizes, but I remember all the fun and joy I had reading the books and imagining other lives and worlds than my own.
  • watwut 4mo ago
    Young adult fiction being the fing young adults read the most makes 100% sense.
    • reverius42 4mo ago
      "Young adult" fiction is supposed to be for like 11-15 year olds. By high school I'd think you should be reading regular "adult" material. I think the curriculum generally agrees and assigns what we'd call adult literature in high school English.
      • watwut 4mo ago
        Young adult is NOT 11-15 year olds. By literally any definition. > I think the curriculum generally agrees and assigns what we'd call adult literature in high school English. The curriculum assigns what they should read to get overview of history of literature and general education. You are not meant to like most of it, you are meant to learn about the writer and period from it. The curriculum does not assigns what they "should" read for pleasure or like.
• globular-toast 4mo ago
  > Personally, I'd drop technology from the classroom entirely. Definitely. When I was in school we started to have projectors in classrooms but I honestly don't think they added much at all. Seeing a "modern" classroom with electronic whiteboards and tablets everywhere is horrifying. I doubt any paedagogues were asking for this. What's more likely is Microsoft and Google realised there were education budgets all over the world they weren't yet harvesting.
  • fractallyte 4mo ago
    Projectors and electronic whiteboards elevated lessons for me. Ever see a science teacher try to draw a galaxy or nebula on a blackboard, and try to describe the awesomeness of it using just words? Math concepts, especially visualizations, become so much more accessible. One math teacher in my school used an analog overhead projector as part of his workflow: he would write math on a long transparency roll, sitting at his desk, facing the class, so every student could see exactly how their work should be reasoned-about and laid out properly. He could rewind (literally) to any previous point in the lesson. As always, it comes down to one's ability to use the tools effectively.
• dyauspitr 4mo ago
  Drop technology entirely and start failing them. You’ll never find an Asian school taking mercy on their kids.
  • kakacik 4mo ago
    FOMO at its best, fuck their personalities and development and having happy childhood as base layer of personality for rest of their lives, its grades at all costs! Famously most of asian kids wear glasses from studying all the time, well we need up up that up! What if they overtake us in some rat race. Not the best parenting but some folks are like that and then it shows on kids, thats true.
    • buellerbueller 4mo ago
      No one said it is about grades at all cost. Education, at all cost, yes.
    • NickC25 4mo ago
      >FOMO at its best, fuck their personalities and development and having happy childhood as base layer of personality for rest of their lives, its grades at all costs! It's about making sure kids can read. It's about making sure our tax dollars are spent on making the next generation of people into functional adults. I don't want the country spending billions on an education system that churns out adults who are genuinely illiterate and can't write.
    • dyauspitr 4mo ago
      The rat race is nothing to be sneezed at. Social welfare systems across the world are strained even in places like Europe that historically have benefitted from the long tail of colonialism. The kids are going to have to be competitive and that means at the very least being able to read and do some math. Also it’s not like kids these days are frolicking in the fields and outside the home all day with their friends, you would just be cutting into some TikTok time.
  • mensetmanusman 4mo ago
    This is why Asian countries are dying faster though.
• Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
  At the risk of a flamewar I want to say that I still don't accept audiobooks as a 100% drop in replacement for actually reading. I know a lot of millenials my age who insist that listening to an audiobook while <driving/cleaning/walking/biking/cooking> is completely the same as actually sitting down and focusing without distractions on a paper book for hours. But it isn't! Firstly, much is lost without seeing the formatting of the page, and without being able to flip back to an earlier page easily to re-read something. Secondly, sitting down and reading develops concentration and focus. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of people who agree or disagree with my take. I'm not saying audiobooks are bad, but, they are not at all equivalent to real reading.
  • alt187 4mo ago
    I agree with the sitting down and focusing part. For me, I've always been extremely inclined to audio processing, so I can sometimes just lay in bed or in a chair, or on the train, and... listen to an audio book. I really don't think it makes a big difference, at least for me. I used to be attached to the sensory experience of flicking pages, but there's also a big factor in letting the book (or, the narrator) take you to their own pace. A good narrator really completes a story. All that stuff about listening to an audiobook while working out, or cooking, driving, or anything is crystallized bravado from people who think it makes them look clever that they can do two things badly at the same time.
    • tartoran 4mo ago
      I think reading develops internal monologue and you also can change the tempo according to understanding, slow down when a pasaage is hard etc. With audiobooks something that is not very clear escapes away as the audiobook moves on. Maybe multiple listenings can fill the gap but am not sure if re-listening to audiobooks is a thing.
      • Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
        Yes, well put, this happens to me too. I have to re-read tough or confusing passages, and I can slide quickly through simple parts. The forced pacing of an audiobook throws me off because of that.
• NickC25 4mo ago
  fellow Fairfield County native here. Likely around the same age as you. I went to a great public school (I was a terrible student, crippling ADHD but that's another story for another day) in the southern half of the county. I'll let you guess which one. Also spent a few years in another of the top districts (west of the capital, again, easy to guess ;P) before making the move south. It's NOT the schools. They are well funded and as you say, pretty helpless because teachers, even younger ones, just aren't able to deal with kids whose parents shoved a smartphone into their hands at age 3. It's NOT the parents - in order to keep up with the jonses in those towns, you have to work like a dog and most likely, both parents are in high stress demanding environments in order to make enough to live there. I was fortunate that my dad did quite well for our family, but there's no way I could raise a kid in that environment. It's the fucking devices, and the drive to put tech everywhere in the classroom. When I was a kid we had a single Mac in the classroom (besides the teacher's computer), mainly to dick around with Oregon Trail, Math Blaster, or some typing app. We wanted to play games? We went outside and played sports, or stayed inside and played games like scrabble or chess. In high school we had to do genuine research 15-20+ page papers as early as Sophomore year. There was zero Wikipedia, much less ChatGPT or Claude. Of course, a book, which requires attention, effort, and has no distractions, is not going to capture the attention and imagination of someone who has had the world and all of its distractions at their fingertips since they gained consciousness, and weren't made to socialize without devices. And no, we cannot allow people to pass to the next grade without mastering the skills required of their current grade. This needs to be completely iron clad and not up for debate. I was nearly held back 3-4 times. I am an idiot. I was miles ahead of where elementary school and middle school kids are today. I don't care if a wealthy Ivy grad and his management consultant wife donate a bunch of money to make sure their kid can pass - if their kid can't read or write, their kid can't pass.