5 ms·

Call centers are the archetype of a bad work situation. If you are aiming for classes to meet that standard, you are aiming very low.

vacri 12y ago
I didn't say they were good. I said that they don't cause the problems we associate with adolescents in adult staff: ie: it's not the bloody chairs that cause adolescent acting out. Saying "I don't act out. I have an expensive chair" is not a counterpoint.
- nilkn 12y ago
  You really don't think sticking somebody in an uncomfortable chair for 7-8 hours a day, giving them a desk that's too small to even accommodate the work they're expected to do, telling them to basically shut up all day, and getting on to them for even getting up to take a 3 minute stretch-walk is going to have any impact at all on adolescent behavior? There are reasons that all these things are done, of course. But pretending that they don't have an impact is just silly. There are huge costs to structuring classrooms like this. I recently spent all day in such circumstances and it really reminded me of how oppressive the conditions in high school felt. By the end of the seminar, I was just flat-out tired and frustrated and I wasn't listening to anything the speaker was saying. I just wanted out. Honestly, if decent chairs are too expensive, then we'd be better off throwing the chairs away completely. Have students stand. Just use standing desks that don't have to be shaped so that you can get in or out of the seat easily, thereby sacrificing half of the working surface. This solves the problem of not being able to afford reasonable chairs and it's far healthier for everybody as well.
  - vacri 12y ago
    To quote myself: "Crappy chairs in high school don't help". I'm not 'pretending they don't have an impact'. Mind you, I'm also not pretending that $800+ office chairs are the norm for adult [office] workers, and that it's those chairs that underly the difference between adult and adolescent behaviour. Are you aware that adolescents who don't go to school - like home-schooled kids, early drop-outs, kids in developing countries with no access to high school - that those adolescents still act out? Or that adolescents have had a long history of being featured in stories as not behaving 'appropriately' (such as Romeo and Juliet), well before the advent of modern high school?
    - nilkn 12y ago
      You're just attacking strawmen. Where did I say the cost of the chair is the determining factor? Where did I say that improving high school conditions would just universally eradicate bad behavior in adolescents? You've made up all this. Go re-read my first post which offended you so and see if you can find any of that in there. You were upset to some degree that I mentioned an $800 chair and you seemingly won't let go of that even in the face of the broader context of what I clearly meant. All I ever said is that really bad classroom conditions do play a role. You agree with that even, but are still fighting back against an imaginary opponent. And in my experience, yes, even call centers have more comfortable seats and desks than the typical high school classroom. I certainly didn't always have a full square meter of desk space in high school.
VLM 12y ago
And yet, in a pyramid shaped economic structure, there probably are 100 call center employees for every dotcom programmer, making it extremely representative of "real world office conditions".

vacri 12y ago

I didn't say they were good. I said that they don't cause the problems we associate with adolescents in adult staff: ie: it's not the bloody chairs that cause adolescent acting out. Saying "I don't act out. I have an expensive chair" is not a counterpoint.

nilkn 12y ago
You really don't think sticking somebody in an uncomfortable chair for 7-8 hours a day, giving them a desk that's too small to even accommodate the work they're expected to do, telling them to basically shut up all day, and getting on to them for even getting up to take a 3 minute stretch-walk is going to have any impact at all on adolescent behavior? There are reasons that all these things are done, of course. But pretending that they don't have an impact is just silly. There are huge costs to structuring classrooms like this. I recently spent all day in such circumstances and it really reminded me of how oppressive the conditions in high school felt. By the end of the seminar, I was just flat-out tired and frustrated and I wasn't listening to anything the speaker was saying. I just wanted out. Honestly, if decent chairs are too expensive, then we'd be better off throwing the chairs away completely. Have students stand. Just use standing desks that don't have to be shaped so that you can get in or out of the seat easily, thereby sacrificing half of the working surface. This solves the problem of not being able to afford reasonable chairs and it's far healthier for everybody as well.
- vacri 12y ago
  To quote myself: "Crappy chairs in high school don't help". I'm not 'pretending they don't have an impact'. Mind you, I'm also not pretending that $800+ office chairs are the norm for adult [office] workers, and that it's those chairs that underly the difference between adult and adolescent behaviour. Are you aware that adolescents who don't go to school - like home-schooled kids, early drop-outs, kids in developing countries with no access to high school - that those adolescents still act out? Or that adolescents have had a long history of being featured in stories as not behaving 'appropriately' (such as Romeo and Juliet), well before the advent of modern high school?
  - nilkn 12y ago
    You're just attacking strawmen. Where did I say the cost of the chair is the determining factor? Where did I say that improving high school conditions would just universally eradicate bad behavior in adolescents? You've made up all this. Go re-read my first post which offended you so and see if you can find any of that in there. You were upset to some degree that I mentioned an $800 chair and you seemingly won't let go of that even in the face of the broader context of what I clearly meant. All I ever said is that really bad classroom conditions do play a role. You agree with that even, but are still fighting back against an imaginary opponent. And in my experience, yes, even call centers have more comfortable seats and desks than the typical high school classroom. I certainly didn't always have a full square meter of desk space in high school.

VLM 12y ago

And yet, in a pyramid shaped economic structure, there probably are 100 call center employees for every dotcom programmer, making it extremely representative of "real world office conditions".