Re:Tell HN: How USA school closure seems to be working out
by waholleyiv on Saturday March 07, 2020 @12:41PM
(#22512829)
TLDR: opportunity cost
It is the primarily responsibility in some domains. For others, the system is designed to allocate responsibility to the education system in order to balance with the time demands of fully employed parent(s) (to support the family) and the cost that would be otherwise incurred.
Re:Tell HN: How USA school closure seems to be working out
by giantg2 on Sunday March 08, 2020 @08:12PM
(#22521698)
So the system goes to jail if it doesn't enroll all school aged children? So the system decides which children go to public schools, charter schools, private schools, or homeschool? Of course not. At it's very core the responsibility for a child's education falls to the parents. Even if you send your kids off to school, you still need to be involved to motivate them, help them with assignments, etc. You can even see that the most influential factor in a child's success is whether or not the child has 2 parents (Harvard study).
Yes, you can take into account opportunity cost. However, that won't shift the responsibility, it's just the outsourcing of the labor. You can see this in any power structure (corporate, military, etc).
In theory, the lesson plans could be distributed to parents (or whoever is supervising) and they can teach it. For older students home alone or students who's parents are not able to teach the subject, there are many great teaching videos just an internet search away. The discipline to self-learn is something that would need to have been instilled by the parents.
It seems to me that as a society we have forgotten that the primary responsibility for teaching (let alone raising) our children is our own. Instead we pass it off to 'the system' and make a big deal about having to raise our own kids.