But put in the necessary work to make learning at home productive. Nope, can't do that.
We have put in the work at our house to make e-learning possible, and it can be effective, and kids can focus, and kids can wear masks, and kids CAN still LEARN during difficult times - but it takes sacrifices from parents, be it sleep, entertainment, our phones, TV, or even time off work and living lean.
But I'm ready for it... let's hear some CAN DO stuff from the HN community!
I'm in a similar kids/work situation and it's going very rough at best. But then again I'm a completely terrible parent, barely capable as a normal functioning adult, and my kids inherited the coked up hummingbird trait from their mother.
You may be an outlier who can do this, but the average human will break down with that schedule over the long term
So, no. I do NOT just work a half-day, I prioritize, I multi-task, and it's very difficult to maintain this lifestyle.
Serious question, why bother? Any normal job would have you working less (assuming it’s true that you never get a free weekend or holiday, which I kind of doubt). What do you get out of this? The ultimate satisfaction of helping a stranger receive email instead of being with your family on Christmas?
And having conversations about the difficulties is how people, especially people on HN, will better understand the problem and come up with a solution that will (hopefully) leave everyone better off.
That might be true but if something is hard that doesn't mean it's automatically worth doing. Video conference learning might be both simultaneously hard and completely worthless.
I have three kids, all elementary school age and I am prepping to start the school year all remote. I'm not afraid of the challenge but i'm honest with myself that it will take a toll on my kids and my marriage that I cannot avoid. No matter how hard I work, it will take time and getting into the routine cannot be done overnight.
It's okay to be daunted by that prospect.
that's a very narrow minded way of looking at the world. Kind words, hugs are very much worth it
But I totally understand how if you applied this saying to EVERYTHING then it wouldn't make sense, or be seen as "narrow minded" I suppose.
I mean, fishing is pretty damn easy, but every trip I take is worth taking for the peace of mind.
Most people must work during daytime hours, and formal learning (for example, math that pushes the boundary of what you know) does not work very well for kids (or adults in my experience) in the evening. I’m glad that you have the flexibility such that you don’t have to do work 8-to-6, but that’s clearly not realistic or even possible for most people.
How does one hard work their way out of this? Start a business so you can teach during the daytime and in the meantime your kids do what exactly?
HN crowd is a tough audience when it comes to adolescent socialisation, not everyone benefits from sitting in front of a computer from a young age.
Being picked last for every team ever wasn't great for that. It was humiliating, time after time. But worse was then being bullied in the compulsory showers every time for supposedly wanting to have anal sex with everyone, I guess because I was into music and science, not sport. Although, outside school, I was in weekly soccer, basketball and sailing competitions, and did a lot of kayaking, windsurfing, table tennis, roller skating, swimming, bike riding, tennis, handball etc etc. I can hardly believe how sporty I was compared to now, yet still was considered super-unsporty!
Ah this is another dismissive comment I guess. Maybe people like me are over-represented here! (And who this "HN crowd" I read about? Everyone but you?) I reacted to your language, I think - you presented yourself as just pointing out a fact, when you got dismissive comments from a tough crowd without your level of knowledge and understanding.
The contrarian dynamic strikes again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
The objections come in waves. In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are a community consensus, it's that they're the fastest reactions to feel, and the fastest comments to write—especially when the topic is provocative, when most of us are reacting from cache [2].
Then a second wave of objections is generated by the first wave. Readers come to the thread, see the comment section dominated by those initial reflexive responses, and feel some version of surprised-shocked-dismayed at how "all HN commenters" seem to react in the same way. This propels them to write defenses of the article, often carefully expressing more moderate or balanced views than the first wave—but they probably wouldn't have been motivated to post anything if there hadn't been the first wave of comments to object to!
These second-wave comments tend to get more upvotes, perhaps because more people tend to share the more moderate view, but also because those comments tend to be more reflective [2] and therefore better written.
This explains why the top comment in a thread so often begins (ironically) with "Wow, I can't believe the comments here"—or from the current thread: "All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old" [3]—followed by a defense of whatever those objections were objecting to.
Eventually you get objections to the objections to the objections—which reminds me of the line "My complication had a little complication" from Brazil [4], and also epicycles.
[1] Cunningham's Law touches on this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I guess it's an easy way to get high up on HN.
"No it isn't."
Edit: Interestingly the argument is the antithesis of the contradiction!
I'm confused why this was written or published. There is no "point".
Yes, it's very hard to keep adults much less kids cooped up in a house all day. Especially for 6+ months. But, what else are we supposed to do?
This is just a paid, public gripe that a lot of people can relate with, but what purpose does it serve? There isn't an alternative unless the author is pushing for schools to open regardless of COVID, which I doubt.
It is
> but what purpose does it serve?
It lets the millions of other parents who find themselves suddenly in the same situation, feeling the same things, know they're not alone, and that the struggle is real!
I'm assuming you're talking about kids in the Outback, where vast distance makes it harder to have classroom instruction?
There was a recent NYT article about that[0], and my takeaway is that it's really homeschooling with support from teachers. Not a Zoom videoconference where they fake like they're in the same classroom. The parents are much more involved in the early years. Once the kids are old enough to know how to learn, then it can become more of an instruction/homework style of teaching rather than what's required for preschool and Kindergarten kids.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/world/australia/australia...
It was 1 way or 2 way radio back in the day, now wiki says it’s 1 way video stream with 2 way voice.
From wiki... “ Each student typically spends one hour per day receiving group or individual lessons from the teacher, and the rest of the day working through the assigned materials with a parent, older sibling or a hired home-stay tutor.”
These children might develop an amazing self-sufficiency or some advanced self-organization skills (if they manage to deal with it well). I often wonder how I myself would have turned out, if I had been taught this way or similarly.
As a first-time father of 2.5 years old, I worry a lot about his behavior like when he hits me for no reason and then laughs. That cannot be normal, or so I used to think.
His pediatrician assure us that this is normal toddler behavior. In fact, lack of such behavior is cause of concern. Another thing she told us is that social workers look out for extremely well-behaving kids because they might be suffering abuse.
At this stage, I personally don't have experience with school age children but I imagine it is not normal for 5 years old to be able to sit in front of laptop for several hours.
This is clearly the best we can do know.
If I were the author, I'd consider opting out of kindergarten, or do it intermittently.
How education adapted to this pandemic will be studied for years to come. Hopefully something more brilliant than Zoom will be discovered somewhere, and spread.
This world is full of can't can't can't. Everywhere we turn, if there's an inconvenience involved. If we have to do something boring. If it won't be fun. If it's hard work..... we can't do it. It can't be done.
I wish we had a "we can do this" attitude. I wish parents could say, "Don't worry, let's help each other. You may not have the time, but I do, and I'm here to help."
But I'm out of hope.
The world is filled with plenty of that, and it always has been. But plenty of people are absolutely tackling this mess with a can-do attitude. You're just not seeing it, for whatever reason.
> But I'm out of hope.
And that may be the reason ;-).
Turning off the news is the best choice I've ever made. Can't be too depressed when I don't get bombarded constantly with BS, we're too busy living our life to the best of our ability.
"The way we need them to learn" strikes me as a very telling choice of words. This is a moment where we need to be meeting their needs, not just molding them to our expectations.
I created a home-based program (week to week) where we learned everything I could find that would normally be in a regular pre-school curriculum.
We worked for 3 hours every morning "studying", and he was 4. I made it fun. I made it productive. We took breaks. We had snacks. We had recess. It worked.
By the end of the summer, he was reading and more prepared for Kindergarten than any of the kids in his class.
Yes. If parents stop complaining, and get down to work, and make this fun for their kids, and have a positive attitude, even the youngest students can learn from home.
Now days we even have Zoom options, so we WILL be able to get kids eye to eye with teachers, friends, other students. I would have loved that 8 years ago.
In a weird way, they're kind of agreeing with the article here -- remote learning as it's currently structured in the average public school does not work for every kid.
The only disagreement seems to come down to whether someone's reaction to seeing a paragraph like this
> Even our worst-case scenario is a privileged one; a trashed apartment and frayed nerves are nothing in comparison with what other parents are about to undergo. My husband and I can work at home, and we can afford some assistance with child care. The huge number of parents who must work outside the home, parents who can’t afford any child care, and parents who don’t feel comfortable managing a sitter’s viral risk alongside their own are in a far worse situation.
is:
- Wow, this is a problem we should collectively work to address.
or,
- Wow, parents sure are lazy with their kids.
Which... I mean, that's a position some people advocate for. But if every parent was equipped to do that, then their kids wouldn't have been in public school in the first place.
However, I do think a lot of people put their kids in school because it's easy, not because they couldn't homeschool them.
I've been surprised several times that the immediate reaction I've gotten when I tell someone we're homeschooling is "Oh, I could never do that."
The truth is almost anyone can. I used to think it should be more regulated and only "good" parents should do it.
Then I saw a single mom with only a high school degree and terrible teaching skills take her failing boys out of public school, homeschool then for a year, and send them back to school a year later, more in advanced placement classes.
If she could achieve that on n her own, without spousal support or any of the right skills, then this is within most parents' grasp.
I suspect she was more willing to suffer and fight for her children than a lot of wealthy parents are, though.
Some are. Some aren't.
Same goes for the kids.
Not everyone lives the same life as you.
These are fundamental qualities that require physical interaction!
You give me the most well-behaved kid, and I'll show you a hellion when I attempt to sit them in front of a boring "remote learning" session for a few hours.