Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

How do you deal with the students who outsmart teachers? A lack of rule sets would seem an open field for students to manipulate the adults in the room.

One of my friend's daughters is vicious at this. At 14, for a "career and personal planning" project, she stated career her goal as "porn star" and somehow wrangled a skype interview with a 19yo "mentor" in the biz. She has no intention on following this path, but loves how it drives teachers up the wall. "If billy can want to be a soldier and kill people, then I should be allowed to pursue my dream too." She's a perfectly normal girl, but once she identifies an authority figure as weak she turns them into toys. Put her in a free environment and I'd expect resignation letters within the week.

View on HN

I say the girl should be congratulated for her ingenuity. The amount of effort she put into tweaking the teacher's tail is commendable. The real "solution" here is for her to find a mentor who will channel her efforts into more projects that make people think as well as shock them. Sometimes this is risky for the teacher, but god knows we need more critical thinkers.

When I was 14, more than half a century ago, I got into trouble for holding opinions that the people her would consider merely progressive. One of my daughters in high school got into insulting her peer group by using a vocabulary they didnt understand. They thought she was praising them. She is now in her thirties and very well adjusted. If she had done such a thing in middle school, I would have been very amused, but her mother would have been absolutely mortified. Probably best that she didnt.

A good teacher could gainfully discuss the choice. Being a porn star is a short-term career; what are you going to do after 35? It's physically straining and may have health implications. It has image problems: how do you tell your friends, relatives, and kids what's your job about? It requires good physical shape, diets, etc. Is it worth it? If so, how do you pivot? Talking about that with a straight face may be useful for the whole class. (Edit: spelling.)

>> Being a porn star is a short-term career;

It depends. There is a range of approaches. The classic approach, of which I think you are speaking, is indeed very short term. Girls are paid per day/shoot/scene and that's all. Other girls own and operate their own websites, retaining copyrights, and can generate a stream of income over a great many years. There are women out there in their late twenties still releasing "new" material shot while they were 18. Many who opt for this approach don't do sex, or even nudity, and so don't suffer any health repercussions. But that takes planning and a degree of time/money investment.

I wouldn't encourage the career, but I would fault any teacher ready to dismiss the industry. If you ask kids what they want to do, you shouldn't be critical of answers that conflict with your personal morality.

In Sudbury Schools, there are plenty of rules. If a student broke the rules, their would be a jury of their peers and a sentence to follow out. If she wanted to stay at the school, she would accept it all and acclimate. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, sometimes a few months.

Someone who ignores our system of justice would be expelled. It happens.

It all depends on whether she wants to be in this environment or not. Most people want to be, but not all.

If she lasted long enough to understand that she could be heard by being her real self, then she would probably stay. But it can take a long time to get through the toxic layers some students have built up over the years.

>> Someone who ignores our system of justice would be expelled. It happens.

I hope they don't read Lord of the Flies. I'm not sure that I would want a group of teens, especially peers, to judge me on anything. Didn't Trek TOS also cover this in the episode on the planet without adults?

I have seen far more compassion and wisdom from the students on JC than I have when serving jury duty with adults. Reality in this instance speaks better about ourselves than our fiction does.

Keep in mind that your experience is with people who are living in a competitive world. If you belong to a cooperative world, no one benefits by putting someone else down. When treated fairly, they treat others fairly.

For those coming from traditional schools, it sometimes requires a few conversations or JC writeups before they start to have empathy, but most get there fairly quickly.

Lord of the Flies is fiction (and IMO overrated and unbelievable).

You said yourself, she's doing all that precisely because it annoys the teachers. She wouldn't get anything out of it if they weren't trying to stop her.

Moreover, she probably gets social encouragement from her classmates for doing things like this. Put her in an environment where the classmates made the rules, and now she's just a clown surrounded by people rolling their eyes.

Doesn't that lady have a gift worth cultivating? I'm not joking, by the way — finding weak points and exploiting them can make you a good novelist, intelligence officer, crisis manager...

I condole with her teachers, at the same very time.

I think one should congratulate that girl for both identifying vulnerabilities in the egos of adults and for actually finding a real contact in the business. Her argument makes sense, btw: Killing for money is vastly more evil than fucking for money!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com