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Comment by more-coffee | Hacker News Reader

"Large group of young students in India, pursuing a future under impossible circumstances, collapsing under the immense pressure and leading some of them to commit suicide."

Well, that's terrible. Surely we should discuss why they even get to this point, and how this could be prevented?

"Most suicides happen by hanging from ceiling fans, so let's make anti-suicide ceiling fans."

Nailed it.

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While I agree that simply focusing on the method used is missing the bigger picture, it can have benefits. In England & Wales, changing domestic gas formulation dropped the overall suicide rate [1], so there is a precedent for positive effects from removing easy access. While this should certainly not be the only measure, it can be accomplished quite a bit more quickly and easily than changing both the university entrance process as well as the parenting culture. But I would consider it at-best to be a stopgap measure.

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/449144?jou...

Obviously you need more than safer fans, but don't knock it. Reducing access to means and methods is the most important thing you can do for suicide prevention.

People talk about method substitution, but that doesn't always happen.

The root of the issue is people choosing they want to die, not that people are able to die

Yes, but sometimes it's best to take multiple simultaneous approaches when solving a problem, and sometimes the root of a problem is hard enough to solve that other approaches end up being more effective, at least in the short term. Means restriction is well-studied and does reduce suicide rates.

There was a point in my life where I chose to die, and the reason I'm alive right now is because I didn't have immediate access to lethal means. Every extra minute that it takes to figure out how to kill yourself is another minute of opportunity to change your mind, and that's what saved me. We absolutely should be focusing on mental health, but means restriction (particularly gun control in the US) is also an important thing for people to understand and consider.

Sure, work on that too. But the most effective measure so far for suicide prevention has been to reduce access to means and methods. This is replicated in many different areas across time.

So to admit my daughter to pre kindergarten, the school expects her to know the alphabet already. Talk about pressure.

Well, some schools even expect the parents to be well educated.

That's not unreasonable if you want to select for high performing children. The correlation is very clear.

There are various correlations which are very clear, like parents wealth. The question is whether these are ethical. If every school filters for such criterion, would students from poor or uneducated parents ever have a chance at social mobility? Do we want such a society?

In the US, the voting majority seems to want such a society, otherwise we wouldn't have so many politicians cutting education and other taxpayer funded support to families in need.

Is that hard to teach..I mean..its the alphabet..Excuse my possibly ignorant questioning.

Yes, it’s ridiculous that kids can’t just be kids anymore, they already have to be a part of the hamster wheel by age 5-6. Knowing the alphabet at that age is far less important than gaining social skills by playing, and spending carefree time with other children.

Talking about pre kindergarten which happens at age 3 ish in India.

It is expected for them to know the English alphabet. English is not the primary language spoken in most of India, so it is more difficult than it might seem.

Depends on the pupil. I'm dyspraxic and never learnt the alphabet. It hasn't affected my life or career. Not sure what use it would be to me.

Not sure if troll, but giving the benefit of the doubt...

You are clearly posting a comment comprised of letters of the alphabet. How would one do so without knowing the alphabet, assuming you typed it out rather than dictated it. And well, you also read the original reply. So are you having all that dictated for you? Or are you implying the reading/writing does not require knowing the alphabet (which is difficult to believe, but who knows)?

About the use of an alphabet, have you used a dictionary or any other system that is alphabetically ordered?

Apologise I didn't make it clear. What I mean is learning the order of the alphabet. I was taught read, write and type without ever being able to memorise the alphabet.

The last time I used a system that is alphabetically ordered was in a CD shop 10+ years ago. Im not being sarcastic but I use a dictionary regularly, I just search for word using Google.

> never learnt the alphabet

By this, do you mean that you can't read? Or you can't remember the ordering of the letters? Or that you can recognize whole words but not as being made up of individual letters?

The order of the letters.

It takes months of constant reinforcement at that age.

Even worse if it is a foreign alphabet.

Perfect solution to a perfect problem of course.

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