Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

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> If you're a kid and do the cost/benefit analysis, going to school looks like a dumb decision and a huge opportunity cost for time that could otherwise be used for things with known reward (playing). Bullying, exams, homework, sleep disruption, etc is all cost.

The benefit of going to school for kids in the US at least is that you get to move a year closer to getting out.

A cost is that if you don't go, you get held back (and get the according social stigma).

Another poster below asked

> But why did Japan's snap first?

I think one of the reasons here is perhaps that kids automatically advance through the public schools system for the first nine grades regardless of whether they actually attend school or not. So people can stay even with their friend groups.

I've known/worked with a few kids who didn't go to school, and while some of them had personal issues of some kind or another, others simply just didn't see any cost to not going to school and hung out with their friends when their friends were out of school and otherwise enjoyed life.

Another difference, I think, is that with bullying in US schools, you can usually escape it to a certain extent through different classes/activities, but in Japanese schools, you tend to stay with your homeroom class for every subject, so there's no chance to get away/make a different friend group except for club activities and the next academic year.

Very very few people are sociopaths (~2%), but these strong people mirror and magnify what they've been exposed to at home or in peer groups. Often the problem is really with some parents and sometimes a particular teacher, misbehaving and not being corrected. When do adults correct eachother? Exactly! And of course the "glad that's not my child being treated that way..."

And why not? The culture is about microaggression. Eventually, your peers become competition. A competition to break down the environment as hard and fast as time permits, and then wonder why nothing changes..

If this reflects company culture, the kids will need to learn to survive, either by skipping school legally, or learning to survive and maybe become a bit psychopathic themselves. Just to be a little ahead of the system. Those skipping school are those who could turn the situation around, if not orchastrized by the community, the teachers and closest family. It is sort of a culture strangling itself.

You get what you deserve in the end. So look people in the eye and get to know them, even if they're a bit strange looking, they're much more fun to be with in the longer run. That other reward will still be dangling there, teasingly.

I appreciate the efforts put in HN and the people who make this a platform for eachother. Such platforms people can stand on and make a difference.

I feel like the competition angle is a scam. For all his faults, one of the things my father taught me (not intentionally, as me developing the habit enraged him) is that there is always a backdoor.

He did alright in school, studied hard sometimes, other times didn’t, dawdled around a bit after high school. He joined an organization that was a good fit for someone with reasonably good grades who dawdled around a bit after high school, but found himself much more intellectually developed and disciplined than most others. This is how you get put on the fast track.

I scored near the top of every standardized exam in school. However, I hated it and skipped constantly. My abusive and chaotic home life did not allow me to study and complete assignments properly, so even the apparent intelligence advantage frankly did not help me. So I quit, got a minimum wage job, read a lot in my off time, paid for my community college, found myself the smartest guy in most of my classes, won a bunch of scholarships to my state flagship. Did similar stuff there. In a few steps I’m in the same socioeconomic status (or higher) as the smart high achieving kids from my high school.

I believe one of the main issues is that most parents (including my own) won’t allow the children to consider such a path, and will begin to terrorize (“discipline”) them for things such as not making a high enough grade or exactly following the trajectory fellow parents peer pressure them into believing in. I have no sympathy for these types and think they are unfit to parent if they have such a low level of maturity. Many children may also be unfit for such a path and would just smoke weed and play games til age 35. Again I feel that it is a parent’s responsibility to understand their children.

> The benefit of going to school for kids in the US at least is that you get to move a year closer to getting out.

> A cost is that if you don't go, you get held back (and get the according social stigma).

At least in California, this is no longer true. My daughter has been a year behind for 6 years straight now, and we've done everything short of suing the school to try and get them to hold her back a year, but they refuse to.

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