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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here. I read the article and it seems totally normal for a little kid not to be able to do "school" on a laptop. Kindergarten is so much different than later years of schooling. It's not about lectures and subjects, or homework and tests. It's about much more fundamental lessons, interspersed with creativity, socialization, and learning to be separated from your parents.

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.

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Me too! We're jugging 3 kids and working from home, and I thought the article was on point. My guess is that most of the dismissive comments are from people without kids!

I have 4 kids. I work from home. My wife works 11 hours a day away from the house. I feel like this world is full of "can't" people who aren't willing to do the extra work. We seem to have enough time to comment on Hacker News. To argue about masks on Facebook. To watch every TikTok, and spend hours on Twitter.

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 don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and the parents.

What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing reward at the top.

I like your take on life - thanks for reminding me of this little fact.

I assume this is sarcasm, but if not, prepare for down-votes because absolutely nobody agrees with me.

> if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing

that's a very narrow minded way of looking at the world. Kind words, hugs are very much worth it

The point is that the things that come easy for us are usually those that we value the least, so, after we put in a lot of hard work and time on something, and we had a great accomplishment, we'd say "if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing." It's a self pat-on-the-back.

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.

Nothing is wrong with hard. But complaining about hard things, sympathy, and recognition of the difficulty is also a large portion of what makes doing hard things tolerable. Trying to shut it down will have the opposite effect of what you want.

have you been taught to tell hard from bullshit? i've been taught that hard and worthwhile are orthogonal and the amazing prize at the top sometimes is just the fact that you've made it, thanks, now get the f* back down you idiot.

Yes, sometimes I cannot tell the difference between hard and bullshit. And yes, I can be a complete idiot sometimes. So, thanks?

This comment is lacking in empathy. Not all situations can be solved by the same logic.

I'm sorry, and I agree, it wasn't. It was a frustrated post and I'm being down-voted because of it :/

I'm with you, we should approach problems with optimism not fear. However, teaching that approach to kids is a long term strategy, and helping them adapt to a new routine is a slow process, it's less about the difficulty and more about the emotional cost that you have to pay to succeed.

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.

Something being difficult and worthwhile doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient use of your time. And it doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t make those things easier. Building a computer is hard. It’s also worthwhile. I’ve built a few. But I’ve bought a lot more. It usually isn’t worth my time, effort, and energy.

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.

> If it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing

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.

You're right. My point is more that parents need to work really hard to be involved and turn that boring video class into something productive, interesting, and worthwhile.

So why don’t we make everything as hard as possible? Ditch the washing machine, wash your clothes by hand. Skip the grocery store, go hunt for your food instead.

What exactly is your daily routine then. Raising 4 kids while working full time with your spouse working 11 hours outside of the house is a pretty large claim.

Probably something like, get the kids dressed before the first nanny shows up at 8am...

I run my own business. Been a web consultant / developer for over 17 years. I have a pretty steady clientele right now. I work 6 to 9am, then 10-11pm, and I usually get a hour or two in during the day. Plus I work 6am to 10am weekends, maybe more if my wife isn't tired and hangs out with the kids on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

You essentially work a half day. Burying the lede here a bit.

I never get to stop working, but thanks. Every day, all day, I get email and have to respond to a vast customer base. While I may not be coding away at my computer, I have to stop about 10 times a day to respond to customers, help them solve a problem, make an update, etc. It never ends, I never get vacation, I never get a weekend, I never get a holiday. I literally had a customer call me on Christmas last year because they got a new iPad and wanted me to help them put their domain email on it.

So, no. I do NOT just work a half-day, I prioritize, I multi-task, and it's very difficult to maintain this lifestyle.

Must be nice to have flexible working hours! Many people do not have that luxury, even when working remotely.

Sure, but some parents don't have the luxury of doing fewer hours at their job during the day like you. Weekends and vacations don't count.

> 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?

So you have flexible hours and on top of that, even if you go to sleep immediately at 11 and wake up exactly at 6, you don't get the average amount of sleep people need.

You may be an outlier who can do this, but the average human will break down with that schedule over the long term

I've run into a number of dads that drive really hard, always at the expense of sleep. They seems to die early, 40s 50s. Might be possible.

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.

I’m very curious about your daily schedule. I was homeschooled for 12 years, 1 of 5 kids so I’m familiar with home education and having a hard time imagining how a single adult can both work and teach and take care 4 kids.

I've run my own business for over 17 years. I get up early, work, stay up kind-of late, work, and get a lot of time in early on the weekends. It's not really that terrible. It's difficult, but doable, and I can still focus a lot of my energy on raising my kids.

I think that’s great, really. I also think that in your original comment you said that people should be focusing on what can be done with hard work rather than complaining about impossibility (paraphrasing).

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?

Even time off work? Do you have no understanding of other people? How can you assume that's an option for people?!

I got similarly dismissive comments once when I pointed to the importance of PE for child development, not just physically but also social dynamics and team aspects, confidence building and so on.

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.

Yeah, the lack of social interaction is a killer for a lot of child development. Kids on the spectrum whose primary problem is interaction skills are really getting screwed by the current situation.

PE is not important for child development. Exercise is. PE is a shitty kind of torture, a crappy simulacrum of doing some kind of physical activity you actually enjoy and would do voluntarily. In thought I hated sports, in part because of PE. Exercise is great. PE is an abomination.

Sweet Jesus, this. The only way I got back into exercise was swimming, because the only PE association it had was primary school lessons that were calm and didn't involve shitty peers.

> confidence building

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.

"I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here"

The contrarian dynamic strikes again: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the contrarian dynamic?

"Threads often get an initial wave of negative comments, followed by a second wave of objections to the objections. What determines the initial wave of comments is not community opinion—rather, it's what's the easiest thing to make reflexive objections to. Those comments are the first to show up because those reflexive reactions take the least time. Thoughtful comments require reflection, which is much slower" ?

Thank you.

The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet comments generally) are propelled by people making objections. [1]

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...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215135

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyHilwSRo28#t=61

A lot of these bad ideas aren't even in comments any more, I've been seeing them more and more in hyper short blog posts, eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109726

I guess it's an easy way to get high up on HN.

"An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition."

"No it isn't."

That’s not an argument, that’s simple contradiction!

I disagree. The meta insight of the contradiction elevates it to the level of an argument. The contradiction serves as an argument in this case.

Edit: Interestingly the argument is the antithesis of the contradiction!

I understand dealing with children, I'm not being dismissive (at least I don't think I am) of that.

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.

> This is just a paid, public gripe that a lot of people can relate with

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!

That's fair enough, but that's not a fair indictment on virtual education (per the headline). The premise stinks.

It is the beginning of remote-learning science. Anecdotes allow estimations of impact and the creation of hypotheses. If nobody talks about a problem, does it exist?

But what about children in Australia, where remote teaching has been done for many years? Are they all somehow specially gifted children, so that they manage?

Can you say more about the format of remote learning in Australia? Age ranges? How much video per day? In my school district, they are looking at 4 hours (2, 2-hour blocks) of "live learning" in-person per day, for 5-6 year olds. I can't imagine they're doing that in Oz?

Probably referring to this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air

I can only assume they are talking about “school of the air”. Very much not the norm here, it’s very remote students hours from towns taking school remotely.

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.”

This is interesting!

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.

I don't know all that much about how it's done there, so I can't really answer that.

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...

Finally a comment that makes some sense. This should be near the top, really.

Heck, older kids have problems. My brother has a large screen for the computer and his son did his first Zoom class and freaked out. The 30+ faces staring at him was just too much. My brother had to switch to the view that just shows the speaker. It was still a pain for the whole day. It's just not physical so it becomes watching a TV show for the whole day. There is something about the physical presence of others that makes things better.

> You give me the most well-behaved kid, ...

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.

Saying you can relate to what the author describes means that you can fill in the iceberg below the surface. I'm not sure I can say that for those without kids developing an appreciation for the magnitude of this iceberg is possible without having a child. I'm still learning how to dad and part of that is sharing the experience of the phase transition from childless to parent with those who have yet to or choose not to pass through the transition. With enough time and thought (which is hard to come by when you have a kid), maybe I'll get there.

What is your brilliant solution then???

This is clearly the best we can do know.

Often it's easier to find a solution by talking about a problem, rather than staying silent until you've solved it on your own.

I don't have a brilliant solution. But it's also not clear to me that this is the best we can do now. It might be better to skip the whole thing entirely.

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 is the first thing that came to mind, not the best we can do.

And yet, with a little time, patience, and dedication from parents, all children can be taught to be respectful, focus, and learn the way we need them to learn during a strange and complicated time.

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.

If, by "a little time", you mean a few years, until they're psychologically developed enough that you can expect this of them.

"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.

My son had to miss pre-school when he was 4.

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.

Ah, so the original comment is predicated on the assumption that all adults are capable of doing that for their kids.

Some are. Some aren't.

Same goes for the kids.

I'm saying that all adults are capable of making distance learning work for their kids. They CAN do it, but it will be HARD.

Nah.

Some parents are ESL with low literacy rates and little access to technology in their homes. It's very privileged to preach to such people and tell them they need to just get over it, stop complaining, do the hard work.

Not everyone lives the same life as you.

What you did with your child is vastly different than sitting them down in front of a computer screen for hours. You interacted with your child and gave them a social experience and hands on activities. People have to work and can't just take off to be full time teachers for their children. Sure you would have loved Zoom, but I doubt your child would have.

This is a good point. GP is arguing that their experience with their child was great, specifically because they didn't sit their child down in front of a screen and tell them to sit still and watch a pixelated head talk at them all day. And they're probably right, what they're describing sounds like an awesome learning environment.

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.

Effectively, what you're advocating for is that parents should all homeschool their children.

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.

I'm saying that I'm tired of parents saying they "can't" do this distance learning things, or their kids "can't" do it, because they can, and if everyone put in some positive energy and effort, we can make it a success.

I don't think everyone should homeschool.

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.

Slightly unrelated, very sorry, but could you direct me to the resources you used while teaching your son?

> This world is full of can't can't can't.

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.

Unfortunately the laziness is all around us where I live. We’ve struggled for the last 10 years to find more than 2 or 3 other families that think the way we do.

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