Teens' anxiety levels dropped during pandemic, study finds
bbc.com
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- Homework should be abolished
- School should start at a reasonable time. In my opinion, 8AM is too early. Kids that live far away have to wake up at 6AM, which is not a normal time judging by when kids wake up during summer break (9-10AM). 9AM would be acceptable. Not sure how much it would affect teachers' lives though.
- Kids should be made aware of the psychological help they can receive if they have personal issues. We had a psychologist at school, but I don't think anyone consulted them.
- Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia. Housework (fixing things, cleaning etc), finance, time management, how to actually learn/study effectively, mental health awareness, working out with correct technique and not ruining your body, how to eat healthily are all things that I value more than knowing the intricate details of how the European Union came to be (knowing history is useful and interesting, but I'd have rather spent that time on the aforementioned things). Of course, a lot of kids are going to complain many things in this list are boring, but they will value them once they grow older. PE in my school didn't teach any theory, which is just stupid looking back. Our body is with us for the rest of our lives, we should have the knowledge of how to take care of it.
Also, certain degree of freedom is something that everyone wants and values in their life. It would probably be expensive and hard, but if possible, I'd try to give kids a way to choose a small part of their study path.
An entire essay on the subject: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/getting-hit-head-lessons/
A big problem with school for me was that very little of it was framed in a way that made it seem useful. In subjects where I either understood the value (math for example, as I learned to program in my teens, so saw value in it to do things I wanted. While many of my peers followed the “it’s only useful if you want to be a math teacher” philosophy) or had some kind of extra interest in, I did well in, but even in subjects I chose to do, liked and was good at (eg German), I struggled trying to find the motivation to do any homework. Being forced to didn’t help, I would rather stare into space for an hour than actually spend the time on homework.
A big part of it, I think, was I needed downtime. I had already spend many hours in school and now was being told I needed to spend my time doing more school stuff? No thanks!
Even now, a couple of decades later, I need downtime to process the things that happened during the day. I’m a huge believer in Hammock Driven Development because of how important I feel thinking, reflection and downtime is.
EDIT: hell, I did really bad on one subject I used to be great at because of the homework: the homework load was too high so I dropped to the lower level class instead, which was the start of my downward spiral: it was too easy so I didn’t do much in it, the teacher didn’t push me and a few years later I struggled and never recovered. If the homework load were less, I would have stayed in the higher level class and, while I’m not certain, I’m pretty sure I could have at least maintained my ability instead of it deteriorating. I still believe I would have done better in my final exam at age 13 than I did at age 17 because of this.
It all boils down to not wanting to put any effort in the end.
Would you also say that programmers writing code on computers instead of pen & paper just "don't want to put any effort in"?
In the school during lesson, there is less privace as people look at you struggling and plus there is always someone to instantly nudge you.
I strongly believe that tests are an underutilized way to teach. Many seems to believe that you can't learn anything during tests, that they are only there to evaluate kids. However actually sitting and thinking about stuff is really important and tests helps with that.
Tests are not place for individual problem solving nor for figuring stuff out, they are for when you already learned that stuff and is proving to others that you did.
I do agree that's a useful life skill, but that is really scraping the barrel for reasons why homework works.
The problem there is we can find examples where there is no homework and a functional, thriving society behind it [0]
To me school is mostly about teachers checking on students instead of them actually explaining things. Once I was on a summer school in the Netherlands during university and I remember one of the professors saying that during the first 2 semesters they need the students to unlearn destructive behaviours from school. E.g. admitting when they don't know something and to ask. I'm from Germany but to me it seems like a problem occurring in many countries.
The Montessori Method of Education, developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori, is a child-centered educational approach based on scientific observations of children. The method views the child as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning environment. It attempts to develop children physically, socially, emotionally and cognitively.[1]
I used them, they were great for scoring high quality drugs. All I needed to do was memorize a list of symptoms, regurgitate them and get referred to a specialist and do the same again.
Which is why as an adult I find the whole area of psychiatry to be bunk. And that's supposedly the harder of the psychological sciences. If you can't deal with false positives you have no place in medicine.
If I came in to a doctors office and demanded they reattach my missing leg, while clearly having two legs I'd be met (rightly) with skepticism, somehow when it comes to the mind it doesn't work that way. Surely someone would have figured out a way to measure the missing serotonin by now?
The total failure of positivism in clinical psychology is what resulted in the current state of affairs, pushing for more of it won't bring about any imagined golden age of psychology, only further `the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time' [0]. Positivism is a flawed doctrine and at this point should be considered nothing but dangerous dogma -- at least in the case of psychiatry.
[0]: I believe it was Mark Fisher that said something to this end but I digress.
By any objective standard - suicide rates, lost days of work, self harm, substance abuse, murder, etc. - we are worse off or no better today than in 1960 when we were supposedly emotionally stunted and oppressed. Every extra dollar spent on psychology/psychiatry since then has been a waste.
That's not even touching on the crisis of reproducibility that has made a mockery of the entire field and put it somewhere between catholic confessionals and recreational drug use in terms evidence based outcomes.
You brought very little in defense of positivism, so I'm at a lose as to what I can respond with there. What I will say is that, by relying on a macroscopic outcome and declaring that any increase must be caused by the psychiatric field, you ignore the very obvious fact, something positivism constantly struggles with, that the world has changed since the 60's. Is the rise of social media the fault of psychiatry? Is underemployment? How about Fortress Europe?
By most microscopic measurements, clinical psychology is a cure that does help the majority of patients. Both in the long-term and short-term.
That is where we disagree.
Clinical psychology makes people feel better about themselves in the short term, long term there is a distinct lack of evidence of positive outcomes. And a lot of unrepeatable experiments that show positive trends which disappear when looked at more closely.
As for psychological help, maybe those who consulted them just didn't talk about it?
Absolutely agree on your last point though.
That's also probably only going to work for highschool aged kids. The reality is that they're probably capable of getting themselves to school if you have to leave early
THIS !
Cooking, Nutrition, Medicine, Drugs & Vitamins, Finance, Basic electronics etc. Practical stuff needed every day.
Schools mainly get funded through local property taxes. If you compare curriculum in towns that are generally middle and upper middle class with towns that have a larger lower middle class population you’ll probably see different curriculum. More AP classes, electives, life planning, etc.
The town I live in has pretty high taxes but it’s mainly to fund the local school system which ranks high. Just about everyone with kids uses the public school system because of this and it’s a big selling point to new residents home-shopping.
But we pay for it.
The curriculum broadly is determined by the school board.
The school board tends to be made up of more "well off" people.
They will prioritize the types of classes that they took to get them where they are.
If you are on the school board, you are most likely not a house wife, not a mechanic, not a seamstress, etc.
So you get a prioritization on classes that lead you down the "four year degree, rise to management" type of life.
Also, not sure 15 year old me could have imagined something less interesting than finance lessons where I get to figure out how to manage all the money I don’t have.
We had health class for a few years at my school.
> Finance
We had some basic finance, but I would have liked more. We covered writing a check and balancing a checkbook. I'd have liked to see more about calculating compound interest, as well as a primer on how taxes work. I can see the tax lesson failing, though, if it was too long before I got an actual job.
> Basic electronics
This was covered in college, but not high school. I'm not sure this is very practical for most people, either. People need to know how to use computers, but not necessarily how to design a circuit board.
I did in the 1970's computer programming at my comprehensive and we started with adders, half adders and machine language programming BTW this was for the CSE stream (this not going to university)
Professors teach, are they in that position because of some ineptitude? Of course not, the opposite.
Students' parents, guardians, extended cohabiting family, etc. have an impossibly diverse range of skills (and ability to communicate, etc.). Even if these people were available at all times, they remain a hugely variable source. If we're saying that practical life skills are important, we should aim to provide a consistent experience to avoid inequality in society.
I'm sure everyone has stories about how the people who raised them taught them a few things well and were terrible examples of others. Some of these will be funny, but others can have life changing consequences.
Should the school system be designed for ideals that don't hold true, or for the real world?
Sometimes YouTube (or online courses) can help: https://www.youtube.com/c/DadhowdoI/
But sorting good information from bad is a skill on its own. People come up with all kinds of heuristics with varying efficacy.
Eh, no; they're probably more available on average these days. Average working hours are down quite a lot in most developed countries, and far more people have regular scheduled employment (vs working on a farm or similar, which could frequently be every waking hour for most of the year). But the assumption that most parents either know these things or are good at teaching them is... optimistic, to say the least.
I was cooking some of my own meals from when I was 14 or so - Ok this was only simple stuff
They wake up that late because they're staying up late. They should be waking up when the sun tells them to, and go to sleep when their body tells them to, which doesn't happen because they're surrounded by light that messes up their circadian rhythm. This has a huge impact on things like anxiety.
Consequently, there can't be one time that is optimal. Why do we work the hours that we do, year round? It doesn't make sense biologically, it's an artifact of industrialization.
> “Research to date has shown that the circadian rhythms of adolescents are simply fundamentally different from those of adults and children,” said lead author Gideon Dunster, a UW doctoral student in biology.
> “All of the studies of adolescent sleep patterns in the United States are showing that the time at which teens generally fall asleep is biologically determined — but the time at which they wake up is socially determined,” said Dunster. “This has severe consequences for health and well-being, because disrupted circadian rhythms can adversely affect digestion, heart rate, body temperature, immune system function, attention span and mental health.”
Seen similar information from other sources, but this came up first after a quick search. Of course screen light probably makes the problem worse, but there do seem to be significant biological factors.
The one thing that disrupts the circadian rhythm dramatically is light. This is well-established and also mentioned in the article you linked.
> Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia.
This is parenting vs schooling, ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services.
And more importantly, history isn't "random trivia". While the merits of a degree in history may be debatable, if the majority of the UK had a passable knowledge in why the EU exists, and what the UK did to become an empire, the attitude towards integration with the EU would likely be very different.
> PE in my school didn't teach any theory, which is just stupid looking back.
PE is the bare minimum amount of exercise and movement a child could have without being considered "entirely sedantry". For many kids it's the _only_ exercise they get.
As much as I agree with other points, I can only strongly disagree here. It strongly implies a condescending attitude that stupid and uneducated decided about British future. If only they could be brainwashed^H taught they would choose the “right” option.
It's not condescending in the slightest, and debate around Brexit revealed that although theres's nothing wrong with being against european integration, a lot of people have almost no idea of what the EU does and does not do.
If people at large understood what happened and why we have the institutions we currently have, they are shown to be far more likely to be in favour of them.
For serious analyses of the Brexit question by extremely well equipped academics (I rather think they 'understand') and others try https://briefingsforbritain.co.uk/
I completely agree that the physical activity is important, but then let's not pretend that it's educative when it isn't.
It feels like PE was 2-3 years of gymnastics followed by 6-7 years of "let's just play basketball/volleyball/soccer" with a semester of swimming here-and-there. Certainly no instructions or structure to any of it.
As a fat kid, I was always the happiest when sitting out entirely (or swimming, where it turns out natural buoyancy is actually helpful).
Always getting Ds and Fs and being chosen last for any team activity led to me spend my college years on the couch.
Only through getting back pain and posture problems I found out 5 years later that I enjoy jogging and yoga and weightlifting and isometric exercise - if properly instructed.
It feels like I missed out on the years in between simply because PE at school never had the goal of helping kids be healthy - just keeping them busy in any way possible.
Workspaces aren't educative, of themselves, but they're a pretty important facet of running a school.
Due to all my previous negative experience, I chose to sort-of-quit PE altogether. It was impossible to actually quit, but you could compensate it with an equal amount of extra credit, so I happily replaced it with Arts credit.
Surprisingly, no one as much as batted an eyelid at that. The snobby attitude of "who needs PE anyway" was certainly prevalent in my age group.
A study has shown that PE in schools have show it has zero benefits and only teaches some kinds to skip classes.
You'll need a slightly stronger argument to meaningfully shape this debate
The discipline isn't, but the way at least I've been taught it unfortunately is... It didn't take me until I graduated to take an interest in history, when I could learn the cause and effect chains without getting distracted by rote memorization.
If I'm being honest with myself, my answer is probably no. "If only they taught _" for me, can be boiled down to "If only I was 30 in grade school"
Even if you select for ability along some axis, you still get different interests and learning styles - and personalities.
Learning is basically industrial, uselessly abstracted [1] and commodified, when it could be individualised. A lot of talent is wasted because high school stunts the really bright kids. And given how brutal it is, it seems to damage everyone emotionally.
[1] Virtually none of the math you learn at school really makes any sense unless you're one of the small number of people who go into STEM - which is where you finally discover what it's for. Things are a bit better than they used to be, but basic financial math as a specific competence is far more useful to most of the population than even the most basic algebra and trig.
For instance: How long was WWII? How long was Vietnam? When exactly did WWII start, before or after US involvement? Knowing those sorts of dates allows students to put today's wars into context. Has the US been in Iraq longer than WWII? Longer than Vietnam? They can memorize the dates and answer those questions themselves. That makes them informed citizens, and some of them eventual informed soldiers, better able to participate in very relevant current events.
You know what is completely useless? Telling the date each happened on their respective classes, and that this knowledge will be tested.
Memorizing dates is as dull as it can be, without having motivation from knowing the context. Dull things get crammed for tests and then forgotten, with near zero retention when those people grow up and actually want to use the context.
Even if dates were more important than causes, they stick less, reducing the utility of teaching them.
I wonder about this type of thing a lot when I think of my experience in school. a lot of the material they taught me in lower and middle school was just wrong. not like subtly wrong, but blatantly incorrect in a way that would be obvious to any undergrad major in that subject (which schoolteachers often are). I'm sure the teachers must have realized too. why spend so much time teaching stuff that needs to be unlearned as early as high school?
the best example I can think of right now is the answer to "why is the sky blue?". my lower school science teacher told us it was reflecting the ocean. I'm sure she realized this answer didn't make any sense, but that's what she taught us. I don't expect teachers to try to explain raleigh scattering to a group of third graders, but wouldn't it be better just not to explain it at all?
I can understand teaching general rules upfront with the expectation that exceptions will be covered later (eg, teaching lower school students that water boils at 212F/100C is okay, they can learn about vapor pressure later). but why would you teach that columbus was the first european to discover north america? not only is it completely wrong, but it's not a practically useful fact, nor does it create a solid basis for deeper understanding.
Who's Rayleigh?
in a weird contrast, we spent tons of time on the civil war and slavery (and not just the sugar-coated version either). we learned about thomas jefferson and sally hemings, and we learned about andrew jackson and the trail of tears. so I don't think it was out of squeamishness that they declined to cover more recent history.
I get that schools (especially private schools) ultimately need to satisfy the parents, but it strikes me as a massive disservice that my peers and I were able to graduate high school without learning a single thing to contextualize the two defining current events of our childhood: 9/11 and the iraq war. the film charlie wilson's war was the best explanation I got until I was in college.
Although to be fair, history textbooks are often really terrible.
We (collectively) want all children to have a good foundation of life skills by the time they reach adulthood.
Unfortunately there is no curriculum for what a parent must teach their children.
Luckily, there is a standardized curriculum in the form of schooling.
Instead of assuming all children get good parents (which is obviously a harmful assumption), let’s just take advantage of the fact that we can pretty much guarantee all students will learn the school curriculum and use it to teach important life skills to children who otherwise wouldn’t learn.
Why not use that math class to teach personal finance, mortgage rates, basic economics, etc.
Why not couple English with a stronger focus on proper communication (especially negotiation, conflict resolution)
etc.
Teachers are given a document that says in X weeks you need to cover the following topics/units. Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement -- regardless of their parental upbringing.
> Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement
I'm pretty sure by age 14 my school math problems were along the lines of "John takes out a loan for $x, with a compounding interest rate of Y%, how much does he pay back in total?"
I agree that we could do better at teaching however!
I do not believe that having a specific curriculum is necessary to have a good foundation of life skills. In addition I would argue that the curriculum in schools is absolutely disappointing if this is the target.
> Instead of assuming all children get good parents (which is obviously a harmful assumption), let’s just take advantage of the fact that we can pretty much guarantee all students will learn the school curriculum and use it to teach important life skills to children who otherwise wouldn’t learn.
The issue here is that you are basically torturing these students that would end up learning (either due to their parents or to some other resource) regardless in order to improve the life of these that would not. I would understand your point however if school was not mandatory.
I think you need to face this fact to understand schooling in 2020.
And if quarantine changed anything, it is that I value school more then before. And I am not one of those people desperate to somehow making remote school and work function, thankfully we had no stressful deadlines during that time. But the kids still missed it and still learned better when in school then home alone.
It's better if school policy can be discussed admitting it has two main purposes.
While this may exaggerate the case, it will continue to largely be true so long as we relegate huge portions of our population to 2-3 jobs while the VC system sustained in part by Ycombinator rewards capital formation to a degree that is damaging to society.
Usually when people say they are working 2-3 jobs I believe they mean they get a couple of shifts a week from a couple of different employers.
E.g. 16 hours a week at a coffee shop, 12 hours a week at a restaurant and 2 nights a week as a cleaner.
I understood the comment to be angry about some large injustice, I'm not sure whether they were meaning to essentially say "some people have to work for a living, it's outrageous". With (Western) Europe's extremely strong social systems, the number of people who are forced to work multiple jobs because they wouldn't be able to eat otherwise is minuscule, I believe.
The financial education and time management lines really resonated with me from the parent comment. The problem is that there is not anything resembling equal footing at home. Rich kids, realistically the top 5-10%, are going to get financial education at home and the others will have to learn in the school of hard knocks. I had to learn “tough” lessons about finance because the resources for what I needed to know didn’t exist at home. And I talk to people now who are older about how they prep their kids for the world, and it’s just a classic information imbalance. You could do a lot of good by leveling the playing field here.
Physical Education wasn't my favorite class, but never once did anyone talk about the theory behind developing athletic performance or recruiting the proper muscles for a movement or anything like that. It was just "go run" or "play a game of baseball".
But I agree that there is some lost potential in terms of building a strong knowledge base about fitness and well-being. The paper below suggests there are likely a lot of moderating factors in the benefits of PE.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701809817
Meanwhile they prevent my generation from building houses and rob our pensions.
Modern school systems are pretty much entirely this... only they aren't really glorified. To be fair, a society in which every adult is expected to be working needs some kind of daycare for kids, but there are probably better ways to go about it.
Which, that sentiment applies directly to history.
I am 42. I had less than 9 weeks of cooking. Part of that 'cooking' was cooking once a week, a cookie contest that almost got me in trouble because I didn't cook while home sick, and how to set a table for a formal setting (i've never used this). The once-a-week cooking was in a group setting. I had "financial education" in social studies class - taught by a car salesman friend of the teacher. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at used cars. I was in 8th grade: 13 years old at the time.
I had health class, which mostly taught us the parts of the body and sex ed over and over again. PE class at one point consisted of ping-pong for 6 weeks: I didn't learn anything that I could actually use in life - how to be do cardio, stretching, weight training, nope. Nothing like that.
Not once was I ever introduced to any sort of child development classes. You see, I took AP classes and had a full college prep schedule, so they didn't think these classes were important. Some others were so much better prepared than I was.
That seems super shady. Did anyone end up filing a complaint with the school board?
There are most likely illegal policies and activities taking place at every public school in the U.S., and it's not taken seriously because children cannot vote and many parents think the schools ought to be going hard on their kids anyways.
Although in retrospect it was perhaps a bit ridiculous that my cooking class allowed only a microwave, while I worked an open forge in metalworking.
However, 08:00 local astronomical time does seem too early and most European time zones are ahead of local astronomical time, sometimes ridiculously so, making 08:00 even earlier. So I don't disagree.
Kids learn at different speeds so a good education system takes that into regard. Systems should be transient that slow starters can catch up at a later time and reach higher forms of education.
We need more teachers and smaller groups. Eating healthy can be a course, but you quickly loose all the pupils that already learned that from their parents.
Mental health is hard to teach and there is little certain knowledge here, it only works individually. Aside from really hard cases, I think children have quite resilient minds.
I believe the reluctance to do physical exercise has other sources, not really lacking education. But PE is vastly to be preferred to medicating "unusual" behavior.
Typical response By admin is to ignore the the Issue or minimize it.
I cannot honestly condemn teachers that disengage though. Classrooms get bigger, bullying happens digitally and out of reach, teachers and parents are critical of each other and pupils are the first to notice if they have free reign and know pretty well how to profit from such conflicts.
Do you think this was an issue of not being aware of the offering, as opposed to it being difficult to get help for one's personal issues because of stigma or feeling like you can handle it if you just try a little harder?
I would also say that something needs to be done regarding bullying and teachers that are power-tripping.
How much does a year at an American University Cost ?
Random trivia should not be taught, but cleaning and fixing? Next you'll want to teach morals.
We always have in many ways, but I catch your drift. I take issue with schools that teach kids what to think instead of how to think.
I don’t know if it is pandemic but I’ve seen some people complain about some very controversial curriculum creeping into schools. A person I saw on Twitter recently posted some curriculum their 1st grader was being taught which tells a story through the lens of critical race theory. In essence telling the children that the white kids are racist and need to work to be anti-racist.
It was shocking to me because it is applying controversial “Theory” that is very much opposed to liberal science ideals of falsifiability and injecting identity politics into minds that can’t even begin to understand the postmodern philosophy these ideas grew from.
It's not even about teachers being good or bad. It's about something called "illusion of competence". Basically, everything seems easy while teacher is explaining it on whiteboard, but when facing similar task on your own, outside of the classroom you are completely lost, don't know where to start. Homework helps dispell that illusion.
An excellent cowpath right? "The teachers are bad, so rather than fixing the teachers we make the students teach themselves afterhours."
That's like saying you're a great natural basketball player and practice should be abolished.
Practical skills: History is useful, yes, especially for governance and historical equity. If Americans didn't know history well, more Southerners could get away with the false states rights narrative for the Civil War. But, on the whole, I agree we overly focus on literature and ancient history relative to modern skills, IMO.
That said, abolishing HW is great too. It’s become a crutch for bad teachers.
As a child, and now as an adult, I've always thought homework was an insane proposition. If you had a job where you showed up in person for 7 (realistically more than 7) hours a day, but then assigned arbitrary multi-hour long projects afterhours, you'd quit, 1000%.
> In my opinion, 8AM is too early.
First bell for us was 7:18. Meaning the bus showed up at 6:30. Meaning wake up was 5:45.
Looking back, my four years of high school were probably the worst years of my life. I'm glad, at least for a brief minute, current high school students are getting some kind of reprieve.
Everything on your list except housework was part of my required curriculum in High School in 1990s California (and the housework stuff was offered as an elective called Home Economics). Now I wonder if it's still there.
Oh and massive grade inflation
School is for education and culture, that is those "random trivia".
Fixing things, cooking, and cleaning can be taught in a couple of classes (e.g. shop) or taught by their parents...
I would have been 100% happier as a kid if I could have simply done my education on my own or virtually, and spent my time with people I actually enjoyed the company of. Sort of what it's like to be an adult actually. The modern school system is such a terrible model.
I think it all comes down to how students are seen by architects and the school system in general. I wonder if private schools are different.
It definitely felt like we were trapped in there and held against our will.
Now I am curious how schools in scandanavia are, given their famous prisons.
But that's the same part of me talking that wishes everyone was "forced" to work a retail or food service job for a year or two of their life. Probably impossible to actually do and enforce here, but would definitely make people overall be nicer and more considerate of others (and in the case of cleaning schools, more likely to clean up after themselves).
I was and am a vegetarian, and maybe in wealthy districts they have better lunch options, but certainly not in mine. The fact that we largely tie school funding to property taxes is a huge problem. Regardless, let’s not pretend that school lunch, at least in the 90s, was actually healthy or good or even at a reasonable time for lunch.
My SO was a teacher for a few years too. Despite Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) being offered and encouraged, many kids' parents still could not be bothered to sign their kids up until late in the year. My SO kept food in the drawers of the desk for these kids. In addition, FRL did not cover the weekends, so many kids would come in on Monday having not eaten for that weekend. Though not common, it was again chronic with these kids.
Food scarcity in the US is still very much a 'thing', unfortunately.
That's pretty frustrating to read. I was sleep deprived enough to sleep 15 hours a day on the weekends during high school, but actually going to bed before midnight still just resulted in staring at a dark ceiling for an hour.
Sleep hygiene is important, but at a certain point the circadian rhythm will put its foot down.
I also suspect that starting at 11 AM-1 PM and going until 4-5 PM, despite being less overall time, would produce vastly better academic outcomes in high school just due to the average teenage circadian rhythm and the resulting zombification of current students. The noneducational duties of high school could be handled by letting students show up earlier as needed with breakfast/lunch provided- the structured classes would just start later.
Maybe give the early arrivers a place to take a nap while we're at it.
I totally agree that if we focused on getting kids a reasonable amount of sleep and a healthy meal or two (and hydrated!), we’d likely be able to have much better outcomes.
I was taking prescribed sleeping pills because I couldn't fall asleep and had anxiety attacks late at night if I forced it. My school started at 6 am so I got up at 5 am. It got pretty bad at some point.
My dad and grandfather both have problem sleeping early but I am worse.
It's not just american schools. All schools resemble prisons because all school systems around the world essentially adopted the american model which borrowed heavily from the prussian model.
All schools were compulsory indoctrination centers which buttressed the burgeoning nation-states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
Modern education system, along with national media, government, etc are pillars of the nation-state. You can't have a nation-state without one nowadays.
Some/all of that have less to do with war and more to do with general disaster preparedness.
* Bomb shelters provide shelter from...bombs, yeah
* Windowless hallways provide shelter from tornadoes (no glass to break/become shrapnel)
* The heavy metal doors are firewalls that automatically close when the alarm goes off (most are hollow, won't do shit against assault weapons and predate even Columbine)
I suppose you could put windows between the classrooms and hallways, but those have their own associated problems to overcome: increased noise, more windows for students to break, safety in emergency situations, etc.
As for non-connected classrooms, where you need to walk outside to go between rooms, I've always thought that was to solve the same problems. Cheaper to build/renovate/modify/expand, easier to clean, less noise and fewer students running into each other.
Ref: https://www.lakeplacid.com/story/2016/02/olympic-prison-stor...
Sleep deprivation has a major effect on generalized anxiety[2]. The research I would like to see done, is to test whether the groups of students with the earliest starting schools saw larger drops in anxiety during the transition to full remote.
[1]https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/features/schools-start-too-early.h... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00057...
I've never worked anywhere that I needed permission to use the bathroom.
https://theconversation.com/companies-target-toilet-breaks-t...
https://nypost.com/2018/04/16/amazon-warehouse-workers-pee-i...
I guess some people in this industry had parents with enough money to avoid ever having to do a non-tech industry job? That would surprise me.
Some manual or skilled labour jobs would permit random breaks, I guess. But most people I know worked service industry. You don't get to just leave a cash register unattended because your bladder says to.
In my experience, the problem of needing to go to the bathroom while also needing to man a register was overcome by a quick "yo, could you cover me for a sec?" to a coworker.
People that work at Walmart, Amazon, major grocery store chains, etc. (i.e. the major employers in America) are expected to man their post until it's time for their legally mandated scheduled bathroom break.
I suspect most people did have a job like that once in their lives. Then again, the last time I actually had a job like that I was actually still in high school, so that sort of policy didn't seem too strange to me at the time.
School is a prison you're forced to go to, are not paid and are typically not able to change schools like you would change jobs (you could potentially go to a private school, but that would depend on your parents having and willing to spend the $$$).
For example: If you are assaulted on work grounds, you have a right to self-defense which will be respected by the police, who will show up, as opposed to being punished the exact same as the person who committed the assault by a school administrator who has decided that Zero Tolerance/Fight-Free Schools means everyone who is involved in an altercation is automatically equally guilty.
> I think we need more classes specifically around teaching coping skills and learning how to interact with others.
This is a good thought, but it runs up against the fact it would involve teaching students to stand up to arbitrary and capricious authority, which is the strategy a number of teachers use to maintain class order. Being able to cope and interact with the world necessarily entails being able to push back against the worst abuses of many school systems, religious organizations, and, yes, to some extent work environments.
Not just that, but they’re also actively isolated from people who aren’t of similar age. Teenagers (who don’t happen to have an older sibling) go through the identity-crisis period of puberty entirely without role-models to, well, model. Other than the made-up, exaggerated ones they see in TV shows.
It’s no wonder the adopted behaviour of most teenagers feels instead like some sort of cargo-culting of adult behavior, rather than a gradual acquisition of actual maturity; and no wonder that it’s such a mental shock for many teenagers when they either enter college or the working world, and so get exposed to non-age-segregated collaborative settings for the first time.
The typical live-in-a-dorm college experience is not so much a mental shock as is about putting off adult life for another four years, while you party.
And, while older (30+) students do exist, most of them don't live in dorms (And those that do, don't live with all the 18-20 year olds.) They will be, at best on the distant periphery of your peer group.
For most people, college does not solve this problem.
Most people, as it turns out, don't pursue technical degrees. Fewer than 10% of degrees are in STEM fields, with another ~10% being in a medicine-adjacent field.
The number of undegraduates who actually go on to do meaningful, novel, work in a lab (As opposed to just using a facility for a few hours, in order to pass a course) is even smaller than that.
The scary distant Real World turned out to be much easier to handle than the artificial one behind the walls of the schoolyard.
And to wit, by all objective measures, I ended up "handling" the Real World far better than any of the people who told me I wouldn't.
Maybe those who teach secondary school do so because they have difficulty handling the real world.
* I both work as a full time developer at a fortune 100 company and teach a few sections of a college level programming class each semester. So I don’t know what this says about me.
I don't think that's for the reasons you outlined, but rather because adolescents are treated like children right up until they've turned 18 and finished high school.
They go from basically having the rights and responsibilities of a child, to those of an adult, rather than a gradual growth of those rights and responsibilities as they mature.
Also, is it not common for teenagers to have jobs any more? I got my first job when I was 15, and haven't been unemployed for longer than a month since (I'm in my late 20s now).
The endless bureaucracy and inefficiency of the school system frustrates all kinds of people.
From your family/friend/neighborhood groups? Are you saying schools are where you go to meet people of similar interests? How can that be when schools are for everyone?
> Humans are social creatures
Humans are social creatures with in-group bias. Especially young kids. Schools are an unnatural system for humans. It's why kids universally don't like school. It's why you have to force, trick and brainwash them into liking school.
You might want to read up on the history of modern education system. They certainly weren't created to meet people with similar interests.
We have the option here in Ontario to keep our kids home and do home learning. But anything else the kids might do to get social exposure and even physical exertion is effectively closed.
Real home schooled kids usually have clubs and so on that they attend to hang out with other kids. That avenue is closed off.
My kids have to go back, just for their own mental health. As awful as the schools might be right now, they'll be better than being stuck at home playing Dragon Quest Builders II through for the third time.
Family? Mom and Dad are 2 people? Did you follow the footsteps of either? Probably not as you have unique interests and tastes. Neighborhood groups? I grew up in an area where I was the only child within 6 blocks? Am I out of luck? Schools _are_ the neighborhood group!!!
Edit: I am well-versed on both the history and current status of the education system. Both my parents and my spouse are full-time teachers.
Didn't say they did. Just said there is a reason why they universally don't like one thing - school.
> so that argument is irrelevant.
The argument isn't irrelevant because it goes against your assertion : "Humans are social creatures". Schools weren't created to be social environments for kids. They weren't created for socializing. Kids don't socialize in a group of 1000 kids. Schools, in fact, prevent socialization. Kids tend to socialize after school. Everything you've said so far is indoctrination nonsense. If you wanted kids to socialize, school is the last thing you'd build.
> Family? Mom and Dad are 2 people? Did you follow the footsteps of either?
So no siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc? Also, do you have to follow in their footsteps to get your social needs from family?
> I grew up in an area where I was the only child within 6 blocks? Am I out of luck?
I wonder what people like you did before schools were invented 150 years ago? Is there a reason why you can't go out 7 blocks?
So you only had a father and mother in your family and were bound to a rule that limited you to 6 blocks?
> Edit: I am well-versed on both the history and current status of the education system. Both my parents and my spouse are full-time teachers.
Now I understand why you think the way you do. Just because your parents are school teachers doesn't mean they or you know the history of the education system. Actually, the fact that your parents worked for the system incentivizes you to ignore the history of the modern school system. It's what happens when you rely on the system for a paycheck.
I'm replying to the parent comment that stated online and virtual learning are superior to attending schools. It was implied the ONLY purpose of school is to ascertain knowledge when that's merely one (small) aspect.
"Schools, in fact, prevent socialization" is maybe one of the most divorced from reality statements I've ever read on HN.
Good luck on your future journey. Edit: Created 20 days ago explains everything
You say this in a country that has a fairly sizable immigrant population. And you don't have to live in the same house to be able to visit grandma on the other side of town.
> Created 20 days ago explains everything
Not here.
That’s demonstrably false. I have plenty of friends in university right now who love school and have great memories of it going all the way back to kindergarten.
I didn’t love high school but I enjoyed elementary school and I love university. I can also think of a few changes that would have made high school a much better experience. Now that I’m in university, I see how much better it could be!
You can have an alternative alongside current standard school structure. You don't need to abolish the current schools but run the alternative and see which one performs better. I find it upsetting how people don't want to introduce alternatives or let man have a choice. Why do people don't want others to have a choice?
You can see this almost everywhere. Take apple walled garden threads. Just why?
Have diverse schools and structure. Some can have bigger breaks and start at noon. Some can be stretched out age wise and be more sociable place. Others can be like prison.
It's bizzare how similar schools are here (India). Some of it is forced by bureaucracy of the state and central government but a lot of it is self imposed while handing out creative and diversity points in their advertisement pamphlet.
But you're right - school is the place where most people form friendships, just like adults at work. It's harder to form friendships if you're not regularly put into social situations with others. I'm not sure what the best answer is institutionally, but I don't think the current state school system is the right one.
That 'life can cause anxiety' doesn't mean it's bad.
Learning anything, exams, trying new things - it's all going to cause some degree of stress and anxiety.
School has constraints, but most of those constraints exist for self-learning anyhow - it takes a fair degree of composure or focus anyhow.
School is not 'living hell' for the vast majority of kids, I don't even know a single person who ever described it that way, though I'm sure it exists.
Structured learning has really no equivalent, especially for those who want to engage.
There are obvious reforms that could be made, not the least of which would be students approaches. Also - a lot more sports (daily), music, and longer term projects and probably some kind of structured free time.
It's not bad at all, it's just far from perfect.
You will still be forced to interact with a bunch of immature kids after school except this time they will not even know they are still children and may be responsible for paying your salary, too.
During the NATO bombing of Serbia 20+ years ago, for us, teens, life was never better - no school, no work, parents worrying about basic stuff (i.e. not us) - just plenty of outside socializing and random activity. Everybody remembers that as good old times :)
I can imagine the same to be true now, not to that extent.
My general feeling (which includes my own family's behavior) is that people have returned to hanging out with whoever they used to. They just don't go to restaurants or other social settings to do it.
There aren't "organized" activities, but I see kids out playing on my street every single evening.
Honestly it's refreshing to see kids behaving organically for once instead of their parents shuttling them from one activity to the next.
I suppose the impact probably also depends on age and the number of siblings.
We've got three that are two years apart and preschool aged. They were able to entertain each other pretty well through it all.
I could see it being a much bigger issue for only children or kids that have a bigger age gap between them.
I used to work with a guy at British Telecom who had been in the under 21 national football squad of one of the waring nations - he was drafted and lost his lower leg to a mine.
He was medevac'd to the UK and with support from a local business man did a degree at Manchester I think
It doesn't at all surprise me that teenagers feel better when they don't have to go to school.
The list of problems that schools face (overcrowding, parental pressure, curricula packed with superfluous stuff no one will ever need again, curricula not even close to incorporating modern technology, buildings obviously in disrepair, way too early start times) is long, and it hasn't shrunk for years now.
I suggest medically induced commas for 8 hours a day. It's quite a safe technology with minimal long term negative effects.
You're getting downvoted for the coma comment, but this here is spot on. When the schools got locked down because of the 'rona, the most pressing problem for parents was that they had no place to put their kid into or a way to care for the kids themselves because rents these days require that both parents work...
It was just a modest proposal.
So really, let's focus on what matters, the original point of holding down a job was clearly to enjoy the A/C at the office.
Besides, those who suffer with it the most either don't vote or have little political relevance or maturity to make a stand. And parents are not good mediators, since they tend to focus on the outcomes, not the day to day life of the student.
That's how you reach the unfortunate situation we have today.
I do not think that countries where people under 18 years old can vote are common.
> but never so broken that it actually demands a top to bottom reform.
I would challenge that, it's just that it does not affect adults which is why it has been ignored until now.
Every cohort of teenagers since ancient times has believed, it seems, that their parents didn't understand. I think then one finds the ignorance was usually balanced in the other direction. Parents in general do want their offspring to grow to be self sufficient, which does require some pain - we're not going to be here forever to care for our kids - but most parents want their kids to get through their whole life with fulfillment and happiness. Sometimes that means a little hardship for a greater life overall.
This I think accounts for parents, in general, seeming to be hard on teenagers. Those teenagers will either realise it was for good or initiate a revolution in how they treat their own teens. That revolution hasn't happened yet.
My observation is that we go in cycles - parents are liberal, their children are more conservative (when they become parents), so their children respond by being more liberal, etc..
Yeah, anxiety is a natural response. And we've developed biological mechanisms to adapt to it. But the application of anxiety has changed _so much_ in just the last few centuries. Anxiety sources have proliferated. Beyond food and shelter, we have anxieties about grades, waking up early, approval from peers, et cetera. This compounds, especially if you come from a family that struggles to even provide food and shelter. Children are also then told they live in a meritocracy and therefore should internalize their shortcomings and bad marks.
I digress, but I don't think we can appeal to nature and argue our current situation as natural. We can be doing better.
Based on what _I think_ you're trying to say, I think this is a terrible take and I hate everything about it. People aren't trees. Society, people, and children especially shouldn't be forced to be exposed to anxiety inducing, depressing, and stress inducing situations. (But that's what I'm guessing what you're saying, since you have not put a real conclusion or clear statement there.)
If the whole of schooling can be replaced by a few videocalls during 2020, what value was it ever really providing.
You could live on water and plain crackers for some time, but that doesn't mean it's a complete, healthy, nourishing, replacement for a normal diet.
The best would be something like comparing people from different U.S. states or cities that are roughly similar, but one city shut down school much longer than the other. (Perhaps even comparing schools, although "whether a school decided to err on the side of staying shut down" probably correlates with something that would affect kids' performance.)
Anyway, let me pre-register my prediction that, if good studies can be done, they will show that kids who were forced to miss a year of school (or in-person school, at least) will not have been measurably negatively impacted by it.
High school was hell for me. I guess a point can be made that it makes you learn life the hard way.
I'm not sure that makes it unecessary, or bad.
As bizarre as that may sound, hospital was like a refuge for me.
And school wasn't even that bad.
This is a common anecdote. Aspies report being more comfortable and less bullied at virtual school vs physical school.
We'll soon have some real data on this. California passed a law last year that requires high school start after 8:30 am. Schools have until the 2022 school year to implement the law, which means we'll have a natural case study as different schools implement it this year (once we return to in person school) and next year and the year after.
...Worth noting there were no school shootings for the first time in decades in March (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-first-march-without...)
Maybe now's the right time to talk on how to improve public schooling, or what to replace it with.
I'd be pretty sure that wasn't true. If you're thinking towards our tribal ancestors then I'd expect that children would be brought on with skills and work as quickly as possible in order to strengthen the tribe.
The oldest school establishments in the UK - from Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages - certainly weren't for "babysitting" (ie provision of nutrition and as much care as needed to prevent injury).
you mean how they ended up. babysitting wasn't an issue when public schooling started
> Compared to pre-pandemic, there was an overall decrease in risk of anxiety, and an increase in wellbeing but no large change in risk of depression
https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peo...
Also, for all of the extremely attentive readers like pwinnski out there, I'm sure they've already come across research on increased rates of suicide due to economic despair https://wellbeingtrust.org/areas-of-focus/policy-and-advocac...
The study also reported specifically that "Students at risk of depression pre-pandemic showed a reduction in depression scores in comparison to students with no depression pre-pandemic (HADS score of 0-6) who showed an small increase in depression scores." So it was the very students most likely to be depressed before the pandemic that are doing (slightly) better, and the small increase (from 3.0 to 3.9) does not raise students into the range considered most dangerous (7+)
Please try to avoid personal jabs and rule-breaking questions, thanks.
[0] up to 68% https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-americans-are-gett... or 47% https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/47-percent-will-mak... https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanguina/2020/04/28/some-earni...
Now I can always say "can't come, better safe than sorry!" and nobody bats an eye.
Before, it was always frowned upon if I didn't want to meet someone.
Thus it is proven that:
1. The total sum of stress is an invariant
2. teachers are a parental stress sink
The study is for anxiety of school, not anxiety in general. Now that people are at home, of course they are going to be less anxious of schooling.
Quote:
“With children and young people having been out of the classroom for so long, and with many students in this study seeing improvements in mental health and wellbeing during that time, the case to address issues weighing on their quality of life at school is stronger than ever.”
https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/anxiety-in...
"With children and young people having been out of the classroom for so long, and with many students in this study seeing improvements in mental health and wellbeing during that time, the case to address issues at school weighing on their quality of life is stronger than ever."
When in doubt, consult the primary source: https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peo...
Quote: "Compared to pre-pandemic, there was an overall decrease in risk of anxiety, and an increase in wellbeing but no large change in risk of depression"
I seen no evidence for that claim, in either article.
One of the worst things you can do for your mental health is avoid uncomfortable feelings. All that usually accomplishes is making those feelings even worse.
That’s why exposure therapy is such a big part in dealing with phobias and anxiety. It’s counter intuitive, but being stressed and anxious (within reason) helps you develop coping mechanisms that come in really handy in life.
I think there are some key differences between the above and what school permits.
And for sure, a child who was never put outside of his comfort zone would make a bad adult. It's just hard to know until hindsight. Some things are simple bad, and should be avoided, but other things are immaturities, and you could grow out of them.