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Comment by hoot | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the point of school is even going to be at this point

I had a similar reply in a separate thread, but human-to-human interaction is extremely important for young children. Teachers teach much more than school subjects in the classroom - they teach how to behave, how to ask for help, how to interact with others, etc. I often feel like teachers of young children teach them how to be "human".

I think as people age they can probably rely more on Khan Academy, etc.

Maybe this will change in the future as we find better ways to teach young children with technology, but I would be apprehensive with dropping a 1st grader in front of a screen and having zero human interaction.

> teach how to behave, how to ask for help, how to interact with others, etc. I often feel like teachers of young children teach them how to be "human".

Isn't that the job description of parents and/or day care?

Small modern families don’t have a ton of people around and the relationships between those people tend to settle into equilibrium. It’s not really adequate for practicing the adaptive social skills we usually (used to?) expect from adults.

And day care can provide more of that, but is naturally supplanted for 25-30 hours per week once kids start attending school.

Socialization is absolutely a function of schools. You can expect big societal repercussions if it were substantially removed.

Yes, but at that age it's important to be taught those things and be socialized through all aspects of life. You can kind of think of it like learning a language - you learn it faster when you're fulling enveloped in it.

It's easy for parents to miss things that a public school teacher with an education degree would not.

Also, children can be taught all of that by their parents and through day care, but still fail to do what they've been taught in a school setting. It's important for teachers to teach those things or reinforce those teachings.

I highly recommend asking teachers of young children about this, or looking into what education materials teachers are trained on. Many schools have professional development days, so what a teacher knows and works with changes/updates often.

School is more than pure pedagogy - learning social skills, making friends, and developing resilience are equally, if not more important.

Aren't team sports much much better at teaching those?

These aren't mutually exclusive, if anything most (virtually all?) school have team sport classes

Also: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/7-charts-that-show...

One important function of schools is not only to offer education, but to force people to become educated. (Nearly) everyone in a society sharing some common skillsets (like writing, basic math, critical thinking etc) is hugely beneficial, and allows individuals and society at large to get long-term benefits where on their own they might have chosen short-term benefits. Though arguably that effect is strongest in the early grades.

a) a shared reference frame (mainly social)

b) stability/refuge for kids/adolescents from unstable families

c) interpersonal connections with experienced humans (opposed to isolated discovery)

d) pedagogy

that was its main purpose for a while now; most people learn complex concepts through youtube these days. an engineers/hackers ability to dive into topics on their own doesn't map to the requirements for the healthy development of a child.

To provide environment for obtaining social skills and to shape brain development with a series of repeated pedagogical excersises.

What's your alternative though ?

Having kids learn on screens, play on screens and work on screens ? From kindergarten to the grave ?

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