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Comment by shard | Hacker News Reader

> this seems to be purely a thing in the english speaking cultures

This is a major thing in many East Asian cultures as well, China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea. Korea had to pass a law saying that private academies have to close at 10pm, so that kids aren't studying past midnight, but some academies still stay open secretly as the parents are demanding the extra hours. It's a vicious circle: kids compete for the few spots in top universities so they can get into the best companies, average qualifications rise, so next generation have to compete even harder for the same few spots.

This is carried over to the US as well. Asians compete for the few spots in top universities, as they are held to higher standards already, and this just keep ratcheting up the average standard for Asians each generation.

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I'm not familiar with this custom, but wouldn't kids with more balanced extracurricular lives have an advantage over those who fill their day to the brim? Surely after some point you hit diminishing returns, and after that it becomes downright damaging (in terms of mental health etc). So I'd expect the cycle to balance itself after a while, with parents eventually recognizing the importance of downtime. What gives?

(I suppose the answer is that there's an economic incentive in squeezing your kids into a pressure cooker of endless commitments, to the point where the pros outweigh the cons; but this assumption makes me feel like I'm being unfairly cynical to the parents in question.)

Depends. If you think it is just diminishing returns, than you always get more the more you put in. Just not as much. You have to drop to negative returns for that to go away.

And indeed, in that framing, it is going to be tough to make it so that those who can afford to spend their time shouldn't do so.

So, are there policies where we could make it so that folks can put a legit value in the things they are neglecting for this extra spend in time? I can certainly hope so.

You end up with generational trauma, Asian parents who were worked to the bone as children, saw peers find higher-paying jobs as a result, the people who had mental breakdowns are presumably brushed aside and viewed as a source of shame, many keep grinding through the system because the alternative is poverty as a farmer, end up with scars repressed and treating their children the same way... and the children who break from the pressure bond over the Internet and try to treat each other with kindness, but are often unable to provide for each other because they're too mentally scarred to find jobs and make a living.

> wouldn't kids with more balanced extracurricular lives have an advantage over those who fill their day to the brim?

Depends on what you mean. Afterschool activities often include sports, so there's some balance between academics and physical activities, but physical activities won't get you into a good school unless you are at a competitive level, so there are high pressures there as well.

As for parents who recognize the importance of downtime? The ones that can afford it... send their kids overseas. But of course, even with added downtime, those kids are more academically competitive, so they end up ratcheting up the standards in the area they go to.

After bedtime, I would grab a book, creep into the bathroom, and hop into the dry bathtub to read. I preferred this to a flashlight under the covers.

Mom would find me, send me back to bed, and shame me for reading. Then I was further shamed and humiliated when I was fitted for spectacles in third grade. Of course my parents blamed myopia on reading books in poor lighting.

That bathroom was actually the site of innumerable playtimes for me. Battleships and Cartesian divers in the tub, Rubik's cube maintenance, trying to get my alligator lizard to drink from the tap. It was a dingy, dusty playground where I felt kinda safe and clean.

Question is, what did you read? I don't think these kids going to night school are there to read popular youth literature.

TFA subject is "Play".

Myopia is caused by spending time indoors without full wavelength sun exposure btw. Two hours outdoors when the sun is bright should be enough.

Hindsight is 20/20!

Korea had to pass a law saying that private academies have to close at 10pm

similarly, china banned private afterschool services for school subjects. i don't know how effective the ban is, but their argument was similar.

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