Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

> I’m now writing this in an attempt to start letting go of that spite. Just like I was during school, those teachers too were probably doing their best, and making mistakes, as we all do. Instead, I thank them for trying, I thank them for their patience. I know I derailed nearly every class and I know that many of you at least recognised the potential, and tried to get me to see what I was capable of.

This reads like: now that I'm old and very wise I finally understand that those who hurt me as a child can't be blamed because they tried their best.

But I don't think absolution makes sense here. The 6 year old isn't at fault for being who he is. It's the responsibility of adults to figure out why a kid isn't thriving. Trying to force a round peg into a square hole year after year after year is not reasonable, and cannot possibly be considered "trying their best". Should teachers continue to bully kids who can't sit still? Is the status quo for ADHD kids acceptable? Of course not. ADHD kids deserve a happy childhood, too.

It's totally fine to make peace with the past and to let go of anger without trying to justify what happened.

> It's the responsibility of adults to figure out why a kid isn't thriving.

Isn't that putting the bar too high?

> Should teachers continue to bully kids who can't sit still?

There's no mention of that in the article.

The author also makes assumptions that look rather fanciful. There's no reason to take his explanations/rationalizations at face value.

If the adults aren't responsible, then who is??

They too were children once.

It comes down a lot to your definition of responsibility. Yes, those teachers were adults who could make their own decisions. But sometimes you can make all the decisions that you see as being the best and most informed at the time you make them, and still produce poor outcomes, simply because you don't have the resources or knowledge or ability to do better.

So should we judge the teachers based on how they tried to make decisions in the moment when the author was young, or should we judge them based on the results of their decisions with the knowledge that we have now? I find that quite a hard question to answer definitively, but I do know that I tend to use the former rule for myself and the latter rule for others, which certainly seems quite unfair to me.

I think you're right that there is definitional question here. I think it's right to state that adults are responsible because children are physiologically incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. I think it's right to observe that harm has been done when harm has in fact been done.

The question of "guilt" or "judgement" is more complicated, as you say. Where many people go wrong is that they automatically jump from harm + responsibility towards guilt. That's how you end up with articles like these where the author feels like he has to choose between anger towards his teachers and thanking them because they tried their best. That's a false dichotomy if I have ever seen one.

A teacher who traumatizes a child isn't that different from a surgeon who botches a surgery. It doesn't mean the surgeon is a terrible person but neither does it mean you have to be thankful to the surgeon because he tried and because he operated successfully on other people.

No, that's the inherent job of an educator, to assess the student's situation which includes physical, mental, and emotional support.

If you want to teach someone anything while yelling at them, or making them uncomfortable because the room is too hot, or by making them do meaningless puzzles that don't relate to the material it deeply compromises your goal of teaching them.

An interesting anecdote, I was sent to months of psychological and physiological evaluation as a child as some adults knew something was "wrong" or more accurately things didn't seem to make sense.

Those things finally made sense to me when I did a short screener for autistic masking and found myself in the 99th percentile.

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