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Comment by jihadjihad | Hacker News Reader

I think it's counterproductive to provide Chromebooks and iPads to students, but the "excessive use of screens" in my experience is by and large a parenting issue. And it's not just about boundaries around devices, like time limits or app restrictions. It's about setting the right example and providing an environment where reading a book is as stimulating and desirable and encouraged as playing a game every once in a while on an iPad.

It's telling that the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children. And children cannot be held accountable for poor habits that are largely a consequence of their environment.

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The screens thing is a diversion.

The core issue is that it's nearly illegal to discipline students now. There's a socioeconomic divide because child behavior is unfortunately negatively correlated to socioeconomics. Thus poor schools suffer more from the lack of ability for teachers to remove disruptive students.

Yes some excellent teachers are sometimes able to deal with it, most cannot.

In the upper income public school my mom teaches at here in the Bay, the "problem kids" are overwhelmingly classified as low-med severity special ed for that reason - it solves the disruption problem while reducing the need to deal with Karens

Interestingly, in my mom's experience, kids from immigrant backgrounds (working class or undocumented Latinos bussed in and Asian Americans from all economic strata) never get in trouble. It's only the "American" parents that try to overstep on educators toes for "disciplining" kids.

maybe it’s not about race. Maybe it’s because the parents of the kids that are bussed-in are less confident to push back out of fear that their kids would lose the privilege of being bussed-in to the “better” school?

The part of Santa Clara County I'm talking about used to be lower middle class until the mid-2010s.

The Latiné and Asian kids aren't "bussed". Meanwhile, a large portion of African American kids are though. White Americans who aren't 1-2 gen and the African Americans tend to have parents that push back on educators (as did the small amount of 2nd gen and older Asian Americans and Latiné American households - hence why I said "American").

Weird. Why are no Latin or Asian kids bussed?

Because we live in these neighborhoods.

California is not like the rest of the US. The racial dynamics are different, and immigrant families from poorer backgrounds are fine paying extremely high premiums or even rent out a garage to live within in order to send their kids to top school districts. "American" families don't do that.

On top of that, utilizing public services is viewed negatively in the American naturalization process, as it can be contested that an applicant is at risk of becoming a "public charge".

Additionally, the moment a neighborhood becomes too "Asian" or "Latino" in the Bay, all the White and Black families who can afford to end up leaving, and those who remain complain about us "changing the character" of our neighborhoods or "being too competitive".

The Western US (Dallas westwards) has an entirely different racial and ethnic dynamic from the rest of the US.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_charge_rule

Interesting how the racial demographics are much less diverse compared to large East Coast cities. For example, there are far fewer African-Americans (5%) percentage wise in San Francisco versus a city like Atlanta (46%) or Philadelphia (40%). In most of these cities, moving out of the neighborhoods where Asians live would actually place you in the worst school districts. The worst schools tend to be in mostly black and latin neighborhoods.

Racial diversity is orthogonal to ethnic diversity. It shouldn't be code for "Black".

For example, continuing with your Atlanta example, the city of Atlanta is 84% white and black, and those White and Black Americans in ATL are overwhelmingly of southern origin in the US.

Meanwhile, an Asian American from Jiangxi is extremely different from someone from the Mekong Delta who is extremely different from someone from Jeolla in South Korea. The only similarly they have is looking kind of similar.

Same for Latiné communities as well.

East Coast cities have more "White" and "Black" people, but not as many Asians or Latiné.

Also, you have to remember the history of the Western US - much of the US west of Dallas wasn't part of the US until the 1840s, and remained a frontier backwater until WW2, so a number of Asian and Latiné ethnic groups had a longer history here than a lot of ethnic groups that are now pivotal in the US.

I think the drop is an almost worldwide thing and not correlated very much to disciplining. Disciplining varies, the screens and the slop are universal.

This is an interesting take. Based on what you’re saying, then I presume that in India and China academic performance is dropping as well?

According to PISA results, it seems that the US does worse on maths on average, but pretty close on reading relative to UK and Ireland.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...

There's probably a much better data source, but am on phone.

For the purposes of determining the effect of screen time on education, we would need to compare the performance of Chinese or Indian students over time along with a measurable increase of the use of screens and compare that to say American students. Simply comparing American students to Chinese or Indian students is not sufficient.

Yes, I agree, hence my point that this wasn't the right data. It was better than nothing though.

> the second part of your sentence applies equally well to adults as children

You're right, and we see this everywhere. But at least adults already learned how to read, so this is not something that will stop their development during their critical formative years.

It's true, but it's cold comfort. the amount of reading I can do in a single sitting has declined a lot.

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