U/Jack_of_Spades Breaks Down the Decline in Children’s Educational Performance in Schools and Describes How It Starts in the Home

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_Z_E_R_O · 2024-02-23T07:34:26+00:00

I feel like the comment beneath that one is the real gem. Parents are so burned out, overworked, underpaid, and stressed, we're basically in survival mode all the time. We're so disconnected from anything meaningful that we've forgotten what it's like to have a relaxing, stress-free day. This isn't a parent problem, it's a society problem. I want to be there for my kids, but half the time I'm too just damn tired.

My dad's parents both worked too, but the difference was they had grandparents who watched him and his sisters several times a week, and a vibrant community where everyone walked to each other's houses. Their family didn't have to stagger their work schedules and juggle paid childcare like we do. That's the new reality - kids who barely know their own family and hardly ever see their neighbors. The only stuff for kids to do now is paid, structured activities that require a parent to be on-site and cost a small fortune. If you want to take the kids out for a fun day somewhere, no matter how small, prepare to pay $20 per hour per child. People complain about ipad kids, but the real issue is vanishing third spaces where people can just exist without paying for it or being aggressively advertised to.

The nuclear family social experiment has been an abysmal failure. We all moved halfway across the country for our jobs, we don't have a community, we have no free time, and we're drowning financially.

Malphos101 · 2024-02-23T12:41:49+00:00

Ah yes another "This generation really has an attitude and respect problem, unlike the generations before" post.

The REAL problem with education in the US is the constant defunding and attacks on education by the GQP. This isnt a "both sides" or "non-political" issue, this isn't a "kids just arent respectful enough today" issue, this isnt a "tablets destroyed kids" issue.

paxinfernum · 2024-02-23T13:15:15+00:00

Speaking as a former teacher, I think smartphones are a canard. Most research showing lower attention spans is from tracking people while they are using a computer or device. Yes, we all context switch a lot while on devices. If the school were allowed to restrict cellphones, students would be forced to focus.

The larger issue that I saw was how much cheating has massively been normalized among students. I had classes where nearly 80% of the students would turn in obviously plagiarized work, and this was before ChatGPT. The internet has made cheating easy, and kids have no shame about doing it, even otherwise fairly good kids will do it.

The problem with cheating isn't just that it's unethical. It's that every time you cheat, you're hurting yourself. Cheat on 3 assignments in a row, and you are behind in the skills and knowledge you need. So then you don't know what you need to know to move forward, which leads to cheating on the new assignments, and once you've cheated your way through a whole grade level, you're pretty much trapped. The effects snowball.

From a former teacher's perspective, cheating was so pervasive that most of the teachers I knew just threw their hands up in the air and pretended they didn't see it. Sending every student to the office was infeasible. You do that too much, and even the best principal will be overwhelmed and start claiming it's your fault.

You can't call that many parents. It takes too much time, and when you do, they mouth something about how they will do something, but the kid just comes back in and attempts to cheat the next day. That's assuming they don't call you a liar. Remember, if the kid is cheating in every class and you're the only teacher trying to address the issue, mom and dad's reaction is that you must be the bad teacher. After all, they're doing fine in everyone else's class. /s This applies temporally as well. If the kid cheated all last year and got a good grade, and they get in your class, where they are suddenly failing, guess who the bad teacher is? Not the one who didn't catch them cheating all last year.

The problem is pervasive, and no one has the guts to address it. Covid just made it worse because it was easier to cheat in an online environment.

mojitz · 2024-02-23T13:23:20+00:00

I'm always extremely skeptical of any explanation of anything that ultimately boils down to, "It's a culture problem." Yes, culture is typically a factor in some fashion, but I find it's most often better thought of as a proximate — rather than root — cause since culture is itself to a very large degree a product of underlying material conditions. Change a country's overall wealth and how it is distributed throughout society, change what types of industries it is based in, change its type of government, change... any number of things and the people living in that society will respond by adopting different norms, attitudes and behaviors. Hell, they'll even produce different types of art.

So yes, in a certain sense this person is right, but what they've identified as the principal issue is downstream of the real problem. This is actually something they get very close to identifying earlier when they point to how "the algorithm" is completely fucking us up. Well, the next question has to be "where did that come from?". Culture certainly didn't produce it. I would contend that it is a product of an economic system that prioritizes and rewards profit maximization to the exclusion of virtually all other concerns — and we can place a whole host of other problems at the feet of that issue as well, from the destruction of walkable communities serviced by mass transit (and the myriad issues that stem from that), to the the climate change crisis over which we seem to have no control (and the myriad issues that stem from that ) and about a million other things spiraling outward in a growing web of dire consequences.

TJ_McWeaksauce · 2024-02-23T13:26:48+00:00

There's no books in their homes, there's no reading in their homes, they don't play games together. Videos games yes, but nothing with math skills. No dice, no cards, no socialization.

I work in the video game industry, plus I've been a lifelong gamer, so I take exception to this comment. Video games encourage interest in math and socialization.

If you go to any subreddit or forum dedicated to specific games, you'll often see a lot of discussion about math and general theory crafting. What will increase my overall DPS more, a 2% increase to fire-based damage-over-time, or a 0.5% increase to global crit chance? What's the best healer build for this RPG? What's the current metagame for this deckbuilder? In the WWE 2K games, does a wrestler's numerical rating actually have a mechanic effect, or is it just for show? Etc.

Video games are loaded with numbers, especially statistics, and a lot of players love to theory craft around these numbers. For example, I just checked out the World of Warcraft subreddit, r/wow, and on the front page there's this class analysis post that's loaded with graphs. That thing is a rabbit hole of number analysis with links to even more number analysis. And the comments are filled with people participating in the analysis.

Which leads me to socialization: you can definitely socialize through video games. The most successful video games out there are all multiplayer games, if not massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Yes, you can play those games solo, but they are best enjoyed when you play with friends. Online socialization is still socialization. And as the WoW subreddit and other game forums show, players love talking with each other about the games they play.

Video games are still games, so they come with the same benefits as any other game, including the ability to foster interest in math and socialization.

SoundHole · 2024-02-23T16:37:30+00:00

I love how everyone just ignores No Child Left Behind, signed by Shrub, which tied funding to standardized testing.

Responsible school districts and admins will do anything they can to guarantee funding, which often means streamlining schools and turning them into diploma mills. The idea that threatening funding over testing would somehow 'fix' education was Conservative horseshit just like everything else they spew out of their dumb faces.

So congratulations, you all got what you wanted and now you bitch and moan and blame parents, teachers and, best of all, the kids themselves for yet another failure stemming from ignorant Boomer shortsightedness.

kingoftheplastics · 2024-02-23T17:00:17+00:00

As a parent to a 3.5yo my question isn’t “why can’t kids read” but “how do I teach my kid to read.” We read bedtime stories every night, I point out the words, we’ve done phonics to an extent (eg she knows the letters and what sounds they make) and she can recite one of her nursery rhyme books but she’s not “reading” it per se. From what I remember/was told I could read more or less independently by age 4 and this is what my parents did to get me there so it’s hard to not ask myself what more I’m missing here and I imagine a lot of parents feel the same way.

halfhalfnhalf · 2024-02-23T17:09:12+00:00

Uh huh it's smart phones and lazy parents and not that the government has been dismantling public education for the past forty years.

Right.

Farmerdrew · 2024-02-23T13:56:19+00:00

I think we also need to take into account just how much more kids need to learn by 8th grade. I feel like they try to squeeze a lot more into their brains than when I went to school.

vettehp · 2024-02-23T15:51:24+00:00

Grandkids are homeschooled and couldn'd be doing better, daughter joined a facebook group with a diverse group of parents that are very involved in their childrens education, they go on a wide range of field trips and educational activities, museums, planetariums, various types of farms animal and fruit, outdoor parks, yet to turn 7, can already spell and read, can do math in his head, Done right, home schooling is the way to go. Lives in WVA, they just passed a bill that teachers can carry a gun in class, WTH

h3fabio · 2024-02-23T14:06:45+00:00

Jack of Spades, not Rick.

DaenerysTargaryen69 · 2024-02-23T18:21:41+00:00

I'm confused.
Isn't /r/bestof supposed to link to a great reddit (series of) comment(s)?

stringerbbell · 2024-02-23T14:15:06+00:00

A teacher complaining about their job and blaming parents is not the best of anything. They bitch and moan all the time and take no responsibility for the school's shortcomings. These places are run like prisons. The teacher complains about online media meanwhile they're the ones that gave my daughter a Chromebook and assignments on YouTube. They're the ones who reward my kids with asinine YouTube videos to get them hooked on that trash. I have no control over this Chromebook like I do with our other home devices. Don't get me started on her homework the other day that explained how McDonald's was moving toward a healthier menu and all the questions were pure product placement. Absolutely disgusting.

dirtyrottenplumber · 2024-02-23T10:40:30+00:00

People be having kids for the sake of having a kid …… ok so kid popped out, now what? You expect me to sacrifice my needs on behalf of this human I chose to bring into existence?

(Yes idiot. You are no longer the priority in your life. Suck it up, you chose this.)

Goddamn population of inbred bunny rabbits

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