Kids going back to school, a non-parent observation

[BarkingGhostar]

Politics aside ...

I understand greatly the concerns of parents in sending their children back to school during this continued pandemic. It has truly been a challenge for parents in having to assist in their child's education along with whatever solutions their municipalities have used to get them back to learning in a remote way. But my curious contention is why is this an issue at all? For many years now, many school districts have offered Home Schooling as an alternative method to in-classroom instruction. Is there some reason why the general masses cannot commute to this program and overcome the president's initiatives to get schools open again? Parents would already need to be home to remote-assist in their kids education so why not go one step more and formalize it?

As for the school systems ... well, they seem to also not be ready, mentally and physically, to re-opening their schools. But do they realize the consequences of this in-action. I am not promoting re-opening schools, but a year without in-classroom usage is a year one cannot justify an institution's existence. As a property tax payer with 70-72% of his said property taxes going to the pubic school system, should I expect to get a partial refund? Just two miles from me they are building a new high school (my county has a very large school system and student population) and by the time it is ready the pandemic needs to be over with of cost justification just will not hide the expenditures as being seen as wasteful.

Now, I have been a long time advocate of non-congregated learning. Technology has rendered most of the reasons mute. The pandemic not only proved that remote learning can be done, but it has been done and the many localized system can easily support this. If parents are willing to make the in-home time for home schooling then I think the president's push would be automatically mutes. The only counter-argument my half-asleep brain can think of are parental latchkey situations that are taking place and that speaks more of legal aspects in parenting than anything else.

Views? And please, let's not make this political. This is about haven proven non-congregated forms of learning can be done on a large scale. It is a form of evolution.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

This country has reached a point where two full-time working incomes are necessary to keep many families afloat. It's just another thing that shows how broken the US is when you have parents wanting to send their kids back because they have to work. It shouldn't be like that, but it is.

It's already a lot with two us working part-time versus one high energy 16 month old. I can't imagine being responsible for multiple kids AND having to work full-time simultaneously. I probably wouldn't be thinking clearly either and advocating for schools to open back up too.

I don't think children should be going back to school, and the government needs to ****ing step in and help families with children right now. What a damn shame this country has become. This is our future - but then again boomer politicians are going to be gone by the time generation alpha are in the work force paying the social security (if it even exists by then). Instead they are advocating for children to go back to school and be infected by COVID and spread it to the rest of their families and so on.

 

[deadlyapp]

home schooling is not the same as remote learning. Home schooling requires a parent or other third party administering the learning, and therefore training, etc is required. Remote learning still involves the teacher instructing the students and not a parent or other instructor in the home.

Remote learning is not a good replacement for most students - especially considering the number of distractions, the likelihood of poor technology in lower income households, etc.

Asking parents to stay home to home school their students is simply naive. Again, those families that are lower income will suffer even further, as there is a high likelihood those parents must work long hours in order to feed their family. Those who are wealthy will simply hire a third party to instruct their children or go to private schools that are opening up, and just advance their children even further than those in poverty.

Edit for more:
I have no children, so I can't in good conscious put myself in the shoes of a parent concerned about their child's safety, or their own. However, I can step back and look at the big picture and how much remote learning is going to affect this generation of students, and probably put an even larger gap between those who are advantaged (generally higher income, white collar families) and those who are already in a position of benefiting less (blue collar, lower income, impoverished). Do I think putting students back in the exact same environment they left is the right idea? No of course not - but I do think there is a way to bring them back into an environment that minimizes risks significantly. Perhaps 3 days on, 2 days off, perhaps you remain in the same classroom and teachers rotate in/out rather than moving class to class, perhaps required masking, perhaps required dividers, perhaps lower capacity classes (maybe swap days in/out for student), temperature checks on entrances, etc etc. There are lots of things that can be done to bring students back in safely and minimize risk.

The real issue is the costs of the above. They're already talking about massive shortfalls in budgets for schooling in order to implement this, and ultimately that will fall to the taxpayers, and those of us who have no children are going to take a big hit for years to come.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I have always been amazed at how some families can exist, really. I never bought into the American Dream but my older siblings did, and the reality came later for them in a very dark and dire way. The law of opportunity cost was a determining factor in my life, and that of my wife's. We chose not to have children because we knew one of us would need to make double for the other to be a homemakers, or we would have to get use to a lot less in things we wanted as adults. I grew up poor, challenged my parents actions, and in-actions, for having a large family in a poor household but that staged things for me as an adult. Make more, have no kids and step out of the poor environment I was born into.

But I digress, i have friends that have had single and dual incomes and again are amazed that they managed to pull it off somehow. One friend in a single income home had two kids and did it making what I was making. Another friend is dual income and had two kids but being both professionals spent much of one of their incomes on out-sourcing the child-raising aspects early on. Both have smaller houses than me, less nice cars, and neither have a home theater and those were the trademark trade-offs.

Now I see a growing condition of home school prevailing and the new generation of latchkey children abound.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

home schooling is not the same as remote learning. Home schooling requires a parent or other third party administering the learning, and therefore training, etc is required. Remote learning still involves the teacher instructing the students and not a parent or other instructor in the home.

Remote learning is not a good replacement for most students - especially considering the number of distractions, the likelihood of poor technology in lower income households, etc.

Asking parents to stay home to home school their students is simply naive. Again, those families that are lower income will suffer even further, as there is a high likelihood those parents must work long hours in order to feed their family. Those who are wealthy will simply hire a third party to instruct their children or go to private schools that are opening up, and just advance their children even further than those in poverty.

Thanks, but I am not naive. I saying there are choices. Everything in life has choices. You wanted a kid. You want them to presently stay safe and stay at home. You have choices there. Unless both parents are working jobs that cannot be done remotely then I fail to see my naivety.

 

[deadlyapp]

Thanks, but I am not naive. I saying there are choices. Everything in life has choices. You wanted a kid. You want them to presently stay safe and stay at home. You have choices there. Unless both parents are working jobs that cannot be done remotely then I fail to see my naivety.

My point is this:
- Blue collar, lower income, support structure of our country workers have the jobs that you cannot stay home for
- Those families are the most at risk for poor learning from a remote environment and likely have parents that cannot provide the same structured learning as a school
- If the government as a whole decides that it's all remote learning, then those students will fall behind, be held back, have lower amounts of development than higher income peers

I suspect that those who are clamoring to not go back to school are higher income families that do have options - not the families that have no options.

 

[nakedfrog]

Moot, not "mute".

 

[Midwayman]

So many issues...

• I can't imagine trying to effectively teach a child and working full time.
• Teaching is a skill and many parents are not equipped to do a good job
• Many parents are disinterested altogether and just won't do it.
• Many kids get much of their food through programs at school
• Many kids have school as a place to get counseling or escape from bad home situations

The reality is you can throw blame on 'lazy parents' and maybe its even partially true. However the ones paying the price will be the kids. It would be a disaster for many of them. They would effectively be missing school for however long this lasts. They would back slide in competency level from lack of practice so would end up even further behind. Likely these would be the kids who can least afford it as well.

I don't have a solution, but its not as simple as 'everyone should home school'

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

This country has reached a point where two full-time working incomes are necessary to keep many families afloat. It's just another thing that shows how broken the US is when you have parents wanting to send their kids back because they have to work. It shouldn't be like that, but it is.

It's already a lot with two us working part-time versus one high energy 16 month old. I can't imagine being responsible for multiple kids AND having to work full-time simultaneously. I probably wouldn't be thinking clearly either and advocating for schools to open back up too.

I don't think children should be going back to school, and the government needs to ****ing step in and help families with children right now. What a damn shame this country has become. This is our future - but then again boomer politicians are going to be gone by the time generation alpha are in the work force paying the social security (if it even exists by then). Instead they are advocating for children to go back to school and be infected by COVID and spread it to the rest of their families and so on.

Does the 1-working parent household exist anywhere in the world anymore?

I mean even in the likes of Europe?

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Does the 1-working parent household exist anywhere in the world anymore?

I mean even in the likes of Europe?

Not quite - I can't speak for everyone, but much of my extended family lives in Europe and it's pretty common for one parent (usually the mother) to take on stay-at-home roles early in the child's life and re-enter the workforce later on. But still, that's compared to here where many parents just go straight back to work after giving birth. One part of the world is better equipped to "handle" their children, and it's not ours.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Moot, not "mute".

This. I probably wouldn't have said anything but he misused the word twice in his original post.

My son graduated high school in June so this is a moot point for me. His college classes will be online and he is capable of self-motivating to do what he needs to do for his education at this point.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

There's no doubt that home-schooling is definitely taking off. I know a lot of people in my area that are doing it. Not sure of the costs, who pays for what, etc... but yeah...

And by homeschooling - I mean a group of collective parents do it (each teaching different subjects) and they will also accept other students and basically making their home into a classroom.


And let's face facts - we are like... #3 or something like that in spending for public education, yet the outcomes are dog-shit for a large portion of the states. I guess that's capitalism for you as charter schools, homeschooling, etc... continue to rise. The point being: Our education system isn't a money problem. They have fucktons in the majority of urban cities.

All the while none of that cuts the budget of the public schools since everyone still has to pay their property taxes.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Now, I have been a long time advocate of non-congregated learning. Technology has rendered most of the reasons mute.

See - this is the part where it's pretty clear that you don't have kids.

The attention spans of the majority of NORMAL kids is incredibly hard to maintain. Now put a laptop computer in front of them, a cell-phone in their hands, and a bunch of other toys and crap around them in a home. Their attention to remote learning will be gone in less than 3 minutes - at least for anyone that isn't in high-school at minimum.

Some of it is definitely the parents, but we never get to blame the parents these days.

 

[rh71]

I have always been amazed at how some families can exist, really. I never bought into the American Dream but my older siblings did, and the reality came later for them in a very dark and dire way. The law of opportunity cost was a determining factor in my life, and that of my wife's. We chose not to have children because we knew one of us would need to make double for the other to be a homemakers, or we would have to get use to a lot less in things we wanted as adults. I grew up poor, challenged my parents actions, and in-actions, for having a large family in a poor household but that staged things for me as an adult. Make more, have no kids and step out of the poor environment I was born into.

But I digress, i have friends that have had single and dual incomes and again are amazed that they managed to pull it off somehow. One friend in a single income home had two kids and did it making what I was making. Another friend is dual income and had two kids but being both professionals spent much of one of their incomes on out-sourcing the child-raising aspects early on. Both have smaller houses than me, less nice cars, and neither have a home theater and those were the trademark trade-offs.

Now I see a growing condition of home school prevailing and the new generation of latchkey children abound.

Sometimes you have no control of it and you still manage because you take the blows as they come. We were blessed with twins and people always asked how we did it. We didn't know how we were going to, going into it, but we had help at times, we took shifts, and I fortunately also worked from home so doing the 3am shift was no big deal because I can still find rest throughout the day. Point is, you do have to plan and make smarter choices, but curveballs can be dealt with. I would rather do that than never do at all. That's how many people make it with multiple kids... they just adapt as they go. Things usually do not stay the same - finances can also improve... so you shouldn't plan the rest of your life based on a current situation.

 

[PingSpike]

When my Grandmother was asked how she raised 9 children she responded "I haven't a clue."

 

[thestrangebrew1]

My wife was a kindergarten teacher this last year and she'll be teaching 1st grade this year. Because it was last minute, it took our district almost a whole month just to actually setup a way to remote learn. By then, it was mid-April when they had something in place using zoom and listening to my wife teach (I was WFH at the time) was a nightmare at that age group. Getting the kids focused on the lesson, kids are all excited to see their classmates would constantly chatter (it's cute and funny at that age) and just other forms of constant distraction.

From my own observation of watching my daughter remote learn (4th grade) she was able to focus more on the screen, but you could tell she was bored. She's yearning for interaction with her teacher and classmates. We're hoping this year her teacher will be more interactive with the students go remote, we'll find out on Thursday which way they'll go as they have they're Board meeting. They were surveying what parents thought about sending kids to school etc.

Living in a rural community, about 25% of the students live in the country and internet was pretty much non-existent. That made it tough for my wife to teach. Couple that with parents who just don't care, some of her worst students wouldn't even log in for a session half the time at least.

It's a no win, specifically for the kids. Us parents will find a way to make the best of it, but the kids will end up suffering the most. If they go back, contract the virus and get a teacher or a member of the family sick it would be devastating to the child. If they remote-learn, they don't get the benefits of interacting with each other and learning social skills etc. Parents will be stressed if they lose out on income which would cause problems at home.

Depending on how this plays out with my daughter, I may consider holding her back a grade. I have the benefit of having a wife as a teacher so she can gauge where our daughter should be so we'll cross that bridge later.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

 

[BurnItDwn]

They should do outdoor school, at least for earlier years ...

Forest school (learning style) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[rh71]

Kids are all different even in the same age group, so to prove any broad statements would be tough. We know younger kids will have issues with attention span which is why you can't expect them to get much done at home (parental supervision, thus defeating the purpose). My kids are pretty good students who just finished 6th grade and I witnessed their laziness first hand. Slouching on the sofa or under the covers with their Chromebook only half paying attention. Watching instructional videos at 1.5x or 2x speed because it was long/boring. I ask them to sit at a desk and they do for a short while or maybe a day and it's back to the comfy areas. Now imagine kids who are not good students - their education will suffer, no doubt. There needs to be organization and structure for them. Even I would suggest that my kids need the traditional classroom. None of this finish all your work within 2 hours and video games for the rest of the day. That can't be their educational days going forward.

Since the beginning of this, I've claimed that teachers these days are glorified babysitters for maybe 60% of the day. There's no way they're actively teaching a subject throughout the entire 42 minutes per period. In fact I think it's basically only 10 minutes of teaching and the rest is read-this-and-see-if-you-can-do-the-worksheet. The teacher is there for any questions and to keep order - and even then it's tough with 20+ kids with 5+ who feed off each other being very disruptive. We're in a very good district and we still have our share of kids who get 70s and can't pay attention for shit.

My biggest gripe along the way (and I've mentioned it here before) is that we pay a stupid-high tax for our schools... we're up to $14k annually for schools alone (MOST of which is salaries avg. $120k/yr & benefits), plus $6k general taxes. Our home is maybe valued at $850k so we're paying $20k in property taxes. There's another house at $1.2mil a few blocks away as new construction and they have to pay $52k/yr in property taxes. It's ridiculous how much goes into the schools here - and yet, as I mentioned above, how much are the teachers actually doing for our kids? How much is even possible for a teacher to do? We can move to a mediocre district and still get the same level of education there if we go remote. No, I want the in-classroom attention for what we pay. And even if we aren't paying that amount, it is still the most effective for kids. The alternative, what we've seen in the last 3 months, is extremely ineffective as a whole.

 

[kt]

Does the 1-working parent household exist anywhere in the world anymore?

I mean even in the likes of Europe?

We're one working parent household with 2 kids. I wouldn't say it was a breeze but definitely not as difficult as some might think. We live comfortably, not pay check to pay check. We own the home we live in and take family vacations at least once a year. We don't splurge on cars but drive decent cars that we keep longer than most families (8-10 years). We cook most of our meals instead of eating out.

We still manage to save for retirement (both 401k & IRA) and build up a rainy day fund. We are also contributing to, with some help of their grandparents, 529 accounts for both of our kids.

 

[dullard]

And by homeschooling - I mean a group of collective parents do it (each teaching different subjects) and they will also accept other students and basically making their home into a classroom.

I have a beef with that terminology (note: I realize that it isn't just you, but many people use the term wrong). What you describe isn't homeschooling. That is a small private school.

 

[dullard]

Now, I have been a long time advocate of non-congregated learning. Technology has rendered most of the reasons mute. The pandemic not only proved that remote learning can be done, but it has been done and the many localized system can easily support this.

• Parents might not know the subjects to be able to teach them.
• Parents might know the subject but might not know how to teach. I can't count the number of times I've worked with great experts that had no ability to describe what they are doing.
• Parents might not be alive, might not be together, or might not be around. It is really hard to be a single-parent teaching your kids for 8 hours while you are working 8 hours at the same time. A large number of parents are working two or three jobs to make ends meet. When can they possibly have the time to also school their children?
• Many places don't have internet access for remote learning.
• Parents might not be able to have a 3 month old, 2 year old, 4 year old all needing attention and still be able to give proper 8-hours of attention to the 8 year old student that is learning.
• Parents might not have the cash for technology, subject lessons, etc.
• Kids treat parents differently. All my nieces and nephews on both sides of the family have a 100% personality change the instant a parent is in the room.
• I could go on and on.

And I'm pretty sure the consensus from the loss of the end of the spring semester was that the sudden homeschooling was close to worthless. Yes, you can have kids at home with a few minutes per day Zooming their teacher, but that doesn't mean that they learned.

The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn’t Work

The pandemic forced schools into a crash course in online education. Problems piled up, including lack of access to technology and trouble keeping students and teachers connected.

www.wsj.com

 

[kt]

They should do outdoor school, at least for earlier years ...

Forest school (learning style) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We did a lot of this in our earlier years growing up in Sweden. I remembering being very disruptive in classroom back then and this kept me engaged.

 

[jayzds]

We are pulling our kids from school & home schooling this year. My wife doesn't work outside the home, so that helps.

What I would like to know is, who has looked into the European schools that opened up earlier in the year? Were there any spikes, or issues from that? I know there are more schools that have opened recently around the world, so I am sure not much info yet on those.

I would be in favor of opening up through middle school for sure, and get back to normal schooling but, I figure that wont happen.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I have a beef with that terminology (note: I realize that it isn't just you, but many people use the term wrong). What you describe isn't homeschooling. That is a small private school.

Gotcha, so mind defining it for me? Is it basically just a single parent directly of the child teaching them?

I would figure by high school it would start to get difficult to teach your kid Math, Biology, History, English, etc... simply because most adults aren't well-versed to teach all of them.