Historically least prepared for college high school class in history...

[pmv]

I'm sure other factors were at play, but on the point about COVID in particular, we can't succumb to the logic that saving even one life is never a tradeoff for anything else of value. If we did, the speed limit would be 10 mph on the freeway, if we were even allowed to drive. Whether we like the idea of it or not, we make tradeoffs with safety versus other things every day. And that calculus will consider both the value of the other thing, and the number of people likely to be harmed. In the case of education, I would point out that it's even more crucial now than ever, with poorly educated Americans making extremely bad choices at the ballot box which could even end democracy. Not only that, we are eliminating unskilled labor with AI and robotics, and replacing it with high tech jobs, meaning it's an even bigger disadvantage these days to be without a good education than it was when we were young.

Not all of that is on COVID, of course. It's a broader conversation. But we should think very carefully about school closures should the situation arise in the future.

Yeah, that is true in general as well as with respect to COVID. It's very tricky, though, as not only are the trade-offs often very hard to see, and the effects hard to quantify, the costs and benefits of every such tradeoff tend to fall on different groups of people (that's certainly true when it comes to driving and speed-limits).

As far as school closures are concerned, I'm influenced by the facts that (a) the only person I personally know who nearly died from COVID (ended up seriously ill in hospital) was a teacher who caught it from their students, and (b) my own memories of school are that absolutely no learning occurred there anyway, you had to 'bunk off' in order to get sufficient peace-and-quiet to be able to get any studying done (I used to skip school to go to the library and work through the text books in peace).

For me school was just somewhere you were forced to go in order to be violently assaulted on a regular basis and end up in hospital occasionally (and I was lucky enough not to have been targeted by the two serious sexual abusers on the staff). Schools being closed back then would have been no great loss from my perspective.

But, on the other hand, it's clearly true that not every student has equal access to somewhere quiet to work and to adults who are willing and able to answer questions about things. And the one person I knew who was officially 'home schooled', while they didn't lose out academically, they definitely felt they did in terms of developing social skills. So I don't know, really. Making schools less crap would be the way to start.

I mean the point has been made repeatedly that poorer students suffered more from school closures because they had parents less able to academically help them, and less computer equipment and noisier, smaller homes, and more temptation to get into trouble and less motivation to study on their own, when compared to students from affluent middle-class backgrounds. But on the other hand, those students also tend to go to the crappiest schools, surrounded by the most disruptive fellow students and with the worst teachers - so don't the two factors cancel out somewhat?

 

[woolfe9998]

Yeah, that is true in general as well as with respect to COVID. It's very tricky, though, as not only are the trade-offs often very hard to see, and the effects hard to quantify, the costs and benefits of every such tradeoff tend to fall on different groups of people (that's certainly true when it comes to driving and speed-limits).

As far as school closures are concerned, I'm influenced by the facts that (a) the only person I personally know who nearly died from COVID (ended up seriously ill in hospital) was a teacher who caught it from their students, and (b) my own memories of school are that absolutely no learning occurred there anyway, you had to 'bunk off' in order to get sufficient peace-and-quiet to be able to get any studying done (I used to skip school to go to the library and work through the text books in peace).

For me school was just somewhere you were forced to go in order to be violently assaulted on a regular basis and end up in hospital occasionally (and I was lucky enough not to have been targeted by the two serious sexual abusers on the staff). Schools being closed back then would have been no great loss from my perspective.

But, on the other hand, it's clearly true that not every student has equal access to somewhere quiet to work and to adults who are willing and able to answer questions about things. And the one person I knew who was officially 'home schooled', while they didn't lose out academically, they definitely felt they did in terms of developing social skills. So I don't know, really. Making schools less crap would be the way to start.

I mean the point has been repeatedly made that poorer students suffered more from school closures because they had parents less able to academically help them, and less computer equipment and noisier, smaller homes, and more temptation to get into trouble and less motivation to study on their own, when compared to students from affluent middle-class backgrounds. But on the other hand, those students also tend to go to the crappiest schools, surrounded by the most disruptive fellow students and with the worst teachers - so don't the two factors cancel out somewhat?

Well I'd be reluctant to equate your horrid experience in school with education in general. None of that was the case when I was in school, although education even back then could have stood some improvement.

So far as it mainly affecting the poor, my sister's situation is a counter example. She teaches in a public school that serves a very affluent community. When they did distance learning, these kids were mostly unsupervised by parents, who were off in their high power office jobs, or maybe one parent was in the house but not in the room. And the kids wandered off and didn't pay attention. It could work only with involved parents, meaning one of them has to be there during the sessions. Unfortunately, that is not likely to be the case for perhaps the majority of households.

Overall, given the importance of education, school closures are something for pandemics which are perhaps more severe than COVID.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Overall, given the importance of education, school closures are something for pandemics which are perhaps more severe than COVID.

Until we have every teacher out with COVID and a generation of children with long COVID. Then again, masking and good sanitation would go a long way. But conservatives screamed bloody murder for basic public health protocols.

And for a pandemic worse than COVID, the body count would be extremely high.

 

[pmv]

At the risk of relitigating yesterday's issue, one thing that baffled me during the pandemic was the lack of attention paid to things like ventilation, even after it had been identified as an issue to the point where even a layperson like me had encountered published papers on the web about it.

For example, I remember going to the GP surgery to pick up a prescription, and while they insisted on masks, they made everyone wait together, milling around in the waiting room, which had every single window firmly closed. Likewise, schools apparently often had dismal ventilation.

 

[Pens1566]

At the risk of relitigating yesterday's issue, one thing that baffled me during the pandemic was the lack of attention paid to things like ventilation, even after it had been identified as an issue to the point where even a layperson like me had encountered published papers on the web about it.

For example, I remember going to the GP surgery to pick up a prescription, and while they insisted on masks, they made everyone wait together, milling around in the waiting room, which had every single window firmly closed. Likewise, schools apparently often had dismal ventilation.

Because that would have been too difficult/expensive to do.

And we couldn't even get people (largely) to do even the most basic, non-invasive things like wearing a mask in public.

 

[pmv]

Because that would have been too difficult/expensive to do.

And we couldn't even get people (largely) to do even the most basic, non-invasive things like wearing a mask in public.

Though I don't think that excused the GP surgery not simply opening the damn windows (IIRC it wasn't that cold at the time).

 

[Pens1566]

Though I don't think that excused the GP surgery not simply opening the damn windows (IIRC it wasn't that cold at the time).

I'm guessing someone complained about it and they relented.

We live in a cottony soft land of idiots.

 

[fskimospy]

Well I'd be reluctant to equate your horrid experience in school with education in general. None of that was the case when I was in school, although education even back then could have stood some improvement.

So far as it mainly affecting the poor, my sister's situation is a counter example. She teaches in a public school that serves a very affluent community. When they did distance learning, these kids were mostly unsupervised by parents, who were off in their high power office jobs, or maybe one parent was in the house but not in the room. And the kids wandered off and didn't pay attention. It could work only with involved parents, meaning one of them has to be there during the sessions. Unfortunately, that is not likely to be the case for perhaps the majority of households.

Overall, given the importance of education, school closures are something for pandemics which are perhaps more severe than COVID.

Generally speaking the poor benefit most from public education, and recent results show significant learning loss from areas that closed schools and kept them closed.

I think it was perfectly reasonable to close them in spring of 2020 when we had no idea what was going on but places that kept them closed in Fall of 2020 and onwards did their kids a grave disservice.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

My brother was left handed and can relate. We were sent to Chinese school as children. Sadly, growing up in the US, we were stupid and didn't see the value of being fully bilingual and able to read and write in more than one language. Thus, our Chinese is atrocious. The Japanese Kanji is based off written Chinese characters for those that don't follow. The missus is able to read and write in Chinese and has attempted teaching the kids, but they are just as shortsighted as their old man.

Chinese stroke order is way more intuitive than Japanese stroke order at least. When I first started learning kanji sometimes I'd forget the Japanese rules and turns out I'd be writing them in Chinese stroke order. And then a few in Japanese like 必 have a ridiculously unintuitive stroke order in Japanese while the Chinese stroke order is what you'd think it should be, eg draw a heart 心 and put a line through it. Then Japanese is maddening to read because it's like they just took the Chinese writing system and stapled it onto the Japanese spoken language, so you sort of have to have a sixth sense of is this a Chinese loanword so I use the 音読み, or is this a native Japanese word so I use one of the 訓読み to read a given kanji, and if so which one? I kind of envy people interested in reading Chinese because the writing system is so elegant with meanings given roughly by radicals and then pronunciation by the other parts of a kanji symbol, which is the case for 音読み in Japanese too, but god the Japanese 訓読み can be a real bastard. Though I don't envy people trying to learn to tell the tones apart in Chinese while Japanese has a not too hard to pick up on pitch accent, though the pitch accent can be almost reversed if you go from Tokyo to Osaka for instance. Still though I think you can be understood even if your pitch accent is completely off.

 

[Meghan54]

My brother was left handed and can relate. We were sent to Chinese school as children. Sadly, growing up in the US, we were stupid and didn't see the value of being fully bilingual and able to read and write in more than one language. Thus, our Chinese is atrocious. The Japanese Kanji is based off written Chinese characters for those that don't follow. The missus is able to read and write in Chinese and has attempted teaching the kids, but they are just as shortsighted as their old man.

Did you know there is a stroke order to writing/printing English letters? I didn’t either…found out when discovered my mother dissecting one such “thing” in her edu masters dissertation.

 

[akugami]

@Meghan54

Honestly never thought about it. We just sort of learned print writing, then cursive, in school. That's actually interesting.

 

[akugami]

@SteveGrabowski

Never thought about stroke order for Kanji. I always thought it followed the Chinese stroke order.

Language is both a frustrating and amazing invention.

 

[sdifox]

Did you know there is a stroke order to writing/printing English letters? I didn’t either…found out when discovered my mother dissecting one such “thing” in her edu masters dissertation.

That was on the exercise book. First row shows the steps

 

[IronWing]

Did you know there is a stroke order to writing/printing English letters? I didn’t either…found out when discovered my mother dissecting one such “thing” in her edu masters dissertation.

We got stroke order hammered into us when learning to write cursive. Some of it has never made sense, like reversing pen direction to form a lower case o. I guess doing so was supposed to result in a better formed letter.

 

[Exterous]

This is only going to get worse particularly amongst the poorer and more remote districts. A mix of economic, political, and societal issues have combined to make a career in teaching excessively unappealing. Richer areas can off set all the BS with higher pay but everyone else...

Hell even with higher pay people are still leaving or putting in a lot less effort until they can hit their year mark and GTFO

 

[hal2kilo]

Did you know there is a stroke order to writing/printing English letters? I didn’t either…found out when discovered my mother dissecting one such “thing” in her edu masters dissertation.

Painfully, I know well. Being a color blind, mildly dyslexic, ambidextrous, with ADHD, I was tortured with oh so many remedial printing, and handwriting classes that I know well how you are supposed to form your letters, but my mind has different ways. Apparently, it's entertaining for people to watch me print the number 4. Thank the stars for word processors and computers.

 

[IronWing]

Apparently, it's entertaining for people to watch me print the number 4.

Now I have to ask… how do you print your 4s? I print closed 4s like:


I never use open 4s.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Now I have to ask… how do you print your 4s? I print closed 4s like:


I never use open 4s.

And here I thought we could be friends 🤣

 

[IronWing]

And here I thought we could be friends 🤣

Open 4s are time inefficient.

 

[dank69]

Open 4s are time inefficient.

writing is time inefficient

 

[fskimospy]

Now I have to ask… how do you print your 4s? I print closed 4s like:
View attachment 87356

I never use open 4s.

You're a monster.

 

[hal2kilo]

Now I have to ask… how do you print your 4s? I print closed 4s like:
View attachment 87356

I never use open 4s.

2 is 1, 1 is 2, 3 is 3. Sometimes I do your version. Maybe they fixed me, somewhat, as the way I do it now is right. Sometimes mine are closed. That's part of the problem, is there's no consistency in my mind as to how it works.

 

[gorobei]

I am old enough to have been taught cursive in school.
But with daily use of computers being so overwhelming prevalent, I had not used cursive except to sign my name... in decades.
Now, I am unable to write it, and struggle greatly to read it. Even though I was completely proficient 25 years ago.

The purpose, as I recall, is that it is MUCH faster to write cursive, than it is to write letters in print. But maybe that's just me being out of touch with pen and paper in general.

continuous stroke (not lifting the pen) came from the ink and quill era. the feather tips would eventually become brittle so repeated lifting and pressing for each stroke would shatter the quill tip. even with metal tip pens the groove split(s) didnt hold up to repeated pressing versus just be dragged continuously. up and down also led to ink splatter. flat blade pen tips generally work in one direction so slanting everything to allow for pseudo up/down left/right without rotating the barrel of the pen is how you get cursive/script.

cursive is just the simplified version of the fancy calligraphy from the middle ages. i think there was a either a study or a anecdotal online thing where they disproved the cursive speed myth years ago.

 

[gorobei]

Now I have to ask… how do you print your 4s? I print closed 4s like:
View attachment 87356

I never use open 4s.

anyone who has ever had to deal with hand written fields on forms for official use knows better than to use closed 4s.

rushed 4s end up looking like 9s. being off by 5 ends up badly.

 

[nakedfrog]

2 is 1, 1 is 2, 3 is 3. Sometimes I do your version. Maybe they fixed me, somewhat, as the way I do it now is right. Sometimes mine are closed. That's part of the problem, is there's no consistency in my mind as to how it works.

My writing is similar, various characters get written differently based on whatever whims are going on in the handwriting bit of my brain. I started out lefty and was forced into using my right hand.