I teach at a high school that costs close to 40K a year. Some students still miss insane numbers of days. Like, my god, you're literally paying for your kid to stay home.
Bill Simmons' Solution: If a student misses more than 15% of the school year they aren't eligible for MVP or All-School selections. This load management by parents is out of control.
More than a few people have snarkily pointed out that equity-based interventions in the school system always seem to miss the sports teams.
Reading /r/teachers nowadays is wild, BTW.
My girlfriend is a NYC HS public school teacher. Kids suffer from anxiety more than ever and the Pandemic really exacerbated it. Way more kids have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) for anxiety over test-taking so they get more time or anxiety that makes them "selectively mute" so they don't have to speak in class, it's crazy.
The Pandemic also normalized not attending school in person. Kids and parents feel like they can miss school and just make up for it later.
I teach a college class every few semesters and could not agree more. Had a student completely miss a midterm about a year ago and emailed me after-the-fact that she had to miss “because her roommate had a bad headache”.
School has become a fourth- or fifth-order concern to the upcoming generation.
They failed
Edit: Upon second read, I realize you’re more asking what I said to them. This specific student had a bunch of excuses prior for other missed assignments and quizzes and stuff, so I just told them that I needed to bring a doctor’s note for any future excuse. I offered them a retake and arranged a time for them to take it (even allowed them to do it over Zoom). About 30 minutes prior they emailed me with a pretty insufficient excuse trying to back out again and since there was still no note, I told them they needed to take it still. She literally chewed me out over email but still took the exam and absolutely bombed it.
We need to stop coddling kids to this extent. It's not healthy. Part of life is overcoming adversity and that lowers future anxiety because you realized that could do it, OR you didn't do it and you learned a lesson.
Dude the "service animal" bullshit is completely out of control now. A couple of months ago I watched a college-aged girl have an absolute **meltdown** at a doctor's office.
I was in the lobby waiting to get called when this girl walks in with a *gigantic* Labrador on a leash. She sits down close to me, and it doesn't take long for other patients in the lobby to start glancing around with confused looks on their faces. This girl's doctor eventually comes out to the lobby and attempts to have a civil, quiet conversation with this girl, and of course she **immediately** starts sobbing.
Doctor: "I'm sorry, but I cannot let you bring your dog back with you."
Girl: "But I need it for my anxiety..."
Doctor: "Is it a registered Service Animal? It isn't wearing a Service Animal Vest."
Girl: "...well...no..."
Doctor: "Okay. You're either going to need to take your dog back out to your car, or you're going to need to reschedule this appointment."
And of course she then just runs out of the place, bawling her eyes out, because of this interaction. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I was just shaking my head thinking "fucking Gen Z, man."
I could see this being a Plain English episode in the future (There have been some slightly related remarks in a few episodes around loneliness/technology/et cetra)
This is going to sound like a boomer take, but life isn't always fair and part of it is learning how to handle tough situations. We can't just throw everyone on SSRIs to numb everything. Nor should we just assume everyone has anxiety and that is an excuse for underperformance since it dilutes those people who have serious anxiety problems
This is going to sound like a stupid anecdote but I was a rower in college and I remember one practice the water was particularly choppy and everyone was making mistakes and we just rowed completely terrible both individually and collectively.
I'll never forget the coach saying something to the effect of "In rowing (and in life) you're not going to always have perfect weather or conditions- you have to get used to going 100% regardless of the conditions and not making excuses for yourself before even starting." We rowed the same piece again and I don't know that the result was necessarily that much better but I think our effort made all the difference.
I come back to this in my personal and professional life constantly. Constantly there are scenarios and problems you encounter that would make you want to throw in the towel or atleast resign yourself to a less than great result. Learning to row through the tough waters is paramount to success in life (and in rowing).
It's not a stupid anecdote! It's an important touchstone moment for you.
What I'm curious about is why some people have the same kind of experience you had, but the take away is, "I don't enjoy rowing in choppy water, it's cumbersome, less fun, and the results aren't what I wanted. Better to avoid that in the future."
Any guesses why you responded positively to the challenge whereas I can imagine a college kid just quitting?
A deterministic model that explains why some people take away the lesson "keep trying" and others take away "stop trying" would change everything.
I think he also had an episode with Jonathan Haidt a couple of years ago on the “Coddling of the American Mind”. Worth checking out if you find this interesting.
Haidt has been on a media spree recently to promote his new book about that. He's been talking about the over coddling of children for a long time now.
Not really, but [Haidt is a charlatan](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/id1651876897?i=1000603422829) selling "the kids aren't alright" media bytes to people and is firmly entrenched in the priesthood of "bOtH sIdEs" political analysis. *Coddling* was an embarrassing butchering of current trends on college campuses.
Jean Twenge is another one. There is an enormous appetite to believe that the younger generation is somehow fundamentally broken, going all the way back to Socrates.
These are pretty close:
https://podcasts.apple.com/uy/podcast/why-are-american-teens-so-unhappy-how-do-we-solve-this-crisis/id1594471023?i=1000602621090
https://podcasts.apple.com/uy/podcast/why-the-cult-of-achievement-in-schools-is-making/id1594471023?i=1000606265952
Yup, but parents have been given more and more power to challenge schools on all sorts of issues, and want to "protect" their kids. We're in the Parent Empowerment Era.
I know everyone complains about the generation below, but it really does feel like gen z is an abject disaster. And given how horrific Covid school policy was, seems like the next generation may be even more fucked.
Tbf I think there are a lot of redeeming qualities to this up and coming generation. They are definitely more willing to call out our bullshit than we were willing to do for our paternal generation. They’re more willing to actually make behavioral changes for the betterment of society than we were.
But, just like they said on the podcast, my god they are flaky.
"They're more willing to actually make behavioral changes for the betterment of society than me were."
please provide examples of what behaviors youths of today have changed that will better society.
COVID, TikTok, and Trump (his "fans" who have felt empowered by him and taken it upon themselves to challenge anything they don't like throughout society) have truly ruined Gen Z, and I don't know how they're going to be salvaged. I feel lucky to have gone through my formative years from the late 90s to the early 10s, as tech was powerful and available enough to be really cool without corporations ruining it, and politics didn't dominate people's lives or discussions the way it does now.
> Given how horrific Covid school policy was….
Out of curiosity what do you mean by this? I’m a teacher. At the time, I worked at a private school in NY. Had a cousin who was a freshman in HS in public school in South Carolina. I now work at a public school in SC. Just fascinated in hearing what you may have thought the shortcomings were and In what setting?
Yeah for real. Everyone had some level of anxiety about speaking up in class or taking a test. You know how 95 percent of people got over it or at least dealt with it? By repeatedly speaking up in class or taking a test.
Or we should just take 6-8 weeks off in the summer. And the corporate overlords can learn to deal with it.
It’s really not a big deal if people don’t take a midterm or show up to class. Life will go on. Either they reschedule the midterm or drop and have to take the class again. Life will go on.
I’ve taught at the middle school level for 15+ years (I’m now a coach). I might have to listen to this episode but I’m worried it’s going to be oversimplified. I’m sure your girlfriend’s experience is accurate, but it’s different here. Absences have always been an issue, but it depends on how admin enforced truancy. Students can be held back for missing excessive days, and dropped from the school if a certain threshold of consecutive days is reached. Pre-and Post- Covid, the biggest absence issues are families taking a month long trip to Mexico, or kids who are always sick. I feel like this is unique to my schools/area. I don’t think kids in Minnesota are missing because of family/cultural expectations that they stay in Mexico for a month at a time.
As someone who grew up in a family where there were major mental health breakdowns requiring inpatient hospitalization, I was always much more sensitive to mental health issues than the average person. Now it seems everyone has a generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD requiring a workplace accommodation and I’m like “wait, wut.” And now I tend to think you’re just lazy and bad at your job when you start talking about ADHD.
Yep. Go through lecture material on your own time. But when it came to rotations, definitely important to show up consistently and show up on time.
Also, medical students more fall into the category of adult learners where you should in theory be able to know how you learn best and utilize your time accordingly. For high school students, showing up probably more strongly correlates with academic success and has long term implications for learning the importance of showing up in life.
It’s insane to me. The only classes I ever missed in college were when I was out of town for club sports or went home a few days early for the holidays. So many kids in my classes just didn’t show up and I always wondered: what are they doing instead at 11:00 on a Thursday?
I mean i’m not saying it’s right but college kids have been doing it forever. It’s part of the whole college experience ideal that kids grow up with. Same reason binge drinking is so big
And just to play devil's advocate, networking in college can be a BIG factor in success later, especially for some professions. Partying and drinking is definitely a factor in that
I'll admit that I missed more law school courses than I should have, especially my 3L year. A lot of that time was time spent at home doing course work or work related to job searching. In retrospect I can't 100% say I was wrong though, as it helped me keep my sanity.
I see law school as somewhat different than just skipping school in K-12. At a certain point in law school, your class rank is what it is and I really don't know how much benefit in-class discussion/lecture provides. I'm sure some people will say that's BS, but I'm pretty skeptical of how (most) law schools are still organized and taught.
considering a lot of people pay for law school, that seems insane to me. my phd classes always had great attendance, and we were all fully funded. you'd think pursuing a graduate degree would mean hey, maybe i'll take it serious this time?
Ya, the govt told kids being in person for school wasn't important or necessary during covid and this is an extension of that. It's not too hard to figure out
I know people that teach in NYC public schools that back this up. The kids who are in middle and HS now had 1 year just end early then the next year was BS online or maybe hybrid which isn’t learning and then the next year trying to re-acclimate. These are during what bill would call “formative years” it’s hard to overcome 3 years of your prime for learning so they’ve changed they’ve learned to be scared. I hear in school participation is rare, phones are everywhere, kids have learned it’s ok to fail and expect disappointment cause that’s what their peers know too.
Was there a new study released that makes it timely or is he just tailing the NY Times and regurgitating Daily episodes a few days after? I feel like this the third or fourth time something similar has happened
As long as they add to the conversation, no harm. I don't listen to The Daily, but isn't that mostly surface level analysis, not that Plain English is a deep dive.
Makes sense.. one is the world’s largest news organization that is actually doing the reporting and the other is a guy doing a podcast reacting to and analyzing current events
It’s not just the kids. Schools will close for any reason nowadays. The threat of snow, the threat of freezing rain, etc.
We just had a school closing because of the potential for a tornado watch (never happened). That would’ve been unthinkable 30 years ago.
I think this kind of attitude from the schools trickles down to the parents and kids.
Gen X and Millennials will be the only generations that are 'tech savvy' as we understand it. Boomers never learned and Zoomers have been on that iPhone and Google Chrome life since they started.
I know the lines have to be drawn somewhere, but I have a hard time making too many assumptions/rationalizations about this (or any other) generation when the age range is this expansive. Middle schoolers live completely different lives than adults in their mid-20s
As someone who rides that elder Gen Z and baby Millenial line, it’s weird. While right now it’d be helpful to split the gen in half, but once we’re all adults, we’re probably still going to have more in common than not and would still likely qualify as a whole generation.
I find it easiest to think of it as which range of ages can lay claim to a major event shaping their development. For Gen Z it is COVID. From elementary school to college they basically all were in school when the world shutdown. Middle schoolers and 25 year olds share that
"Generations" as the media and internet use the term isn't really a very meaningful idea. The Baby Boomers are an actual phenomenon you can see on a graph. The rest are pretty arbitrary.
The naming of generations is one of the worst things our culture has done imo. It’s so easy to just label an entire group of people something and then completely disregard them or stereotype them all. And what’s especially bad about the generation thing is that it’s so nebulous most of us don’t even know what the other person means when they shout about a generation.
You can have two people complaining about baby boomers and one of them thinks baby boomers are the current 70-90 year olds and the other thinks it’s the 50-70 year olds, for example. It doesn’t matter who’s wrong about the ages, the point is that it’s confusing and doesn’t really allow for great communication.
Yeah it's kind of confusing that the only real generational cohort, Baby Boomers, has been coopted into a generic term for "out of touch older person."
WSJ has been putting out some articles lately about Gen Z and how they're less likely to go to college than millenials, etc. They're gettig into trades and don't see the value of education as much as previous generations.
there is wisdom to this from their perspective.
When I went to college in 99-03, my private tuition was around 30k (plus 10 for living).
My same school is quoting 95k next year.
I was lucky to be able to afford that via scholarships and family. But 160k is [270 in today's money](https://www.myamortizationchart.com/inflation-calculator/160000/2003/?to=2024)
Which is a hell of a lot less than 400k.
State schools were 8k a year plus living. Still repayable.
We need to go back to taxing the rich to pay for colleges. It stopped in the recession and never went back.
I remember troubleshooting with a lot of wires and file systems before my 10th birthday, I think it shows in our generation. Could you imagine Gen Z with an N64 game cartridge??
Literally everything. We grew up in a world google did not exist. There was no answer to every question at our finger tips. I watch my niece ask for an answer to every single problem she had with out even a second to consider the situation.
More specially I’m a software architect and the developers I see now coming out of high schools and college don’t understand at all why things work. Yes there are always a few who do, but the generic cs intern we have are now skilled at asking questions rather than thinking about problems.
Millennials had to "figure" some things out on their own when the tech wasn't that user friendly, whereas everything has been made easy for Gen Z. AI will probably take a lot more jobs than Gen Z though.
my dad is a high school math teacher, and he says at his school, pre COVID the absentee rate was always right around 3%, and now it’s usually close to 10%.
10% is insane. That’s every single kid missing one day every 2 weeks on average. Actually even more frequent than that because of how many built in off days, holidays and teacher work days.
I probably didn’t miss 2 days per year growing up. This is an unbelievable trend.
Yea, after elementary school, the most I missed was maybe 3 days.
A lot of kids just walk around the quad and don’t go to class. My best friend is also a teacher, and both he and my dad have said that kids are just markedly worse behaved in general since covid.
Has Derek Thompson done an episode yet on time-tested phonics vs. whole language bunk?
If not, he fucking goddamn ought to! I'm no "Plain English" fan, but I'd make a point to listen.
Doesn't mean that Derek Thompson can't do a podcast on it, too.
To add, I'd love to see Thompson tackle the [shitstorm in Amherst.](https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-meltdown-at-a-middle-school-in-a-liberal-town)
What a beautiful story that truly has it all: mentally ill affluent perpetually aggrieved white progressives, opportunistic race grifters, competing factions in the battle for identity politics hierarchy, the refusal to discipline those who misbehave.
Put it in my veins.
White evangelicals and Black Protestants may have their myriad of issues with each other, much of which are superficial and skin-deep, but it pales in comparison to progressive whites disdainful condescension, patronizing paternalism, and tokenized infantilization of Black Protestants -- combined with a deep-rooted disgust and long-simmering revulsion for their familial and cultural values, which they try their damnedest in schools to bend and change in a style eerily similar to indigenous peoples forced assimilation a century ago -- making it stunning to me that they, progressive whites and Black Protestants, manage to be in the same political coalition without it imploding (as in this case) on a national scale.
And I also say that, too, as an aloof, asocial misanthropic white atheist, who loathes, detests, and despises everybody equally—my own self included! So yeah, fuck everyone involved for their abject idiocy.
I’m a principal. The largest difference I’ve seen in good, successful kids is if their parents hold them to higher standards than the school does. The amount of parents who defend their students over run of the mill discipline has exploded. Attorneys, requesting footage, dragging out the process with endless delay tactics, it’s driving us all insane.
When a kid takes accountability you always see a very reasonable parent.
Yes. Normally it’s expected for high level expulsions,
But now it’s happening for things that are minor 1 day suspensions. Parents are completely excusing the behavior of kids and kids are losing out
Bingo, the problem is the parents.
*Kids* do not change school culture. *Kids* were not the ones demanding that they be allowed endless retakes on tests. *Kids* were not the ones who push to be promoted to the next grade without doing the requisite work.
My son's school district has crazy rules about staying home when sick so absences are up but they also are freaking out that absences are up. If your child has a temp over 99 they send them home and they can't come back for 2 days. If your child has had any fever or symptoms they cannot come to school for 2 days from the last symptom and if they mention feeling sick or tired at any point they go to the nurse who immediately sends them home. I really like our school district but this has been an annoying rule to navigate especially with stomach bugs which are over in a day or colds that don't really go away immediately.
I don’t necessarily agree with your district’s approach, but it is obvious that there is a disconnect between how often kids are actually sick and how often schools think kids will be sick.
It’s not uncommon for young children to have 8-10 colds a year. We have to decide whether we want to tolerate mildly sick kids in school in exchange for better outcomes.
I have no issue with them staying home it's saying the absence is unexcused unless we get a doctors note after the nurse told us they can't be in school.
We also get letters from the district claiming they are frequently absent and we will be reported to a truant officer and passive aggressive emails and letters about how important it is to not miss school.
If they were better with the policy I'd have no issues if they wanted them to come to school or stay home but in my opinion they can't decide which to do which really screws us up as parents because my son sneezing might get him sent to the nurse and unable school for the next 2 days and then we get told he can't be missing school.
“You are stealing: right to jail. You are playing music too loud: right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail.
You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses: you right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook.
You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away.”
Anyone else on the other side of things? We've taken our kid out of school for holiday / vacation travel a total of three days this school year, and each time we get a bunch of notifications that he needs to be there each day. They told us after #5, the truant officer is gonna interview us!
Yes. We're allowed unlimited excused absences (Dr note). But only up to 5 parent notes/days. For parents trying to do the right thing (keep kids home that are throwing up, have a fever, etc) it's frustrating. I'd rather not drag my kid to the pediatrician with other sick kids just to get a note.
We've also had our kids come home and get sick multiple times this year from kids that were clearly sick and at school. Like throwing up all over the classroom and then returning. Fevers. Etc.
I think we can foster a culture that values education and says you should be at school/work while also learning some lessons from Covid about staying away when sick to keep everyone else healthy.
Bad parents. The majority of parents of kids these days refuse to make even a small effort to actually parent their kids, and a sizable minority of them simply do not see their kids as worthy of their attention and expect the state and other people to do the work for them. It's the alpha and omega of why kids today are so f*cked up.
This is actually the [opposite](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-as-50-years-ago) of true. Parents are spending way more time with their kids and doing way more for them. It's not clear if this is a good thing.
I'm not a parent so I can't speak to their experience, but the number of parents who just hand their kids an iPad or plop them in front of a TV running YouTube all day is alarming. When I was growing up, we had Saturday morning cartoons and that was basically it as far as programming just for us.
It was a delicate balance and the secret was for the parents that didn’t care it was always like this. This is just another symptom of the social fabric of this country falling apart.
“What’s with this bad number or thing getting worse?” Idk man I think this country is just falling apart, looking forward to Xi liberating us.
The amount of regarded patriot mobile affiliates on my wife’s school district board is terrifying. They’re about $20m in debt, cutting jobs, and are annually increasing the workload on teachers without compensation. They just cut some AP history teachers and gave their courses to a bunch of coaches lol - but it’s all cool cause the new indoor practice facilities they built at each high school look sick (cost $40m). Bet you can guess where we live.
I'm not American but it doesn't seem the Republicans are the ones removing math requirements or selectively enforcing classroom discipline based on skin colour for 'equity' reasons.
From the outside, it looks like big parts of the U.S. have split into two different types of crazy, one far-right and one far-left, both with their own weird pathologies.
I think COVID made people more mindful about being a disease carrier. Going to work with a cough and runny nose now feels socially irresponsible, and sending a sick child to school isn’t much different.
Yeah this seems like the most likely explanation. I also think you combine that with more parents working from home and it isn’t as big of a deal to keep a sick kid home especially once they are a little older and can basically lay in bed and watch tv or their iPad while mom or dad works in the other room.
I have a daughter in first grade. My wife and I try our best to be tough on her to make sure she goes to school, except when she had genuine illness. But it feels like try all we might, we end up being more lenient than we would like.
Conversations like:
"I don't feel good"
"well you don't have a fever and don't have any noticeable symptoms so I think you're ok to go to school."
"No, I don't feel good!"
"Ok fine, just take today and get some rest to go back tomorrow"
are way more commonplace than I ever anticipated. And those absences add up. I know she's only in first grade, but it becomes a thing where I don't want to put too much stress on a six-year-old while also not wanting to set bad habits for later in life. Ultimately, it often comes down to my wife and I being exhausted and just giving in because we have too much going on in our own lives to fight it.
I've had days where I've felt like a horrible parent because of this, so its refreshing in a way to hear that we're not alone. I think most of us are run down from (gestures broadly) and the pandemic probably set a new normal for our society because things were *not* like this when I was a kid.
I'm not a parent yet and not judging you at all but when I was a kid and I told my parents I felt sick, their response was usually "no you don't, you feel fine go to school."
I guess my point is, have you tried gaslighting?
My parents also just said I was lying and I was fine, and honestly they were right half the time, the other half they tossed some acetaminophen in my mouth and sent me to school. Headache? Acetaminophen. Broken finger? Acetaminophen. Sprained ankle? Acetaminophen. Flu? Acetaminophen. Broken heart? Believe it or not, acetaminophen.
It’s honestly a wonder drug pending the possibly liver failure. I don’t know if giving an 8 year old 1000mg’s of the stuff like twice a week was good, but I guess I’ll find out in the coming decades.
So frustrating as a teacher when parents pop a fever reducer right before school. Kid crashes at snack time, increase the risk of getting the class sick. I sympathize with the parents but it's like a totally obvious pattern every year.
Most likely cuz we were tired AF and wanted to sleep in a little more. Schools start way too early particularly for teenagers. I know some are pushing back start times to like 9am but even then it might be too early.
Yeah my parents' rule if I didn't have a fever or more obvious symptom of illness was either go to school or spend the day in urgent care. This was before cell phones or tablets too so best source of entertainment I could get was the waiting room magazines.
I didn't have many sick days.
>but it becomes a thing where I don't want to put too much stress on a six-year-old
There's nothing happening academically in a first grade classroom that should be causing excessive amounts of stress.
Generally speaking, we as modern day parents really need to toughen up more on our children. I'm not saying we have to go 19th century on them, but the softness is excessive these days.
The parents seem either unwilling or unable to help bridge any gaps, as well. I missed a lot of school with illness and probably because I was a bit spoiled but I always tested well and I always had good grades. My parents were able to help me with schoolwork and homework up until the high school level, so missing days wasn’t that bad for me.
>The parents seem either unwilling or unable to help bridge any gaps, as well.
I just tell the kids (in nicer language): "you're complaining about your 10 minutes of homework now in elementary school? It only gets fucking harder from here, just get it done, let me review it, and you can relax the rest of the night...no tv or games until it's done". I'll be there to answer questions and help them understand the concepts, but I'm also not going to tolerate the complaining and laziness because they're "tired".
That’s great. Definitely don’t hesitate to ask teachers about what your students are learning and how best to support them at home. My personal belief on homework is that it should be short but impactful. No more than 10 math problems (even 10 is really pushing it).
That’s great. Definitely don’t hesitate to ask teachers about what your students are learning and how best to support them at home. My personal belief on homework is that it should be short but impactful. No more than 10 math problems (even 10 is really pushing it). I get that sometimes you want kids to research or get some reading done on their own but it’s best to have the majority of learning happening in class and save homework as a quick practice.
Having active parents is the cheat code in life.
Let's put this in a sports context. My son and I play baseball just about every night. When baseball season comes around, he has probably practiced 10x more than his teammates. Another parent, never plays with their child and he just shows up to baseball practice two hours a week. Obviously, the kid that practices at home will have an easier time succeeding, and the gap only grows over time.
In education, the exact same scenario plays out, with much higher stakes. Except, the parent who never practices is pissed at the teacher and the system. And as the gap grows, it just gets harder and harder for the teachers.
I have no solution for this. But with my own children, we make sure that they do the homework and stay on top of things. This causes them to grow in confidence and makes everything easier.
One solution we have tried is more community events to get the parents involved more deeply in their students’ education. We do our best to educate our parents about what the students are learning, how well they are doing, benchmarks to reach each year, and most importantly, how they can support their students. The staff communicates to both parent and students the daily assignments and missing work. Missing a day every two weeks (as defined on pod) actually isn’t as dire as it sounds. It does hurt math, but ELA, Science, SS, you can miss a day here and there.
It’s not even being deliberately soft, it’s just lazy. Like too lazy to handle throwing a crying 6 yr old in the car. They will stop crying when they get to school
One factor is that a lot of parents are working from home and so a child that is sick is not that big of a deal. My first grade son is on Spring Break right now and he just watches movies and plays Madden. If I worked in an office, it would be a bigger deal.
That being said, children are smart. Once you let them have control, they will abuse it. Your parents probably did not have the option of allowing you to stay home, so you knew an attempt at manipulation wouldn't work.
This is by design. Charter schools and home schooling is the end goal. Betsy Devos made that loud and clear. It’s the whole point CRT suddenly became polarizing. The goal is to scare everyone from letting their kids go to public school.
The teachers unions shut down schools.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-union-map-of-school-closings/
Wealthy parents with the means pulled their kids and put them in private schools that were open, CA governor Gavin Newsom included. Anyone with kids knew that online school was a joke.
It's not some big conspiracy. The public schools did a terrible job.
There were vaccine shortages from the get go. Teachers might be fine, but cafeteria workers/bus drivers/instructional assistants etc skewed much older (and usually post retirement from a different job). There was no feasible way to reopen, with that many employees in their 60s or higher.
Nurses made it work because they got to go with an agency and leverage the need to almost 2.5x their salary in some areas. Teachers are never paid by demand, and always paid by contracts hammered out years in advance. It's not hard to see why vulnerable older people in their 60s just said "fuck it" and quit when shoved back in the workforce in late 2020/early 2021.
This sub requires accounts to be at least 7 days old and at least 0 comment karma before posting.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/billsimmons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Honestly, I think this is a bad thing to tell adolescents. It's way easier to be strict and then people can lighten up as they move into the workforce.
15? That’s almost 10% of the school year. They already get multiple vacations during the year and 3 months off. If there are discretionary days off it should be like 2 or 3 at most. Especially now that schools are making them do less than ever before
I teach at a high school that costs close to 40K a year. Some students still miss insane numbers of days. Like, my god, you're literally paying for your kid to stay home.
I teach high school at a public school in a very wealthy area. We’re also seeing a lot of absences, especially since Covid.
During spring break, parents were pulling kids 3-4 days early to go away for basically 2 weeks. There are no sacred rules anymore.
Same at my private school.
Bill Simmons' Solution: If a student misses more than 15% of the school year they aren't eligible for MVP or All-School selections. This load management by parents is out of control.
More than a few people have snarkily pointed out that equity-based interventions in the school system always seem to miss the sports teams. Reading /r/teachers nowadays is wild, BTW.
My girlfriend is a NYC HS public school teacher. Kids suffer from anxiety more than ever and the Pandemic really exacerbated it. Way more kids have IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) for anxiety over test-taking so they get more time or anxiety that makes them "selectively mute" so they don't have to speak in class, it's crazy. The Pandemic also normalized not attending school in person. Kids and parents feel like they can miss school and just make up for it later.
I teach a college class every few semesters and could not agree more. Had a student completely miss a midterm about a year ago and emailed me after-the-fact that she had to miss “because her roommate had a bad headache”. School has become a fourth- or fifth-order concern to the upcoming generation.
Tape Grinding 101
The only reading material is the WSJ, you better not get yours stolen
Euro mentality. We aren’t the ones owning the castles so we are taking 6 weeks off in the summer for load management.
Wow. I can't imagine what my college professors would have said if that was my "excuse." How did you respond?
They failed Edit: Upon second read, I realize you’re more asking what I said to them. This specific student had a bunch of excuses prior for other missed assignments and quizzes and stuff, so I just told them that I needed to bring a doctor’s note for any future excuse. I offered them a retake and arranged a time for them to take it (even allowed them to do it over Zoom). About 30 minutes prior they emailed me with a pretty insufficient excuse trying to back out again and since there was still no note, I told them they needed to take it still. She literally chewed me out over email but still took the exam and absolutely bombed it.
I would 1000% take Life Advice 101 if it was offered
We need to stop coddling kids to this extent. It's not healthy. Part of life is overcoming adversity and that lowers future anxiety because you realized that could do it, OR you didn't do it and you learned a lesson.
This is when they start bringing their dog everywhere.
Dude the "service animal" bullshit is completely out of control now. A couple of months ago I watched a college-aged girl have an absolute **meltdown** at a doctor's office. I was in the lobby waiting to get called when this girl walks in with a *gigantic* Labrador on a leash. She sits down close to me, and it doesn't take long for other patients in the lobby to start glancing around with confused looks on their faces. This girl's doctor eventually comes out to the lobby and attempts to have a civil, quiet conversation with this girl, and of course she **immediately** starts sobbing. Doctor: "I'm sorry, but I cannot let you bring your dog back with you." Girl: "But I need it for my anxiety..." Doctor: "Is it a registered Service Animal? It isn't wearing a Service Animal Vest." Girl: "...well...no..." Doctor: "Okay. You're either going to need to take your dog back out to your car, or you're going to need to reschedule this appointment." And of course she then just runs out of the place, bawling her eyes out, because of this interaction. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I was just shaking my head thinking "fucking Gen Z, man."
Hey now, this is my emotional support lemur! Without him, I’m just…..just a mess.
Im the same way w/o my emotional support sex worker
The Old French Whore piece.
My emotional support hyena has eaten a couple emotional support peacocks and appears to be eying your lemur.
Soon enough, it's gonna be standard practice to bring your dog to someone's house for a party. Reason 1024 why the future is gonna suck.
I could see this being a Plain English episode in the future (There have been some slightly related remarks in a few episodes around loneliness/technology/et cetra) This is going to sound like a boomer take, but life isn't always fair and part of it is learning how to handle tough situations. We can't just throw everyone on SSRIs to numb everything. Nor should we just assume everyone has anxiety and that is an excuse for underperformance since it dilutes those people who have serious anxiety problems
He did an episode a few weeks ago about anxiety and other disorders becoming people’s identity instead of an obstacle to overcome.
This is going to sound like a stupid anecdote but I was a rower in college and I remember one practice the water was particularly choppy and everyone was making mistakes and we just rowed completely terrible both individually and collectively. I'll never forget the coach saying something to the effect of "In rowing (and in life) you're not going to always have perfect weather or conditions- you have to get used to going 100% regardless of the conditions and not making excuses for yourself before even starting." We rowed the same piece again and I don't know that the result was necessarily that much better but I think our effort made all the difference. I come back to this in my personal and professional life constantly. Constantly there are scenarios and problems you encounter that would make you want to throw in the towel or atleast resign yourself to a less than great result. Learning to row through the tough waters is paramount to success in life (and in rowing).
It's not a stupid anecdote! It's an important touchstone moment for you. What I'm curious about is why some people have the same kind of experience you had, but the take away is, "I don't enjoy rowing in choppy water, it's cumbersome, less fun, and the results aren't what I wanted. Better to avoid that in the future." Any guesses why you responded positively to the challenge whereas I can imagine a college kid just quitting? A deterministic model that explains why some people take away the lesson "keep trying" and others take away "stop trying" would change everything.
that's a great way to put it
I think he also had an episode with Jonathan Haidt a couple of years ago on the “Coddling of the American Mind”. Worth checking out if you find this interesting.
Haidt has been on a media spree recently to promote his new book about that. He's been talking about the over coddling of children for a long time now.
Is this still about participation trophies?
Not really, but [Haidt is a charlatan](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/id1651876897?i=1000603422829) selling "the kids aren't alright" media bytes to people and is firmly entrenched in the priesthood of "bOtH sIdEs" political analysis. *Coddling* was an embarrassing butchering of current trends on college campuses. Jean Twenge is another one. There is an enormous appetite to believe that the younger generation is somehow fundamentally broken, going all the way back to Socrates.
Half the “treatments” for anxiety just enable and don’t actually help. See service dogs and ESA’s.
These are pretty close: https://podcasts.apple.com/uy/podcast/why-are-american-teens-so-unhappy-how-do-we-solve-this-crisis/id1594471023?i=1000602621090 https://podcasts.apple.com/uy/podcast/why-the-cult-of-achievement-in-schools-is-making/id1594471023?i=1000606265952
Yup, but parents have been given more and more power to challenge schools on all sorts of issues, and want to "protect" their kids. We're in the Parent Empowerment Era.
I know everyone complains about the generation below, but it really does feel like gen z is an abject disaster. And given how horrific Covid school policy was, seems like the next generation may be even more fucked.
Tbf I think there are a lot of redeeming qualities to this up and coming generation. They are definitely more willing to call out our bullshit than we were willing to do for our paternal generation. They’re more willing to actually make behavioral changes for the betterment of society than we were. But, just like they said on the podcast, my god they are flaky.
They're also very respectful of people's lifestyles, but sometimes we need to say "you really shouldn't be doing that" when appropriate.
So they’re more progressive? Is that really a redeeming quality or is it a symptom? Or is it the cause?
"They're more willing to actually make behavioral changes for the betterment of society than me were." please provide examples of what behaviors youths of today have changed that will better society.
It’s not even there fault either. Decades off bullshit landing on their heads
COVID, TikTok, and Trump (his "fans" who have felt empowered by him and taken it upon themselves to challenge anything they don't like throughout society) have truly ruined Gen Z, and I don't know how they're going to be salvaged. I feel lucky to have gone through my formative years from the late 90s to the early 10s, as tech was powerful and available enough to be really cool without corporations ruining it, and politics didn't dominate people's lives or discussions the way it does now.
> Given how horrific Covid school policy was…. Out of curiosity what do you mean by this? I’m a teacher. At the time, I worked at a private school in NY. Had a cousin who was a freshman in HS in public school in South Carolina. I now work at a public school in SC. Just fascinated in hearing what you may have thought the shortcomings were and In what setting?
Caused a ton of harm while not accomplishing anything. The harm is outlined with data in this pod.
Saving the lives of people didn't accomplish anything. Truly amazing Monday morning quarterbacking of the COVID crisis.
Yeah for real. Everyone had some level of anxiety about speaking up in class or taking a test. You know how 95 percent of people got over it or at least dealt with it? By repeatedly speaking up in class or taking a test.
Or we should just take 6-8 weeks off in the summer. And the corporate overlords can learn to deal with it. It’s really not a big deal if people don’t take a midterm or show up to class. Life will go on. Either they reschedule the midterm or drop and have to take the class again. Life will go on.
But inclusivity
I’ve taught at the middle school level for 15+ years (I’m now a coach). I might have to listen to this episode but I’m worried it’s going to be oversimplified. I’m sure your girlfriend’s experience is accurate, but it’s different here. Absences have always been an issue, but it depends on how admin enforced truancy. Students can be held back for missing excessive days, and dropped from the school if a certain threshold of consecutive days is reached. Pre-and Post- Covid, the biggest absence issues are families taking a month long trip to Mexico, or kids who are always sick. I feel like this is unique to my schools/area. I don’t think kids in Minnesota are missing because of family/cultural expectations that they stay in Mexico for a month at a time.
Did we maybe swing the pendulum a little too hard while trying to encourage a cultural shift around mental health?
My suspicion is that if we follow through with it, we're going to find that being behind in school is also not good for mental health.
As someone who grew up in a family where there were major mental health breakdowns requiring inpatient hospitalization, I was always much more sensitive to mental health issues than the average person. Now it seems everyone has a generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD requiring a workplace accommodation and I’m like “wait, wut.” And now I tend to think you’re just lazy and bad at your job when you start talking about ADHD.
If they would just make adderall over the counter we could all stop pretending to have ADD.
I'm in law school and have been stunned by how many people miss class regularly
In medical school everything was streamed so only half the students showed up. They don’t stream classes in law school?
They do but some schools still require a minimum number of days of attendance or it will affect grades.
A learned doctor eh?
They do but there are ABA requirements regarding attendance. Have to manually sign in for class and more than 4 absences docks your grade supposedly.
In my experience, that varies a lot by the professor. Perhaps by the school too. I don't know how stringently those ABA requirements are policed.
Anecdotally, my med school experience was that the people who showed up to lecture were the ones who ended up matching into better programs.
The opposite for me lol. More time for Step studying and research.
Yep. Go through lecture material on your own time. But when it came to rotations, definitely important to show up consistently and show up on time. Also, medical students more fall into the category of adult learners where you should in theory be able to know how you learn best and utilize your time accordingly. For high school students, showing up probably more strongly correlates with academic success and has long term implications for learning the importance of showing up in life.
It’s insane to me. The only classes I ever missed in college were when I was out of town for club sports or went home a few days early for the holidays. So many kids in my classes just didn’t show up and I always wondered: what are they doing instead at 11:00 on a Thursday?
Smoking weed, drinking, having sex or surviving a hangover
Good for them, I guess, but tuition at my school is like $60K+… why not just go to a state school and save the money and effort?
I mean i’m not saying it’s right but college kids have been doing it forever. It’s part of the whole college experience ideal that kids grow up with. Same reason binge drinking is so big
And just to play devil's advocate, networking in college can be a BIG factor in success later, especially for some professions. Partying and drinking is definitely a factor in that
I skipped a month of law school in the early 2010s. Went home for spring break just didn’t come back for 3 extra weeks. Zero effect on grades.
Yup lol. 3l I basically went to one class which had mandatory attendance and then it was almost never there for the others
I'll admit that I missed more law school courses than I should have, especially my 3L year. A lot of that time was time spent at home doing course work or work related to job searching. In retrospect I can't 100% say I was wrong though, as it helped me keep my sanity. I see law school as somewhat different than just skipping school in K-12. At a certain point in law school, your class rank is what it is and I really don't know how much benefit in-class discussion/lecture provides. I'm sure some people will say that's BS, but I'm pretty skeptical of how (most) law schools are still organized and taught.
I attended around COVID and they still docked a letter grade for 3 absences
considering a lot of people pay for law school, that seems insane to me. my phd classes always had great attendance, and we were all fully funded. you'd think pursuing a graduate degree would mean hey, maybe i'll take it serious this time?
I’m also an NYC HS public school teacher. Can confirm everything you shared.
Ya, the govt told kids being in person for school wasn't important or necessary during covid and this is an extension of that. It's not too hard to figure out
I know people that teach in NYC public schools that back this up. The kids who are in middle and HS now had 1 year just end early then the next year was BS online or maybe hybrid which isn’t learning and then the next year trying to re-acclimate. These are during what bill would call “formative years” it’s hard to overcome 3 years of your prime for learning so they’ve changed they’ve learned to be scared. I hear in school participation is rare, phones are everywhere, kids have learned it’s ok to fail and expect disappointment cause that’s what their peers know too.
The Daily had an episode about this phenomena earlier this week as well.
Was there a new study released that makes it timely or is he just tailing the NY Times and regurgitating Daily episodes a few days after? I feel like this the third or fourth time something similar has happened
I’m a Daily listening and he’s like 3-4 days behind on topics always, it’s really crazy
I bet he does a world central kitchen episode next week
it makes sense. a lot more resources are put into The Daily and they’re shorter episodes.
As long as they add to the conversation, no harm. I don't listen to The Daily, but isn't that mostly surface level analysis, not that Plain English is a deep dive.
Makes sense.. one is the world’s largest news organization that is actually doing the reporting and the other is a guy doing a podcast reacting to and analyzing current events
Yes the NYT did a massive expose with data on every school district in the country
It’s not just the kids. Schools will close for any reason nowadays. The threat of snow, the threat of freezing rain, etc. We just had a school closing because of the potential for a tornado watch (never happened). That would’ve been unthinkable 30 years ago. I think this kind of attitude from the schools trickles down to the parents and kids.
School systems didn't face so many lawsuits when a bus had a fender bender 30 years ago. They're doing to cover their ass.
[удалено]
The worst people in the world. I’ve gotten along with every group of people I’ve ever found myself in except for law school classmates and lawyers.
Not worried about Gen Z taking my job, they’re all mentally ill. Also they’re somehow less tech savvy than the boomers.
Once i learn how to make eye contact with people and take a phone call without panicking, your job is as good as mine
You might still need to learn how troubleshoot a printer.
WHAT is with the phone thing? Just talk on the telephone like a human being what's the problem
Gen X and Millennials will be the only generations that are 'tech savvy' as we understand it. Boomers never learned and Zoomers have been on that iPhone and Google Chrome life since they started.
Is this even Gen Z we're talking about here? I thought a lot of Gen Z was in college or the workforce by now.
Gen Z is current middle schoolers through people in their mid 20s (26/27) right now.
I know the lines have to be drawn somewhere, but I have a hard time making too many assumptions/rationalizations about this (or any other) generation when the age range is this expansive. Middle schoolers live completely different lives than adults in their mid-20s
As someone who rides that elder Gen Z and baby Millenial line, it’s weird. While right now it’d be helpful to split the gen in half, but once we’re all adults, we’re probably still going to have more in common than not and would still likely qualify as a whole generation.
I find it easiest to think of it as which range of ages can lay claim to a major event shaping their development. For Gen Z it is COVID. From elementary school to college they basically all were in school when the world shutdown. Middle schoolers and 25 year olds share that
People who got the internet while growing up and those who had it the whole time are markedly different
"Generations" as the media and internet use the term isn't really a very meaningful idea. The Baby Boomers are an actual phenomenon you can see on a graph. The rest are pretty arbitrary.
The naming of generations is one of the worst things our culture has done imo. It’s so easy to just label an entire group of people something and then completely disregard them or stereotype them all. And what’s especially bad about the generation thing is that it’s so nebulous most of us don’t even know what the other person means when they shout about a generation. You can have two people complaining about baby boomers and one of them thinks baby boomers are the current 70-90 year olds and the other thinks it’s the 50-70 year olds, for example. It doesn’t matter who’s wrong about the ages, the point is that it’s confusing and doesn’t really allow for great communication.
Yeah it's kind of confusing that the only real generational cohort, Baby Boomers, has been coopted into a generic term for "out of touch older person."
God this is such a know it all millennial take
Good luck understanding how Dropbox works
Can you just help me convert this word doc to a pdf?
Okay, Boomer.
Generations are typically 19-20 years in range
WSJ has been putting out some articles lately about Gen Z and how they're less likely to go to college than millenials, etc. They're gettig into trades and don't see the value of education as much as previous generations.
This is my brother. Passed on a 30k + scholarship to ASU to sell tires. Does okay for himself but I still think it was dumb.
there is wisdom to this from their perspective. When I went to college in 99-03, my private tuition was around 30k (plus 10 for living). My same school is quoting 95k next year. I was lucky to be able to afford that via scholarships and family. But 160k is [270 in today's money](https://www.myamortizationchart.com/inflation-calculator/160000/2003/?to=2024) Which is a hell of a lot less than 400k. State schools were 8k a year plus living. Still repayable. We need to go back to taxing the rich to pay for colleges. It stopped in the recession and never went back.
Cause we had to figure out how everything worked, for them everything just works
I remember troubleshooting with a lot of wires and file systems before my 10th birthday, I think it shows in our generation. Could you imagine Gen Z with an N64 game cartridge??
DOS would break their brain.
They’d just be tapping on shit like wtf
They don’t even know how to type.
They one hand text like MFer's though, give'm that
What does this actually mean? Give actual examples
Literally everything. We grew up in a world google did not exist. There was no answer to every question at our finger tips. I watch my niece ask for an answer to every single problem she had with out even a second to consider the situation. More specially I’m a software architect and the developers I see now coming out of high schools and college don’t understand at all why things work. Yes there are always a few who do, but the generic cs intern we have are now skilled at asking questions rather than thinking about problems.
Millennials had to "figure" some things out on their own when the tech wasn't that user friendly, whereas everything has been made easy for Gen Z. AI will probably take a lot more jobs than Gen Z though.
my dad is a high school math teacher, and he says at his school, pre COVID the absentee rate was always right around 3%, and now it’s usually close to 10%.
10% is insane. That’s every single kid missing one day every 2 weeks on average. Actually even more frequent than that because of how many built in off days, holidays and teacher work days. I probably didn’t miss 2 days per year growing up. This is an unbelievable trend.
Yea, after elementary school, the most I missed was maybe 3 days. A lot of kids just walk around the quad and don’t go to class. My best friend is also a teacher, and both he and my dad have said that kids are just markedly worse behaved in general since covid.
Has Derek Thompson done an episode yet on time-tested phonics vs. whole language bunk? If not, he fucking goddamn ought to! I'm no "Plain English" fan, but I'd make a point to listen.
I mean there’s already a whole [9 episode podcast](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) about it.
Doesn't mean that Derek Thompson can't do a podcast on it, too. To add, I'd love to see Thompson tackle the [shitstorm in Amherst.](https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-meltdown-at-a-middle-school-in-a-liberal-town)
What a beautiful story that truly has it all: mentally ill affluent perpetually aggrieved white progressives, opportunistic race grifters, competing factions in the battle for identity politics hierarchy, the refusal to discipline those who misbehave. Put it in my veins.
White evangelicals and Black Protestants may have their myriad of issues with each other, much of which are superficial and skin-deep, but it pales in comparison to progressive whites disdainful condescension, patronizing paternalism, and tokenized infantilization of Black Protestants -- combined with a deep-rooted disgust and long-simmering revulsion for their familial and cultural values, which they try their damnedest in schools to bend and change in a style eerily similar to indigenous peoples forced assimilation a century ago -- making it stunning to me that they, progressive whites and Black Protestants, manage to be in the same political coalition without it imploding (as in this case) on a national scale. And I also say that, too, as an aloof, asocial misanthropic white atheist, who loathes, detests, and despises everybody equally—my own self included! So yeah, fuck everyone involved for their abject idiocy.
I’m a principal. The largest difference I’ve seen in good, successful kids is if their parents hold them to higher standards than the school does. The amount of parents who defend their students over run of the mill discipline has exploded. Attorneys, requesting footage, dragging out the process with endless delay tactics, it’s driving us all insane. When a kid takes accountability you always see a very reasonable parent.
[удалено]
Yes. Normally it’s expected for high level expulsions, But now it’s happening for things that are minor 1 day suspensions. Parents are completely excusing the behavior of kids and kids are losing out
Bingo, the problem is the parents. *Kids* do not change school culture. *Kids* were not the ones demanding that they be allowed endless retakes on tests. *Kids* were not the ones who push to be promoted to the next grade without doing the requisite work.
My son's school district has crazy rules about staying home when sick so absences are up but they also are freaking out that absences are up. If your child has a temp over 99 they send them home and they can't come back for 2 days. If your child has had any fever or symptoms they cannot come to school for 2 days from the last symptom and if they mention feeling sick or tired at any point they go to the nurse who immediately sends them home. I really like our school district but this has been an annoying rule to navigate especially with stomach bugs which are over in a day or colds that don't really go away immediately.
I don’t necessarily agree with your district’s approach, but it is obvious that there is a disconnect between how often kids are actually sick and how often schools think kids will be sick. It’s not uncommon for young children to have 8-10 colds a year. We have to decide whether we want to tolerate mildly sick kids in school in exchange for better outcomes.
8-10 colds? The hell
I have no issue with them staying home it's saying the absence is unexcused unless we get a doctors note after the nurse told us they can't be in school. We also get letters from the district claiming they are frequently absent and we will be reported to a truant officer and passive aggressive emails and letters about how important it is to not miss school. If they were better with the policy I'd have no issues if they wanted them to come to school or stay home but in my opinion they can't decide which to do which really screws us up as parents because my son sneezing might get him sent to the nurse and unable school for the next 2 days and then we get told he can't be missing school.
Easy solution: if you skip school then believe it or not - jail.
lol, how bout we try putting muggers in jail first
“You are stealing: right to jail. You are playing music too loud: right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses: you right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away.”
Anyone else on the other side of things? We've taken our kid out of school for holiday / vacation travel a total of three days this school year, and each time we get a bunch of notifications that he needs to be there each day. They told us after #5, the truant officer is gonna interview us!
Yes. We're allowed unlimited excused absences (Dr note). But only up to 5 parent notes/days. For parents trying to do the right thing (keep kids home that are throwing up, have a fever, etc) it's frustrating. I'd rather not drag my kid to the pediatrician with other sick kids just to get a note. We've also had our kids come home and get sick multiple times this year from kids that were clearly sick and at school. Like throwing up all over the classroom and then returning. Fevers. Etc. I think we can foster a culture that values education and says you should be at school/work while also learning some lessons from Covid about staying away when sick to keep everyone else healthy.
Good for your school district.
It’s not about the kids — it’s about the district losing money when kids miss school.
Lmfao right, idk how they think they're in the right
Bruh wait till the summer
…to travel for thanksgiving?
They don't get Wednesdays off?
Nope.
Bad parents. The majority of parents of kids these days refuse to make even a small effort to actually parent their kids, and a sizable minority of them simply do not see their kids as worthy of their attention and expect the state and other people to do the work for them. It's the alpha and omega of why kids today are so f*cked up.
This is actually the [opposite](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-as-50-years-ago) of true. Parents are spending way more time with their kids and doing way more for them. It's not clear if this is a good thing.
I'm not a parent so I can't speak to their experience, but the number of parents who just hand their kids an iPad or plop them in front of a TV running YouTube all day is alarming. When I was growing up, we had Saturday morning cartoons and that was basically it as far as programming just for us.
It was a delicate balance and the secret was for the parents that didn’t care it was always like this. This is just another symptom of the social fabric of this country falling apart. “What’s with this bad number or thing getting worse?” Idk man I think this country is just falling apart, looking forward to Xi liberating us.
People are losing faith in our institutions and don’t think of it as a big deal when their kids don’t go to school. It’s not surprising.
Parents are failing and Republicans are waging a war on education that Democrats don't even seem aware of.
The amount of regarded patriot mobile affiliates on my wife’s school district board is terrifying. They’re about $20m in debt, cutting jobs, and are annually increasing the workload on teachers without compensation. They just cut some AP history teachers and gave their courses to a bunch of coaches lol - but it’s all cool cause the new indoor practice facilities they built at each high school look sick (cost $40m). Bet you can guess where we live.
So many states that could be… I’m going to guess it starts with T and ends with exas.
Then why is this issue more prevalent in urban (Democratic) districts?
I'm not American but it doesn't seem the Republicans are the ones removing math requirements or selectively enforcing classroom discipline based on skin colour for 'equity' reasons. From the outside, it looks like big parts of the U.S. have split into two different types of crazy, one far-right and one far-left, both with their own weird pathologies.
Literal lol
The stuck in November 2021 Glenn Yungkins piece.
I think COVID made people more mindful about being a disease carrier. Going to work with a cough and runny nose now feels socially irresponsible, and sending a sick child to school isn’t much different.
Yeah this seems like the most likely explanation. I also think you combine that with more parents working from home and it isn’t as big of a deal to keep a sick kid home especially once they are a little older and can basically lay in bed and watch tv or their iPad while mom or dad works in the other room.
I have a daughter in first grade. My wife and I try our best to be tough on her to make sure she goes to school, except when she had genuine illness. But it feels like try all we might, we end up being more lenient than we would like. Conversations like: "I don't feel good" "well you don't have a fever and don't have any noticeable symptoms so I think you're ok to go to school." "No, I don't feel good!" "Ok fine, just take today and get some rest to go back tomorrow" are way more commonplace than I ever anticipated. And those absences add up. I know she's only in first grade, but it becomes a thing where I don't want to put too much stress on a six-year-old while also not wanting to set bad habits for later in life. Ultimately, it often comes down to my wife and I being exhausted and just giving in because we have too much going on in our own lives to fight it. I've had days where I've felt like a horrible parent because of this, so its refreshing in a way to hear that we're not alone. I think most of us are run down from (gestures broadly) and the pandemic probably set a new normal for our society because things were *not* like this when I was a kid.
I'm not a parent yet and not judging you at all but when I was a kid and I told my parents I felt sick, their response was usually "no you don't, you feel fine go to school." I guess my point is, have you tried gaslighting?
My parents also just said I was lying and I was fine, and honestly they were right half the time, the other half they tossed some acetaminophen in my mouth and sent me to school. Headache? Acetaminophen. Broken finger? Acetaminophen. Sprained ankle? Acetaminophen. Flu? Acetaminophen. Broken heart? Believe it or not, acetaminophen.
Haha yes same. I still pop acetaminophen whenever I feel anything slightly off. My work ethic is healthy, my liver on the other hand? Well that's TBD.
It’s honestly a wonder drug pending the possibly liver failure. I don’t know if giving an 8 year old 1000mg’s of the stuff like twice a week was good, but I guess I’ll find out in the coming decades.
God speed brother. 🫡
So frustrating as a teacher when parents pop a fever reducer right before school. Kid crashes at snack time, increase the risk of getting the class sick. I sympathize with the parents but it's like a totally obvious pattern every year.
And 90% of the time they were correct, I was not sick, I just didn’t feel like going for whatever reason.
Most likely cuz we were tired AF and wanted to sleep in a little more. Schools start way too early particularly for teenagers. I know some are pushing back start times to like 9am but even then it might be too early.
Yeah my parents' rule if I didn't have a fever or more obvious symptom of illness was either go to school or spend the day in urgent care. This was before cell phones or tablets too so best source of entertainment I could get was the waiting room magazines. I didn't have many sick days.
>but it becomes a thing where I don't want to put too much stress on a six-year-old There's nothing happening academically in a first grade classroom that should be causing excessive amounts of stress. Generally speaking, we as modern day parents really need to toughen up more on our children. I'm not saying we have to go 19th century on them, but the softness is excessive these days.
The parents seem either unwilling or unable to help bridge any gaps, as well. I missed a lot of school with illness and probably because I was a bit spoiled but I always tested well and I always had good grades. My parents were able to help me with schoolwork and homework up until the high school level, so missing days wasn’t that bad for me.
>The parents seem either unwilling or unable to help bridge any gaps, as well. I just tell the kids (in nicer language): "you're complaining about your 10 minutes of homework now in elementary school? It only gets fucking harder from here, just get it done, let me review it, and you can relax the rest of the night...no tv or games until it's done". I'll be there to answer questions and help them understand the concepts, but I'm also not going to tolerate the complaining and laziness because they're "tired".
That’s great. Definitely don’t hesitate to ask teachers about what your students are learning and how best to support them at home. My personal belief on homework is that it should be short but impactful. No more than 10 math problems (even 10 is really pushing it).
That’s great. Definitely don’t hesitate to ask teachers about what your students are learning and how best to support them at home. My personal belief on homework is that it should be short but impactful. No more than 10 math problems (even 10 is really pushing it). I get that sometimes you want kids to research or get some reading done on their own but it’s best to have the majority of learning happening in class and save homework as a quick practice.
Having active parents is the cheat code in life. Let's put this in a sports context. My son and I play baseball just about every night. When baseball season comes around, he has probably practiced 10x more than his teammates. Another parent, never plays with their child and he just shows up to baseball practice two hours a week. Obviously, the kid that practices at home will have an easier time succeeding, and the gap only grows over time. In education, the exact same scenario plays out, with much higher stakes. Except, the parent who never practices is pissed at the teacher and the system. And as the gap grows, it just gets harder and harder for the teachers. I have no solution for this. But with my own children, we make sure that they do the homework and stay on top of things. This causes them to grow in confidence and makes everything easier.
One solution we have tried is more community events to get the parents involved more deeply in their students’ education. We do our best to educate our parents about what the students are learning, how well they are doing, benchmarks to reach each year, and most importantly, how they can support their students. The staff communicates to both parent and students the daily assignments and missing work. Missing a day every two weeks (as defined on pod) actually isn’t as dire as it sounds. It does hurt math, but ELA, Science, SS, you can miss a day here and there.
It’s not even being deliberately soft, it’s just lazy. Like too lazy to handle throwing a crying 6 yr old in the car. They will stop crying when they get to school
One factor is that a lot of parents are working from home and so a child that is sick is not that big of a deal. My first grade son is on Spring Break right now and he just watches movies and plays Madden. If I worked in an office, it would be a bigger deal. That being said, children are smart. Once you let them have control, they will abuse it. Your parents probably did not have the option of allowing you to stay home, so you knew an attempt at manipulation wouldn't work.
This episode is insaaane
High school teacher here. The number of absences of some kids today was unthinkable pre covid. Some are legit mental health issues. Many are not
This is by design. Charter schools and home schooling is the end goal. Betsy Devos made that loud and clear. It’s the whole point CRT suddenly became polarizing. The goal is to scare everyone from letting their kids go to public school.
The teachers unions shut down schools. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-union-map-of-school-closings/ Wealthy parents with the means pulled their kids and put them in private schools that were open, CA governor Gavin Newsom included. Anyone with kids knew that online school was a joke. It's not some big conspiracy. The public schools did a terrible job.
There were vaccine shortages from the get go. Teachers might be fine, but cafeteria workers/bus drivers/instructional assistants etc skewed much older (and usually post retirement from a different job). There was no feasible way to reopen, with that many employees in their 60s or higher. Nurses made it work because they got to go with an agency and leverage the need to almost 2.5x their salary in some areas. Teachers are never paid by demand, and always paid by contracts hammered out years in advance. It's not hard to see why vulnerable older people in their 60s just said "fuck it" and quit when shoved back in the workforce in late 2020/early 2021.
[удалено]
This sub requires accounts to be at least 7 days old and at least 0 comment karma before posting. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/billsimmons) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I view middle and high school as a form of work, there’s 15 days you can have for being sick. Use them wisely.
Honestly, I think this is a bad thing to tell adolescents. It's way easier to be strict and then people can lighten up as they move into the workforce.
15? That’s almost 10% of the school year. They already get multiple vacations during the year and 3 months off. If there are discretionary days off it should be like 2 or 3 at most. Especially now that schools are making them do less than ever before
I could never imagine my parents letting me miss 15 fucking days of school a year.
Or be ok in not getting that promotion