Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 13 2020, @11:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the virtual-teaching dept.

With Wuhan Coronavirus spreading in New York City, parents, Parent Teacher Associations, and schools seem to be inevitably headed for extended shutdowns and quarantines. The Department of Education is crossing its fingers, wiping down all surfaces, and hoping to avert the worst without closing schools, but parents are going to need contingency plans.

Do Soylentils have recommendations for online resources that members of NYC's school boards can share with the parent community to help kids keep up with their school work? Khan Academy is an excellent resource for math & science; it doesn't span every subject but something like it that grade school kids can understand would be ideal.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 13 2020, @06:55PM (7 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 13 2020, @06:55PM (#970829)

    a level of competency in a skill

    If you believe that anybody can learn to do anything if they just try hard enough, you haven't met my kids, or Gaaark's.

    everyone has something they suck at but have to do anyway

    The most successful people I know, and know of, delegate the things they suck at to others who don't suck at them. If we all lived in the wild frontier, far enough to not see the smoke of our nearest neighbors' cookfire, then sure - individualism and jack of all trades is the way to success; nobody I know, or know of, actually lives that way in this century - though many wish they did.

    Should kids learn to read? Yeah, that's the value set I grew up with and I still see the value in it. Should kids learn how to do long division in their head? It's an interesting challenge, and good for those who can do it - but in the world where everybody had a smartphone in their pocket (which can cost less than 8 hours of minimum wage to buy outright), I think that being able to communicate effectively - both expressively and receptively - via Google and YouTube videos, may well be the way of the future. Even in our (born in the 1960s) generation, I know a fella from Kentucky who never learned to read or write, but brings home a reliable six figures by managing crews that do conveyor belt installation - he's got valuable skills, they just don't involve letters on a page.

    I guess the point here is: the kids should be learning something valuable - but reading and interpretation of Plato's dialogues is probably nowhere near as valuable today as it was in the 1960s, and even the printed page is slipping in the overall scheme of things.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 13 2020, @10:48PM (6 children)

    Your kids are very much a tiny exception and not really relevant to general rules. For the overwhelming majority, it's not even trying. If they keep doing it, it sinks in regardless of if they try or not.

    Second paragraph sounds like you're trying to make excuses for expected failure. Do that and I guarantee you that you will fail. Allow your kids to do it and ditto for them. Forbid it and they might still fail but it won't be because they just gave up.

    Man, I don't care about no Plato. Reading romance novels or even Calvin and Hobbes would do just fine. It's about the repetition until the experience chases away the incompetence not about the content.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 13 2020, @11:50PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 13 2020, @11:50PM (#970923)

      repetition until the experience chases away the incompetence

      You're right, I have a distorted perspective because of these two 1%'er kids in the house - before I had those kids I also had a distorted perspective in your direction.

      "Normal" looking/seeming people do have challenges, and we should all try to overcome to the best of our abilities, but... if you want to succeed like Richard Branson, you don't keep bashing your head against things that just don't work for you, no matter how that makes you compare with the rest of the world. To succeed, you do what you excel at, and let others who are better than you do the things they excel at - and hopefully somewhere along the line learn how to respect and cooperate with people with different abilities.

      Back in High School, I really thought Laura Whatsherface was just not trying to learn Geometry when I was assigned to tutor her, and maybe she was just lazy, maybe with no-holds barred, a cattle prod and 30 days in a locked room I could have gotten her demonstrating geometric proofs. I'm sure there are plenty of people, particularly of the Mrs. degree seeking variety, who could do a whole lot better in maths if they applied themselves diligently, but, then, is that really leading them to better lives when they take time away from practicing skills of their competitive quest to land the most lucrative mates?

      Make me king of the world, give me sufficient loyal subjects that I can reasonably well protect myself from assassination for 30+ years and enforce the policies I decree, I'll fix it all - and meaningful improvements in education for all are near the top of the list. Meanwhile, even the leaders of the free world are just herding cats, at best, and we mostly evolved without that kind of central control - our instincts to pursue, and avoid, learning of various skills probably do more to propagate our personal genome better than following of societal rules and norms ever will. As for my personal kingdom, my kids read just fine, they'll read out loud all damn day long with the slightest encouragement - getting them to do something beyond the mechanics of reading is the challenge.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:41PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:41PM (#971161) Homepage Journal

        We ain't talking geometric proofs that nearly nobody is going to actually use, we're talking reading. Reading is a fundamental skill that nobody should allow themselves to suck at if it can at all be avoided.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:05PM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:05PM (#971170) Homepage Journal

        The difficulty with mathematics is that it is a huge tower of concepts. Mathematics is built on mathematics.

        If your learning has missed a brick on the way up, everything above it is incomprehensible.

        When I tutor, I start with asking questions from the advanced to the elementary -- something like a binary search in the student's knowledge base.

        After that it's often easy to teach the missing brick and the rest can fall into place.

        But if the student has learned to fear mathematics, the binary search will fail in a flood of tears.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @04:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @04:38AM (#971033)

      For the overwhelming majority, it's not even trying. If they keep doing it, it sinks in regardless of if they try or not.

      It seems that people have been trained to believe that they are helpless outside of classrooms, to the point where learning anything is nigh impossible. This while many proclaim that schools help students 'learn how to learn.' It's a shame that in an age where people have access to a vast amount of high-quality information, most do not take advantage of it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @08:49AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @08:49AM (#971107)

      Man, I don't care about no Plato.

      That much is more than obvious, Oh Buzzard of Might. Do you think you could display your ignorance in yet further fashions? Don't know much about History, don't know much Biology. Can't remember the French I took. Wait, TMB, do you know your ancestral tongue? Illiterate is one thing, but to not know the language of one's fathers, oh, dear.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:02PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:02PM (#971169) Homepage Journal

        Gotta learn to walk before you can run, ari. They ain't getting through Plato if they can't get through a modern novel in their own language.

        My ancestral language? Perl 4? If you're asking about Chickasaw, why would I bother learning that? So I can talk to the few dozen people on the planet who speak it when every last one of them also speak English? Pass.

        Languages are tools. I like like tools and will occasionally collect a completely useless one just for the novelty but the Chickasaw language isn't even useful for reading ancient writings in their native tongue because there are none to read. It was a spoken-only language until the 20th century.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.