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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.
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 13 2020, @11:50PM (2 children)
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
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
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.