Comment by programjames
3 days ago
What do you mean by "fault"? My concept of "fault" is whoever I'm going to punish to make society better. (More precisely, assume everyone has some policy `p_i` for actions they take. If a certain action `a` is bad for society, they get punished proportionally according to `KL(a, p_i)`, i.e. they are that much at fault.)
If their home circumstances are forcing them to act this way, then too bad for them! That is part of them and they should be blamed until you can fix the root cause.
Expecting children to be responsible for their own actions to this degree is unrealistic, any policy built on that expectation will be ineffective at best and likely harmful, and thus anyone advocating for it is at best asking us to waste resources and at worst asking us to harm kids.
You've got over 20 posts in this thread, many of them putting the blame on children with no evidence that this would be helpful (probably because it wouldn't be). You've yet to contribute good ideas or substantial new information to our discussion. Your behavior is making our group worse, and ironically if we were to follow your advice here we'd have to throw you out.
I can tell you're passionate about, but frustrated by this issue. My advice is to take a breath and if you're really interested, do some reading and get involved. There are successful education systems out there (everyone references Finland); things aren't hopeless.
> You've yet to contribute good ideas or substantial new information to our discussion. Your behavior is making our group worse, and ironically if we were to follow your advice here we'd have to throw you out.
Do you really believe this? I flagged your comment, because I'm worried that you are trying to convince people by building an ethos (and tearing down others' ethos) instead of appealing to logic. Your writing is very good, but there isn't much substance to it. For example, you say
> Expecting children to be responsible for their own actions to this degree is unrealistic
but don't substantiate why it is unrealistic. I've found that when people disagree (in America) there are usually layers of rhetoric that have been built around the issue, so much so that it can be hard to dig down to the crux of the issue and actually resolve the disagreement. This is why I'm worried about how you're writing: it seems to be adding layers instead of removing them. (EDIT: Note, I don't think you are doing this intentionally.)
Now, I do think I have been adding to the discussion. For example:
- I proposed we raise salaries by 10x and fire everyone to balance the budget.
- I gave an anecdote showing that even top-tier public schools have anti-learning cultures.
- I've pointed out that the "for whom" is important when discussing what is good or bad.
I wanna start off by saying you're clearly a smart person and I'm not trying to run you out or anything. I'm--both deliberately and subconsciously--saltier post Trump v2 and I'm trying to work through it. A big part of me wants to litigate everything all the time, but I'm gonna avoid that here because I believe in the HN community and that wouldn't build and strengthen that community (imagine the breathing exercises it took to attain this level of clarity haha).
Instead I want to discuss your basic point: we should expel problem kids because it improves outcomes for non-problem kids. I don't want to come off as condescending but I DDG'd for "does expelling students improve outcomes" and literally nobody thinks that. Here's some stuff to read:
[0]: https://theconversation.com/why-suspending-or-expelling-stud...
[1]: https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/school-suspe...
[2]: https://disabilityrightsnc.org/resources/stop-suspending-stu...
[3]: https://www.aclu-wa.org/sites/default/files/media-documents/...
[4]: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/rel/Products/Region/central/Ask-A-RE...
[5]: https://gafcp.org/2023/04/11/the-impact-of-early-suspension-...
[6]: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/crdc-school-susp...
[7]: https://theconversation.com/expelling-students-for-bad-behav...
[8]: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED581500
[9]: https://pedagogue.app/why-suspending-or-expelling-students-o...
[10]: https://spark.bethel.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1625&co...
Some excerpts:
"evidence shows these tactics aren’t effective in changing a student’s conduct, and carry major long-term risks for their welfare. Students most affected tend to be those with higher and more complex needs, such as those with disabilities and mental health issues."
"The findings underscore that suspending students does little to reduce future misbehavior for the disciplined students or their peers, nor did it result in improved academic achievement for peers or perceptions of positive school climate." (emphasis mine)
"Suspensions do not reduce classroom disruptions, and often encourage them."
"Suspensions do not improve outcomes for students, whether suspended or not."
"Suspensions do not prevent, and may increase, the risk of school violence."
"Restorative justice focuses on reconciliation with victims, learning from misconduct, and repairing harm caused by student misconduct. Victim-offender mediation is a common restorative justice program. For one example, in Denver Public Schools, a successful school-based restorative justice program decreased expulsions by 82%, suspensions by 39%, and referrals to law enforcement by 15%."
"Black students in North Carolina are more than four times as likely to be suspended or expelled as white students. Research has found no evidence that the over-representation of Black students in school suspension rates is due to higher rates of misbehavior."
"In total, Washington students lost over 169,689 days of class time during 2015. When students are suspended or expelled, they cannot participate in class, are less likely to complete schoolwork, and are more likely to skip school."
TL;DR: suspending and expelling doesn't do what you think it does; instead it causes a lot of harm; other approaches are better.
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Alright, now for some soapboxing. Again, you're a smart person, so I earnestly want to know did you jump in this thread to push your wildly incorrect take before Googling, or have you drank some kind of anti-DoE anti-public-education anti-teacher kool-aid? I'm so deeply weary of arrogant STEM people assuming there are no smart people anywhere else--I just wrote a whole screed in that Paul Graham wokeness thread about this exact thing. Educators are smart! They run studies on how best to educate! They're so easy to find and read!
This is the kind of thing I'm thinking about when it comes to what improves and enriches a discussion. Giving people information they may not have, getting new information and making connections that aren't yet there, giving people grace. The moment we give in and just start trying to win the argument we've lost the whole thing--we have to enrich our mental model of the world together. Or more pointedly, I'm relying on you to help me enrich my mental model of the world, so I need you to call me out when I'm blathering on tilt (could maybe be doing that here) or I've got it wrong, or you know something I don't. If you're gonna be effective at that, you have to do the reading, you have to be self aware, and you have to have compassion. It is work, but people doing that work is how HN stays valuable.
11 replies →
"Expecting children to be responsible for their own actions "
And expecting other children to suffer for their actions is wildly unfair.
Life isn't fair.