
School districts are sending WiFi-equipped buses to poor and rural neighborhoods - Anon84
https://thehustle.co/05082020-wifi-school-busses/
======
umvi
A nice idea, but my experience working with poor kids has led me to believe
lack of access to resources is not the biggest issue these kids face. The
biggest issue is lack of good parents.

My next door neighbor is 11 years old. He has basically dropped out of middle
school. Even before covid-19 he was constantly truant. Now that school has
moved to online, he doesn't attend at all. His math teacher e-mailed me (I had
previously contacted her to get a copy of his curriculum) and asked if he had
access to a computer and WiFi because he hadn't attended a single online Zoom
session. I assured her he did as I could hear him playing Fortnite all hours
of the night. He often comes over for snacks at 10 pm. I ask whether he's had
dinner and he claims his mom doesn't make dinner until 12 or 1 am. I ask what
time he goes to bed and he replies "7 or 8 am". I've tried to motivate him to
do Khan Academy courses for rewards, but his mom always undermines me. For
example, I promised to buy him a Dragonball Z game if he completed the 6th
grade math module on exponents. Half-way through the course he announced his
mom bought him the game and he lost all motivation to continue. Even money
doesn't seem to have much effect unless there is something he currently wants
to buy. This happens every time though - his mom doesn't encourage school at
all. She can't help him because (I'm pretty sure) she dropped out herself.
There's no dad in the picture, and any motivation I try to use to get him to
learn stuff gets instantly gratified by his mom.

So basically, we have this kid with an inverted sleep schedule who is years
behind his peers, has access to everything he needs to be successful, except
parents who care about his future, and thus he is on a trajectory to fail.

~~~
GordonS
I agree this is an issue in poor areas.

As another anecdote, my wife grew up in a poor housing estate in central
Scotland, in a household with bad parents and some domestic violence. There
was a fair bit of violence and drugs in the area too.

Almost everyone in the area was claiming at least some kind of benefit, and
benefit fraud was absolutely _rife_.

I got to know the extended family quite well over time. Almost every parent
seemed determined to continue the cycle of poverty, and pushed their children
to sign up for a council house as soon as they were 16. Fraudulent tactics
were often used to get their kids further up the waiting list, or to get their
kids into newer/better housing once they had a house. One father set fire to
his daughter's house with the hope she'd be moved into a better house. Another
smashed in the windows of his son's house, so they could claim he was in
danger from imaginary drug dealers in the area.

My wife (and indeed her brother) were however determined to get a decent
education and do _better_ , in spite of their parents.

She applied to university, but her mother _hid the acceptance letter_ and
tried to push her into a crappy low/paid job and a council house.

Thankfully my wife came across the letter my chance, and her life has been
very different from that of her parents.

~~~
champagneben
Feel free to not respond as this might be too personal, but I'm very
interested. Does your wife keep in contact with her mother? Presumably yes, as
you have gotten to know them?

~~~
GordonS
This all happened a long while back, but yes, she has kept in touch all that
time. But they don't get on at all, and have a very turbulent relationship. I
think she feels a sense of familial duty more than anything else.

~~~
winter_blue
It was definitely truly horrible to read that her mom hid her acceptance
letter from her. What sort of thing would make someone do that? What kind of
person doesn’t wish best for their children, and tries to make their life bad
instead? It’s just too much.

~~~
rb808
Easy, firstly being poor isn't necessarily a bad life, I see a lot more
unhappy rich people than poor people. Secondly if you think the children will
have a better life will force you to admit you have a bad life and you're
doing things wrong. Thirdly a different life will mean your kids will be
different and wont fit in so well, wont be around so much and might not like
you - is that what you really want?

~~~
lotsofpulp
While being poor may not lead to an unhappy life, having high income
volatility will.

And in the US, low income and high income volatility go hand in hand. You can
have your hours reduced or shifted at any time, your industry can get
outsourced or automated, you may be deemed to be too old or expensive.

No one is happy with volatility, and no one today should expect to go to work
and punch in and out for 30 years, especially if you’re on the lower end of
the pay scale. You should be looking out for better opportunities all the
time, lest your cash flow suddenly stops.

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unangst
WiFi is an essential utility in 2020. When we shut down schools for Covid19
and scaled up from 7 to 11 grade levels of students using Chromebooks at home
that was a major struggle for some families. It’s apparent that a number of
families -esp. those with younger kids (new Chromebook recipients) or
free/reduced status live in a “digital desert”. Subsidized housing /trailer
parks here don’t have WiFi. For many of these families paying rent and putting
food on the table is a major struggle. Busses are a creative option but we
don’t have a good “unlimited data” provider for hotspots. One hotspot loaned
out had 130GB of use for the month. It was used for two students and 6
additional family members.

~~~
OJFord
Even we on HN are using 'WiFi' like this now?

~~~
RandomBacon
Is it 'E-mail' or 'email', or 'Internet' or 'internet'?

~~~
OJFord
I don't care, I think that would be much more pedantic than drawing a
distinction between [wW]i-?[fF]i and [iI]nternet access.

(Other than for consistency: a publisher should have a style guide entry on
it, but it doesn't bother me what they choose.)

~~~
ghaff
Both those examples are cases of what often tends to happen with new terms.
They're capitalized and often hyphenated (rather than making up a new word).

But over time, you end up with something like "Open Source Big Data products
delivered over the Internet" which gets pretty silly or you have hyphens all
over the place which look pretty ugly. Where I work, our style is to generally
eliminate both whenever possible.

I guess WiFi is properly Wi-Fi but hardly anyone uses that these days.

~~~
code_duck
I don't think anyone is trying to draw a distinction about how the term Wi-Fi
is stylized. (My own usage is what Google decides to use for voice dictation).
The question being posed is whether we use 'Wi-Fi' as a term meaning internet
access.

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smkellat
I need to bookmark this for the June county broadband task force meeting. A
point was raised at the last meeting that building a WISP may be the least
impractical step forward to fill coverage gaps. With our local government
budgets being slashed beyond survivable levels right now any effort would have
to be by private finance alone incrementally. Difficulty funding due to
COVID-19 even minimal policing and fire services puts broadband at a lower
priority in officials minds right now.

~~~
grahamburger
I'd be happy to help with this in any way I can. I run startyourownisp.com,
email in my profile.

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TrueGeek
In my districts the busses are running their normal route at lunch time and
any students who need a meal can come get a sack lunch.

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ydb
This is a great idea!! We need to give these poor and low-income urban and
rural students as much opportunity to "get connected" as we can. There are
many thousands of gifted students out there whose potential is untapped, and I
think this is a great opportunity to accelerate education and foster growth.

This, too, would help with the learn-to-code movement (a skills gap that I
consider essential to close). This could have far-reaching effects and do
wonders to lift the next generation of poor out of poverty and into more
lucrative white collar jobs.

~~~
nicoburns
Seems like it would be a better idea just to subsidise these homes with a
regular wired connection...

~~~
zrail
Lots of areas are unable to get any sort of wired connection for any amount of
money.

~~~
nradov
My parents live in a rural area just outside of Silicon Valley and there is no
fiber, cable, or DSL Internet service available at any price. The only options
are satellite and Verizon cellular.

~~~
zrail
Yep. That’s most of the country by land area. Someone I follow on twitter just
started construction on a licensed wireless backhaul to his house. Took months
to even get the time of day from the ISP and it’s costing thousands of dollars
to install.

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sokoloff
I think expenditures such as these, aimed directly at _enabling_ community
members to be more equal in terms of their ability to participate in the
modern world and give themself a hand up are fantastic.

Bring more of these types of tax expenditures IMO.

~~~
zrail
Hear hear. We need a new rural electrification act that pushes fiber to every
nook and cranny of the country.

~~~
ghaff
Though unlike electricity, it's going to be increasingly practical to deliver
decent internet speeds via cellular and satellite. So I'm not sure that
pushing wired connections to every individual house is the best approach at
this point.

~~~
rbanffy
There is no better incentive than having to compete against subsidized fiber.

~~~
ghaff
Of course, a lot of that subsidy will come from more urban areas. Which I'm
mostly fine with but I imagine a lot of people here are probably not.

~~~
rbanffy
Living in society is not free of cost.

~~~
ghaff
Certainly. I'm just remarking that one sees a lot of negativity here,
presumably from city dwellers, with respect to infrastructure subsidies for
more spread out areas.

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rodolphoarruda
In my experience implementing online learning in higher education in Peru
showed that for most poor families wi-fi time is gold, no matter the
context/situation. Student would connect as soon as they get into campus and
work on things for her mother, father, uncles etc. From banking to social
services, to buying things that are not available in local stores (mostly
gifts or kids' toys). Work is done for family in between classes when time
permits. I'm not surprised that kids at any age do the same (at school or in a
bus) elsewhere.

~~~
dehrmann
Seeing this, along with another top-level comment that what kids really lack
is good parents, approaches for what broadly looks like "poverty" need to be
different in developed vs. developing countries. People are poor for different
reasons.

~~~
searchableguy
Controversial opinion but I think stopping poor irresponsible people from
becoming parents is a better solution because

A. It requires less resources for the society.

B. It is better for the kid to not exist than to end up with a miserable life.
Crime statistics for poor dysfunctional households doesn't look good.

C. Overpopulation is a problem. Even if you can feed 12 billion people, at
what cost. And you can already feed that many. The problem is often political
and societal (stopping food waste can solve global hunger). If someone can
suggest a solution, I am all ears.

D. Lower population will lead to better reforms and more attention or
investment per kid. It will be easier to move forward policies and test
things. Democracy won't be a bottleneck but will work for once.

~~~
leetcrew
the end goal of "only good parents have children" is a good one, but there are
a lot of issues with implementing this in the real world, especially if it
involves directly intervening in human reproductive choices.

> B. It is better for the kid to not exist than to end up with a miserable
> life. Crime statistics for poor dysfunctional households doesn't look good.

this is more a philosophical position than an objective fact, but I am
inclined to agree with you. that is, if you could be certain that someone
would have a terrible life, it would be better for them not to be born. the
problem is the error bar on your good life vs. bad life projection. while the
odds might be pretty bad for the group, individuals born in bad circumstances
can and do become wealthy, achieve success in their field, and/or end up
living generally happy lives.

> C. Overpopulation is a problem. Even if you can feed 12 billion people, at
> what cost. And you can already feed that many. The problem is often
> political and societal (stopping food waste can solve global hunger). If
> someone can suggest a solution, I am all ears.

overpopulation is not really a problem in the developed world, where
birthrates tend to be at or slightly below replacement.

the real problem with this idea is who "poor irresponsible people" turn out to
be in practice. I won't speak to "irresponsible", as I'm not sure what to use
as a source, but minorities are disproportionately represented among the poor.
it's hard to see how this wouldn't end up disproportionately preventing
minority children from being born. there's also the question of how you would
prevent these people from having children in the first place, without using
some very dystopian methods.

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cosmodisk
The Guardian had a very interesting series on literacy in the UK. There was a
paragraph about a teacher,who asked each kid to bring one book from home. One
girl brought an Argos catalog.When explained by the teacher that it's not a
book,the girl told the teacher that this was the only one she could find at
home. These kids have no chances if the parents are like this and most likely
is the biggest hurdle as opposed to the lack ofWifi or any other issue.

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tibbydudeza
The govt approached our three cellphone providers to zero rate all educational
websites so that no data cost is incurred when using them.

So why can't US providers not do this ???.

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inetsee
When I read articles like this I wonder whether mesh networking (a la the One
Laptop Per Child project) might help with improving the reach of WiFi in
underserved areas?

Could anyone with more knowledge of the topic explain why mesh networking
seems to be a good idea that never succeeded?

~~~
ausjke
mesh network still cut wifi bandwidth over hops badly, after 2 or 3 hops you
barely can do any streaming, though surfing is fine.

taking bus to provide wifi is expensive, an outdoor wifi node solution will be
much cheaper, all you need is someone willing to share his wifi to those kids,
but that might violate EULA from ISPs(that your wifi can not be shared, even
if it's not for profit)

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ck2
there's one that sits at the end of my street everyday

only problem is they idle the engine all day, that's dumb

~~~
bronco21016
While its certainly not ideal, what would you expect them to do? They rigged
these things together as cheaply as possible to get them rolling out before
the end of the school year. Would you like them to spend hundreds of thousands
on batteries and solar or more efficient generators? Oh, and add weeks if not
months to the roll out?

I think it's a bit quick to be outraged by the bus idling all day. Give them a
little time to find money and iterate.

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vijaybritto
What happens to poor households where there is a single computer for like 3
kids

~~~
eternalban
Have you considered that maybe the implicit social planning idea here is
"these folks really don't need to know about calculus"? All this reminds me of
throwing babies and books on top of electrified floors in Brave New World ..

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chrstphrhrt
Internet access is a human right that flows from the right to education.

