I think one thing few are willing to admit is that a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents. Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child.
When kids are at home, parents should be involved in the learning process. You don't have to be a helicopter and monitor everything, but you should take interest in the work your child is doing. If you check in at least once while they're doing homework it will be very easy to catch issues like this.
> Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child.
My sister works with kids on their speech at a school and she's said that it's _bad_ how many children can't read or tell you what letter their first name starts with. She says that the teachers are getting flack at parent-teacher meetings because of this, but those are things that their parents teach them!
I thought the "kids are illiterate now" stuff was overblown, and I bet it still is to a certain extent, but it's definitely bad. Other interesting things are that they're not teaching kids to read analog clocks anymore? Less important than reading, but still.
Is this because of an increase in the prevalence of child distractions like an iPad? I find that hard to believe since television filled that same void before, didn't it? COVID definitely put a lot of kids at a few year disadvantage, too.
I can't really speak to any of this because I haven't raised a kid, so I also don't want to criticize people for something I know nothing about, but it does seem like children aren't taught by their parents the same way - but I don't know if my parent's generation had the same thought at one point and this is a cyclical critique.
I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts who have more exposure to this kind of thing than I do.
I'm rising 3 kids (in France, I don't know if it changes much). We have banned TV, very heavily restricted phones, and we closely follow homework. I'm persuaded it makes a difference wrt parents that don't do that, but somehow isn't a sure fire way of being a "great parent".
We're in Canada; doing the same. But most of my kids' classmates are on YouTube all the time. The brainrot content is unavoidable and it's creating issues for my kids' socialization.
My parents didn't get me a nintendo when I was a child. My socialization also suffered, but I ended up with a job making AAA games and they did not so I consider it a fair trade now that I'm older.
I don't know how that helps. Watching TV with my kid has been the best way to teach him I've found. There are great videos and shows that you can watch together and then discuss afterwords. Baking videos. Chemistry. Physics. History. Seeing something on TV is great way to fire up the imagination and inspiration for real world activities.
This is what we do. The kids don't get unlimited access to TV, but rather curated access to educational material, but we limit tv altogether on weekdays and they only get ipads at the restaurant. On the weekends they can watch a few fun movies in the afternoon.
Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.
Now obviously is a problem if you go to the restaurant often, in our case it's once every few months and having them watching a movie makes going to the restaurant possible again (we waited 6 years before we could)
>Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.
as a fellow restaurant patron : I don't care that your kid is bored or if you can't afford a baby-sitter -- what I do care about is listening to the latest baby shark or whatever other youtube-brainrot-babysitter-program blaring near me while I'm trying to eat my linguini.
When I was younger if you brought a loud/obnoxious kid to dinner at a restaurant it was a sign that either you were inexperienced as parents or too poor to afford a baby-sitter (which then raises questions about eating out..), or otherwise didn't give a fuck about appearances or anyone else near you.
Also : not all kids are bored by what adults are doing, and a big part of getting good at those kind of conversations and 'adult actions' later in life is fueled by social mimicry and third party practice; to dismiss all children from such activities by directing their attention towards whatever the closest thing that minimizes parenting time and effort is , imo, likely damaging.
But, at the end of the day I gotta throw my arms up and say "Well, i'm not a parent." -- but it just seems obvious to me as a bystander that this level of forced autonomy and independence for smaller children reduces any chance that a kid will say "Mom, what does that word you just used mean?" and actually learn something from a novel experience. It reduces the amount the kids will read the faces of strangers and make social decisions. It reduces the chance that a kid will make a social faux pas slip and require corrections preventing it in the future.
It does, however, keep a kid busy , often annoying everyone else, while you gossip. I'm not sure that's supposed to be the end goal here.
Children don't get the tablet immediately, they eat without the tablet and get it when they are done, so there is plenty of time to chat, with opportunities for talking with the adult.
That being said, everything you say makes sense, but the reality is if you don't get a break every couple of months for a few hours, the parents don't perform, so from my perspective they (and myself) get a pass for the tablet.
As for the volume, they can lower it? I'm very careful making sure the volume is low, but I guess some people aren't careful.
This also assumes the children don't spend time with the parents. The parents could be spending many hours with the children so whatever happens at the restaurant is very small in the big picture.
That's totally fine.
My children get plenty of boring time, sometimes they get creative, sometimes they do not.
When they are creative, their creation is not always compatible with the environment (too noisy, too active).
Not all children like drawing either. Tablet is consistent, which is helpful when going to a restaurant.
Just to be clear, I use tablet only as a tv, I don't allow any games, too many exploits child's mind.
If I went more often to the restaurant, it would make sense to have different activities though, you are right. We go maybe once every 2-3 months, so the tablet was acceptable.
It has become way too expensive eating out.
kids should be kids and do what other kids are doing, even if it's watching TV or playing video games, unless it’s something truly harmful.
watching TV hasn't killed anyone and my generation, who grew up in front of the TV screen for lack of better alternatives, turned out just fine.
The real issue now is with my parents’ generation, but that’s because they’re old and their mindset has become immutable, not because they watched too much TV.
TV tends to reinforce existing biases rather than create new ones.
IMO your kids will grow up thinking that TV is bad, and while it's mostly true that 'the medium is the message', they’re missing out on the opportunity to learn how to deal with it. It’s like a vaccine — it helps them build resilience.
>watching TV hasn't killed anyone and my generation, who grew up in front of the TV screen for lack of better alternatives, turned out just fine.
I don’t think any previous generation kids spend as much time in front of the TV as they do with the screens today, sadly the damage will only be seen when it is done. The difference is mainly the content, as bad as TV could have been in the past at least there was someone responsible and liable for the content put “on air” instead on the internet your child brain is at the mercy of the algorithm.
> My sister works with kids on their speech at a school and she's said that it's _bad_ how many children can't read or tell you what letter their first name starts with
This just blows my mind. Literally the first thing I taught my Toddler once he started learning letters was how to spell his own name.
When there were three television channels, children and adults found other things to do when there was nothing to watch. That's where you developed non-passive life skills.
Now TikTok gives a continuous dopamine hit tailored to their psych profile. Just click on the pictures like a proper trained ape.
> Is this because of an increase in the prevalence of child distractions like an iPad?
There is a massive class discrepancy emerging between communities where kids are always on devices, at school and at home, and those where it is controlled. The crack pipe being in the pocket is functionally different from a heavy object at home.
My wife made very good money. She still quit her job to be a stay at home mom. Being a good parent to multiple children and taking care of yourself is pretty much impossible if both parents are working. Not every family can go single income but I think more could (and should) than do.
Oh wow this is on the dot - this is something my sister has spoken to. The switch from phonics to (some other way of teaching reading by essentially guessing based on word shape that I can't recall the name of). It seems similar to common core math (not sure if that was just a New York thing) where no one thinks it's a good idea at first glance but it becomes standardized in schools still.
> She says that the teachers are getting flack at parent-teacher meetings because of this, but those are things that their parents teach them!
Clearly, they aren't things that the parents are teaching or there wouldn't be an issue, and there is a clash of expectations between teacher (and maybe school more broadly) and the parents.
> Other interesting things are that they're not teaching kids to read analog clocks anymore?
This was absolutely something that was taught in elementary schools when I was in school (I learned it from my parents, largely before starting, but not everyone did and it was absolutely taught as part of the curriculum; also, people who needed to know the time didn't usually have digital clocks on the wrist, in their pocket, and on their computer, plus voice assistants that will give a spoken report of the time in request, then, so it was a much more relevant skill. We started teaching our kids before they started school, but I can see why parents and schools would view it as less important today.)
Not only this, but parents should be involved before children go to school. Teachers have repeatedly told us that they could tell that we read to our children regularly as babies and preschoolers.
That’s neat in a bad way - I have heard the same thing in parent teacher interviews. When my kid was born, I turned into a dude who cries. This stuff makes me cry. I like being involved in my child’s life and absolutely love reading to her. I can’t imagine just not doing my favourite thing with my favourite person.
Granted, I have one child and a lot of privilege so maybe I can’t understand the other side. But I’m not sure I want to.
The post looks like a result of ego defence mechanisms in action. “I keep giving crack cocaine and Xanax to my sister, and it made me realize the next generation is cooked!” Such a bizarre conclusion.
Not sure if there is more context within the subreddit, but I don't see much here to blame on the parents. Which parents? These specific ones or in general? Parents are basically responsible for everything for a child except when they're not and they often get that wrong too. A 5th grader is ratted out by her brother for cheating on her homework using artificial intelligence: I guess Mom & Dad are now also the household AI sleuth.
No, I won't admit blame, but I sure do hope for my and my children's sake that parents start figuring this out. Perhaps the artificial intelligence could think twice before helping a 5th grader cheat?
So what should the parents be blamed for here? Giving unsupervised access to AI? Failing to educate their child? I lean toward the former in the form of age gating. While I acknowledge that these corporations themselves have the ethicists (not sure of the degree of involvement from pedagogical experts), I don't think we can trust them when it comes to kids. For as much as we hear Mira Morati say AI will revolutionize education with personalized tutors, we get a post like this. Sadly, the stakes are more dire. The kid who committed suicide after the fantasy AI chatbot conversation seemed to have a pretty involved mother.
We already had one guineau-pig generation with social media, but AI ups the ante; and I think more should be done to keep it out of the hands of children. But the cat is out of the bag, so now it is mostly up to parents individually and politically.
Having put three kids through the public education system, I can confidently say that the system is broken from top to bottom; comprised of students, teachers, parents, administrators, government, and taxpayers all striving to do their worst.
I would love to see how we could wipe the slate clean and totally re-invent what education in the 21st century could really be.
This exactly. But now disinterested parents have a new threat that will allow them to imagine that their kids are fine when in fact they are on their way to debilitating ignorance.
On the other hand, pervasive reliance on ChatGPT by the greater part of a generation or two, globally, is going to be great for subscription revenues. Let me call my broker.
// a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents //
Is this really something to which we need to attribute blame? I mean, after I learned how to program, I never again sat down and did 100 computations by hand. But I never felt a need to feel culpable or blame my parents.
LLMs happened. They are not going away. There is not an employer on the planet who would prefer their employees to do 1/10th the work by hand, vs. 10x the work using LLMs.
We have to be very careful not to prepare our kids for the world we lived in, or the careers we had. Their world is going to be very very different.
By your own wording, before you learned programming, you learned to compute by hand. Then programming served as a way of automating what you already knew, but you learned it first, and that's the key issue. Don't skip the foundational learning step.
LLMs are just today's flavor of automation. We've automated tasks in the past, and we will automate tasks in the future. Automation happened and will continue to happen regardless of shape and form.
I agree with the high-level sentiment, "We have to be very careful not to prepare our kids for the world we live in." Still, we must also be careful not to skip foundational subjects simply because they're suddenly easy to automate.
Back at the beginning of the 20th century, you had to learn both Latin and Greek to qualify for Harvard or Yale. Because they were foundational. How could you learn the classics without being able to read them? If all you ever read were translations of them, you miss out on so much...
Bread machines exist. They produce acceptable bread. Do you train a good baker by giving them a bread machine? Can you even be a good baker if the only bread you've ever eaten is white loaves from a bread machine?
LLM are a tool that has to be guided by human experience. It's really hard to do that if you don't have experience outside LLMs.
Do you train a good copy typist by giving them a xerox copy machine? Can you even be a good copy typist if the only documents you've ever copied is from a xerox machine?
No and nobody cares because copy typists don't exist any more.
I think blame should be taken to mean "root cause" as opposed to a moral culpability. The degree to which a parent takes an active role in their child's education is incredibly important, more important than their teachers or the school they go to, and sadly many parent's do not take much of an interest in their children's education, thinking that it is mostly something schools manage.
> who would prefer their employees to do 1/10th the work by hand, vs. 10x the work using LLMs.
What if instead of these fantasy gains you won't be able to do any meaningful work since you can't count to 10 and just ask LLMs without any ability to tell whether the result is correct?
It's worth noting that a lot of parents forced to go through with unplanned pregnancies are uninterested. They didn't want their children, and they will do the bare minimum necessary to keep them alive until 18.
Unironically is it that hard? I managed to not impregnate anyone until I met my wife in my 30s. Likewise for her. Likewise for many of my friends. Getting unintentionally pregnant is not a common event in my circles. You apply basic biology knowledge and protection and if all else fails there are multiple ways to “fix” the issue before it gets to the point where a baby is born.
> Getting unintentionally pregnant is not a common event in my circles.
Bingo^, especially the “in my circles.” The catch of course is that people have little to zero control over which circles they’re born and raised into, thus creating a vicious cycle.
Good job avoiding a bad outcome, but in the same way it was easy for you due to the circles you arrived on earth in, it’s hard for others due to the circles they arrived on earth in.
This is all true even with high degree of agency. Taking two people with the same degree of agency, one born into or closer to certain norms will have an easier time than one born outside of or further away from those norms.
Man, im in SD, health education here is dire, like there's one line about prevention in a massive slideshow, and nothing else. And assuming that teens just wont is simply delusional.
I am not saying they won’t. I am saying they carry responsibility for their actions and are free not to engage in dangerous activities, especially if they result in damages to another human. There are gazillion ways to engage in sexual activity that do not require genitals to touch each other, and you are not a victim of your animalistic desires. You are in control and as such responsible. This is a fact and not an interpretation. Regardless of whether humans find creative ways to avoid responsibility and prefer to make themselves small, eg by inventing concepts such as Gods and fate.
Yes, accidents happen. You are quite likely to eventually get hit by a car if you decide to cross the highway on foot every day for recreational purposes. Fate, bad luck, or choice?
I doubt that any of those parents would be receptive to concerns or criticism. I can only hope that in 20, 50, or 100 years, absent-minded parenting is going to be widely recognized as a form of child abuse.
I agree but the amount of stuff parents are expected to do to raise a child now are ridiculous. Many don’t give a shit but for the ones that do, the list is getting untenable. Adding anymore is just going to exacerbate the population decline problem.
while [ `learning_useless_old_skills $gen_old` -gt `learning_useless_old_skills $generation` ]
do complain
gen_old=generation
generation=$((generation+1))
done
Who in their right mind would waste their time learning to read when TTS has existed for decades and everything that matters is a video anyways. Technological progress increased because we stopped teaching Latin, it will increase again when we stop teaching reading and writing, there are many reasons for this, not just that reading is less efficient for almost all tasks, but to make space (mindshare) for the future great works the genuinely need to be written to effectively convey their meaning.
Most people do not need or want to read/write, that is an indisputable fact, stop trying to force it on them. Here is a reading question for you: Has there ever been a time in history where the general sentiment of an older generation was that the newer generation (not individuals nor a group, but the generation as a whole) was doing particularly well at some "essential human skill", Hitler youth? Mao Zedong's revolutionaries? Maybe I would know more if I learned Latin. Gah! If only! At least I've discovered a litmus test for despotic governments.
Even from the specific group angle, In the 60s academics were handwringing about the space race, nowadays we "can't go to the moon" (nor the ISS) and people are handwringing about that.
When kids are at home, parents should be involved in the learning process. You don't have to be a helicopter and monitor everything, but you should take interest in the work your child is doing. If you check in at least once while they're doing homework it will be very easy to catch issues like this.