[HN Gopher] School or Prison
___________________________________________________________________
School or Prison
Author : nickburlett
Score : 278 points
Date : 2021-01-01 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schoolprison.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schoolprison.com)
| aarroyoc wrote:
| My philosophy teacher said that both prisons and schools end up
| being a panopticon because you want the same in both places:
| maximize the feel of power of the authority, don't leave any
| place without surveillance,...
| im3w1l wrote:
| I have never seen a school with a literal panopticon (a tower
| from which everything can be seen, and which can not be seen
| into). So then if not a literal panopticon, a metaphorical
| panopticon? Doesn't mirror my school experience either. Feeling
| was that the teachers had no idea what was going on most of the
| time. But I didn't go to school in the US, maybe that's why?
| hshshs2 wrote:
| Technological panopiticons now, most doors are locked or
| alarmed and the remaining entrances have video surveillance.
| Windows even on the first floor are often limited from
| opening very wide. Many American schools also have a police
| officer on site and it's not unusual for police to stop
| children outside of school grounds for truancy.
| slavik81 wrote:
| There's a lot less barbed wire around these prisons than I'm used
| to seeing.
| jchw wrote:
| https://res.cloudinary.com/schoolprison/10_wwfagw.jpg
|
| You can read "Xue Xiao " on this building, making it a bit easier
| than it should be. :)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is fun, but to the extent that it's trying to make a
| statement+, most of the difficulty comes from the angles used in
| the photos. They just look like generic buildings.
|
| You could make the same game out of "school or doctor's office"
| or "prison and bank" and it wouldn't be any more obvious if the
| photos were shot this way.
| afrojack123 wrote:
| What is up with the clickbait headlines on this site
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It's part of the larger situation that the buildings created by
| large bureaucracies all look about the same.
| canofbars wrote:
| A lot of these images only show a very narrow look at what
| looks to be the entrance to some front desk style room. I'd be
| more interested in what the insides look like.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's an architectural style called "brutalism", which has the
| predominant aesthetic of "a boot stamping on a human face
| forever".
| daniel-levin wrote:
| Have you ever set up a high-occupancy building in a structure
| that isn't rectilinear? It's a space efficiency nightmare to
| fit naturally rectangular fixtures and appliances to rounded
| walls. I worked in a beautiful post-modernist building with a
| terrible architectural oversight: the aesthetically charming
| glass panels acted as a lens that focused light in a way that
| heated the whole office up. The AC had to be cranked up high
| just to survive in there. I would take a well-lit, well-
| ventilated box over a more architecturally creative space
| that causes its occupants problems.
| kfichter wrote:
| Although your classification of the images presented above is
| incorrect, brutalism can actually be quite a beautiful
| architectural style. Except perhaps when attempted by
| American educational institutions.
| jclulow wrote:
| I mean, not really? I think you're projecting the behaviour
| of the USSR (or whatever) onto the architectural style. From
| an aesthetic perspective, brutalism can be surprisingly
| pleasing -- especially if you throw in some trees:
| https://twitter.com/Karl_poyzer/status/1246511600300896257
| kiba wrote:
| The concrete are still rather ugly to me.
| ben_w wrote:
| For me, the trees are the only things about those examples
| that I actually like. Absent the trees, they remind me of
| the Tricorn center in Portsmouth, which local folklore
| claims won two architectural awards: a professionally
| awarded one for being good, and an award from locals who
| had to live with it for being the worst.
|
| The place has long since been demolished; I remember it
| from personal experience as a shopping centre where all the
| shops had closed, and as a car park where nobody parked.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorn_Centre
| hndudette2 wrote:
| It's the distinctness and uniqueness of those examples, as
| well as that they're surrounded by trees/nature, that make
| them so beautiful. Brutalism as intentional art, not as an
| unintended byproduct of cost-saving or simply not caring.
|
| The depressing nature of a lot of brutalist architecture
| (especially that created by governments) is the uniformity,
| homogeneity and the mass-produced faux-utilitarian feeling
| it evokes, as if the inhabitants are all interchangeable
| peons with no individual spirit. It's a reminder of the
| depressing local conditions that lead to that architecture
| coming into being in the first place.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/housing-
| network/2016/jan/13/brut...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Brutalism is simply an architectural style characterized
| by the use of raw concrete. It can be done well in
| various ways and badly in various ways, like virtually
| any style.
|
| It's worth noting that Phil is not just wrong about
| brutalism but also wrong about these examples being
| (primarily) brutalist. Not generally using raw concrete,
| they would not be considered brutalist. The modern "box"
| has been largely discarded by contemporary institutional
| architects in favor of rough, pseudo-gabbled, uh, crap,
| as shown in the majority of these examples.
|
| I'd say a bad brutalist building is like a rough
| bureaucratic dictate whereas present bad institutional
| architecture is like a bureaucratic dictate but rewritten
| with contemporary niceness guides - "this is a notice
| concerning your rights under the involuntary amputation
| act"
| adamjb wrote:
| Ah yes, neoclassical facades, the defining feature of
| brutalism.
|
| https://res.cloudinary.com/schoolprison/7_pexlbe.jpg
| noncoml wrote:
| What's the point being made here? That if you take a picture of a
| building from a specific angle it's difficult to tell the
| function of the building?
| devnull255 wrote:
| As referenced in the comment with the Foucault quote, the
| modern school and prison are both structures designed in a way
| that makes it easier for their authorities (wardens, guards,
| principals and teachers) to contain and control their captive
| populations (prisoners and students).
|
| In his book "Discipline and Punish", Foucault argues that in
| the establishment of the modern prison, the mission of
| imprisonment shifted from punishing those who were imprisoned
| to reforming and disciplining them to become better citizens.
| The same organizing principles of command and control developed
| for "modern" prisons were applied to the "modern" school as
| well. I thought the game eerily demonstrated how similar
| prisons and schools look to one another. Both kinds of
| buildings are designed to limit access to the building and also
| egress.
| kiba wrote:
| I doubt that is how schools functions and that they were
| trying to make obedient citizens that follows regular hours
| or whatever nonsense people conjure up.
|
| The reason schools operate that way is simple: sheer inertia
| combined with just being impervious to reform.
| bbddg wrote:
| Really interesting analysis: "schools operate that way
| because that's the way they are."
| albatruss wrote:
| What makes the the nonsense you're conjuring up, with no
| argument or research, more valid than that of the renowned
| philosophers you are trivially dismissing? Doubt is good,
| but strong, unjustified claims are not.
| watwut wrote:
| Renowned philosophers tend to be good in philosophy. They
| are not necessary great in history, sociology or how
| various organizations work. They have own biases and it
| is also pretty easy to take their claims out of context
| to sound like something much stronger.
| albatruss wrote:
| Foucault in particular is known for his genealogical
| approach, though. I agree that it's very easy to misuse
| their claims.
| kiba wrote:
| Because the education system wasn't in fact designed to
| produce factory workers for a regimented
| system.[1](http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-
| model)
|
| This is the problem with attributing purposes for which
| our ancestors never intended.
| albatruss wrote:
| Interesting link, thanks for sharing. I read it and I
| think there's some miscommunication going on. The author
| is criticizing Sal Khan and like for suggesting that
| there was a deliberate, cohesive factory model (designed
| in order to..) whereas the commenter recounting Foucault
| here talks about the effects of the model, not its
| intention (designed in a way that...)
|
| Indeed there is no mention of Foucault in that article. I
| read through her blog more and this is the first one I
| found that mentions the book in question
| http://hackeducation.com/2020/07/20/surveillance (also an
| interesting read)
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| > The same organizing principles of command and control
| developed for "modern" prisons were applied to the "modern"
| school as well
|
| You don't know much about prisons seems to me. As in, once
| one know just a little how it functions, the above sounds
| either extraordinary stupid.
| ve55 wrote:
| I would guess that the intention is for the readers to think
| about other similarities between schools and prisons, and the
| the outsides of the buildings are just a convenient way to
| inspire more comparisons.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I just found it fun. Like the "boobs or armpit" type of games
| on Newgrounds.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| Here's a really good article to explain the consequences of
| schools being the holding pens which they are:
| http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
| whhone wrote:
| I also recall this article from his book "Hackers &
| Painters".
| dijit wrote:
| Going to be honest though. School (at least mine) functioned
| very similarly to a prison, in fact, most prisons had better
| conditions than my secondary school.
|
| There is a simple fact that schools can be glorified daycare so
| that workers can offload the burden of childcare. For this
| purpose, a prison makes sense. Despite not being the most
| humane considering the kids didn't do any crime worthy of
| rehabilitation.
| issamehh wrote:
| I can't even look at school as not being a prison. It's one
| of the only places I've had the displeasure to be denied
| basic rights such as going to use a toilet.
| finnh wrote:
| Also one of the only places with a nontrivial amount of
| people who would lie about needing to go to the bathroom,
| many times per day, just to be disruptive and/or to get out
| of class.
|
| aka "this is why we can't have nice things", juvenile
| edition :)
| gpm wrote:
| I think you need to ask _why_ a non trivial amount of
| people would lie about needing to go to the bathroom.
| This is not a common behavior of teenagers at home, in a
| museum, at camp, on a canoe trip, or just about anywhere
| else I can think of...
| neolog wrote:
| Pretty common at parties and other social gatherings.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Teachers can deal with it. It's worth it to have to deal
| with the second order effects of folks lying to be
| disruptive or getting out of class so that we don't deny
| basic bathroom rights to those who need it most.
|
| I have literally ZERO sympathy for any teacher who has
| shitty (haha) bathroom policies.
| brewdad wrote:
| My kid's suburban high school sits amidst a large grouping of
| light industrial warehouses. We joke that the district built
| it's own warehouse...for kids.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I remember hearing that my school was actually modelled after
| a prison. Don't know if it was actually true, but it sure
| looked like it, since it had this large, multi-storey hall
| with classrooms all around it.
|
| A bit like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d
| 3/Kilmainh...
| dash2 wrote:
| You're confident about this comparison. Have you been to
| prison?
| sahin wrote:
| Just a cool service
| geocrasher wrote:
| I get what the comparison is about, I do. But really- how many
| different ways are there to house hundreds of people in an
| institutional setting?
| steffenfrost wrote:
| I thought this was a proposal to give convicted criminals the
| choice between prison or school.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Public school is a prison where both parents can abandon their
| children to be raised by strangers while the parents chase what
| they really love: money. We make ourselves feel better by
| teaching them a few worthwhile things during their minimum 13
| years in lockdown, coupled with a massive public jobs program,
| but most of it is a waste of precious family time where parents
| should be teaching and loving their own children.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| This is a good example of a phenomenon I see where this site in
| particular often seems to have an antipathy towards "public
| school" that's wildly foreign to me, as someone who had a
| pretty bog-standard, middle-of-the-road public education in
| Scotland.
|
| I sometimes wonder if it's down to a fundamentally different
| experience at schools in the US that I'm not aware of?
|
| I feel like I went in one end of the school system, and then
| came out twelve years later able to read, write, play musical
| instruments, understand the natural world, think critically,
| use a computer, and generally having a wide variety of other
| skills. Teaching quality was mostly fine, with staff who seemed
| to be pretty engaged. I spent plenty of time outside school
| with both parents, and I came out with a bunch of skills and
| knowledge that neither of them would have been able to teach
| me. My experience was far from perfect, but it was a million
| miles away from being "a prison".
|
| The "school is a waste of time" argument seems to be popular in
| these circles. Is it down to cultural differences? Or maybe
| it's just the iceberg tip of a deeper and more earnestly held
| view about a fundamental restructuring of society and
| childhood?
| notahacker wrote:
| Autodidacts who thought school got in the way of their
| learning and never really got on with most of the other kids
| their age are overrepresented on HN, and a lot of people not
| in that category don't have particularly strong opinions
| about schools...
| watwut wrote:
| I think that some of it is due to distaste towards women who
| are not start at home. There is extraordinary guilting going
| on here, I mean moms when they argue this particular point
| are guilting less.
|
| For what it is worth, pandemic made me appreciate teachers
| more. Pandemic made my kids appreciate school more (and they
| explicitly stated multiple points where school is better then
| what went on at home).
| powersnail wrote:
| > what they really love: money
|
| Money is just a currency. What they really love (and need), is
| all the goods and services that can be purchased by money,
| which include the things that keep their children and
| themselves alive.
| m1gu3l wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me to call my fantastic parents and
| tell them that I love them.
| EGreg wrote:
| UBI and competition between schools can fix all that.
|
| But naked capitalism tells women to "lean in and earn $1 for
| every 70 cents" instead of telling men to "lean out and earn
| 70c for every $1" ...and spend more time with your children,
| family, contributing to open source software, learning science,
| an instrument, hobbies, sports and exercise and doing other
| things not valued by the market.
|
| UBI is far superior to both a jobs guarantee, minimum wage laws
| and unions in rebalancing the power dynamic between the
| employees and employers.
|
| Instead, today, we are brainwashed that your worth as an
| individual comes from working for a corporation, and the
| schools train the kids to sit down and shut up for 10 hours day
| to do just that. Look at Finland. Or
| http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
| thotsBgone wrote:
| We teach children how to do paperwork starting at age 5. How
| necessary is that?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I'd argue that's a pretty essential skill in the modern
| world. Reading and writing are arguably the two of the most
| important skills we can learn since from them you can
| eventually do anything else.
|
| Paperwork specifically is also pretty important. Sure you
| could argue that they could postpone teaching that until
| later but teaching how to fill out paperwork is basically
| just teaching how to do homework which will be essential
| for teaching mathematics at any reasonable scale.
|
| Of course now things are digital but it's still the same
| skills but in a different shade.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| True, if by money, you mean enough wages to get food, clothing,
| and shelter. If people really loved money, you might expect a
| positive savings rate...
| hndudette2 wrote:
| Agree that applies for the majority of people, but for others
| it's purely a status competition beyond what they currently
| have which they've decided to engage in.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Small but important note: they're only strangers if you want
| them to be.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I was surprised that this was relatively so easy: you don't have
| to understand very much about the two types of buildings to spot
| important functional differences.
|
| As other people have commented, space for windows is crucial.
| (And, at least 2 of the pictures had identifying words in
| different languages) I scored 10 out of 10 and the game bounced
| me out.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Yeah, Dong Jing Du Li Xin Su Gao Deng Xue Xiao and Toth Arpad
| Gimnazium were freebies.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| By comparison, in the army during initial training I had
| flashbacks of kindergarten. We weren't herded that much at
| school. Also the food was for some reason very similar.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The prisons seem to have nicer outdoor grounds and recreation
| areas.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Prisoners appreciate those areas more because they don't have
| access to them in any other context.
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular
| chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and
| registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply
| the functions of the judge, should have become the modern
| instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble
| factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble
| prisons?
|
| Michel Foucault
| paulpauper wrote:
| this is because tall, rectangular buildings maximize volume to
| surface area, whether a hospital school or prison. It is not a
| form of social control or domination. it is more efficient this
| way. A one-story hospital would be prohibitively expensive to
| build in an urban area, and it is not like healthcare is not
| already too expensive.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| > tall, rectangular buildings maximize volume to surface
| area,
|
| I imagine that you mean that tall buildings maximize ground
| area, and that most property is rectangular.
|
| The way to maximize volume to surface area is to build
| spheres, or cubes if you're forced to remain rectilinear, but
| tall buildings optimize for ground area.
| dooglius wrote:
| You shouldn't be downvoted, this is correct
| gpm wrote:
| Surface area in this case refers to surface area of the
| earth, while volume refers to volume of the structures
| placed on the earth.
|
| OP is entirely correct, _and_ no one misunderstood the
| point OP was making. You are simultaneously being
| needlessly pedantic, and less than charitable by needlessly
| interpreting inconsequential ambiguities in OPs sentence in
| a way that would have made them incorrect.
|
| Someone else commented on the downvotes on your post being
| wrong, the above is why I downvoted you.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I misunderstood the point OP was making. But even
| interpreting "surface area" to mean "ground area", it's
| only right in dense areas without open land. The reason
| schools are built the way they are is to optimize for
| cost.
|
| Some of that's land, but some is also the design and
| construction. You're probably hiring a design firm that
| specializes in building efficient brick box schools and
| similar institutional projects, maybe with a big glass
| atrium to have one showcase area, and they've got that
| design patten pretty well nailed down.
|
| When you have space, you get sprawling flat schools.
| Still probably a brick box, but not a tall one. My school
| had large portions that were only one floor tall, and one
| area that stacked two floors. They've since knocked it
| down and replaced it with a 3-story building, because now
| they need more capacity and no longer had space to keep
| tacking additions on.
|
| Would it have used a smaller footprint to stack it taller
| to begin with? Sure, but the building lot wasn't the
| liming factor, budget was.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| I think the excerpt more about the artificial regimentation
| and the arbitrary authority than the shape of the building.
| smhost wrote:
| > It is not a form of social control or domination. it is
| more efficient this way.
|
| efficiency doesn't stop with a building's dimensions.
| efficiency demands social control. it doesn't care whether
| that happens through self-control and self-discipline or
| through domination.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| This is certainly a sound explanation - but is it a good one?
| If we optimize school buildings and prison buildings in a way
| that they end up being indistinguishable from one another,
| maybe we should reconsider the metrics we are optimizing for.
| kace91 wrote:
| I'm not sure I get what's the problem with schools and
| prisons looking the same. Prisons should look like the rest
| of the world after all, they're supposed to be places where
| you learn to function in society.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Fair enough. If our prisons end up looking open, warm and
| inviting, then that would be a very positive outcome
| indeed.
|
| That's not my takeaway, after looking at these photos
| though.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Prisons have to be resistant to the attempts of their
| occupants to escape, or to cause damage or destruction.
| This doesn't really seem compatible with warm and
| inviting.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| Most prisoners don't want to escape, or cause harm, they
| just want to finish the term and go home and move on. I'd
| say you could have the honor system (unlocked doors) for
| 95 percent of prisoners, by letting them know if they
| escape they'll go to a more secure and less free prison.
| Then you make prison a place to learn new skills and get
| treatment for addictions and therapy, and you'll actually
| see some improvement in society. Also, send less people
| to prison.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| We already have prisons like that for low-risk,
| nonviolent offenders. They are called minimum security or
| "country club" prisons. We also have home detention.
| kace91 wrote:
| They can be. If you're curious, check out "worlds
| toughest prisons" on Netflix, an episode that shows a
| Norwegian rehabilitation-focused prison. You can see how
| the place is both secure and warm.
| watwut wrote:
| To me, they looked like buildings. Neither looked
| horrifying, they were just normal buildings. You would
| have to make prison intentionally bad looking from
| outside to make some effect. And i wild still strongly
| preferred to go to school rather then prison.
| tikhonj wrote:
| High-end office builds are _also_ efficient rectangular
| prisms far more often than not, yet they don 't feel like
| hospitals, schools or prisons.
|
| I've spent extensive time in all of these except prisons, and
| I can tell you the difference is stark. What explains that?
| Is it all just down to expensive trim and interior decor? I'm
| sure that plays a part, but that was never my main
| impression. Instead, it comes down to the layout and light
| and feel: it's clear when a building, however regular and
| rectangular, is designed to support and empower the occupants
| and when it's designed to control and direct.
| watwut wrote:
| But they would fit right into these pictures. Not super
| expensive design offices, but normal administrative
| building looks roughly the same.
| ineedasername wrote:
| High-end office buildings cost massively more to build.
| Also plenty of them put employees in a very aesthetically
| pleasing well-lit panopticon with open-plan seating. I much
| prefer my dingy fluorescent-lit office that has a door that
| closes. (And I turn of the fluorescent lights in favor of
| my own small lamp.)
| lukifer wrote:
| Foucault is explicitly referring to norms of behavior, not
| the shapes of buildings: - regular
| chronologies - forced labour - authorities of
| surveillance and registration
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Are you sure? I've seen some pretty panoptic school
| designs, and this IS indeed a shape of building that
| Foucault focused on...
|
| Here's the _chapter_ of his book about the nature of
| certain building styles and shapes being important here...
|
| https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.disciplineAndPunis
| h...
|
| Also interesting to talk about, are the ways that the
| people influenced by Foucault talk about space, area, and
| architectural design. Deleuze and Guattari had a whole lot
| to say about all of those topics, and they are one of the
| principle reasons for Foucaults fame...
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| I believe it's that they're linked and both arrive out of
| the same logics of dominion, and authorizing use of
| dominion over a spaces and people.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| Form follows function, I agree.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Where is the forced labor in schools, barracks, hospitals
| and factories? I understand there are some instances where
| this might be the case, but generally people go to those
| places because they want to, or because it offers them a
| favorable outcome that they're willing to temporarily trade
| some autonomy for.
|
| You can deconstruct the whole of society and make an
| argument that all labor exchanged for capital is
| oppression, that all regular chronologies favored by the
| dominant culture is oppression, that all authority figures
| are oppressive etc... But it's difficult to imagine a
| thriving, post-industrial society not featuring some of
| those things.
|
| Even looking back in history, people have self-organized
| into hierarchical, regimented systems. I think a lot of
| this is just a natural reaction to our environment, which
| is also dictated by regular chronologies (days, lunar
| cycle, seasons), necessary labor (biological need for food
| and shelter) and implicit authority figures (parents).
| yrimaxi wrote:
| The height of ideology is to believe that everything that
| is _is_ because of some kind of inevitability or
| primordial cause.
| mlyle wrote:
| Sure, there's no inevitability, but there can also be
| ways that make sense.
|
| It might be possible to make a space launch vehicle
| that's short and squat, or operate a factory without any
| regular worker hours, but it's going to have some costs
| compared to our current equilibrium
| em-bee wrote:
| when i am sick at work, then i can take a few days off.
| (with or without pay). whatever work needs to get done,
| will be done by someone else, and i join back in without
| penalty when i am ready
|
| when my kids miss school, they have to catch up the work
| they missed. if they already struggle then they can't
| afford to get sick because they will fall to far behind
| and may not be able to catch up.
|
| so yes, school is forced labor and it's a prison
| pmg102 wrote:
| Ex-primary teacher here. At any one time a certain
| percentage of kids in the class would be off sick, it was
| a given. So the curriculum doesn't proceed linearly but
| more like a helix: it circles around and around the same
| topics year by year with each child being supported to
| learn at the level they are - always a broad range in any
| one class.
|
| So it's in my experience totally untrue to suggest that
| any child would have to "catch up" any learning missed
| due to sickness (and also reveals that schools are
| talking bollocks when they suggest that taking a few days
| off to go on holiday during termtime will have any
| noticeable adverse effect, but shhhh)
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah, catch-up work often feels punitive but it appears to
| be universally expected by instructors. I'm a MS teacher,
| and I don't really care (though it does complicate my
| assessments), but my kids' teachers do really care about
| every piece of work being turned in.
|
| Sometimes it's ridiculous-- my then-4th grader was taking
| Algebra I on the side, and had shown mastery on the 4th
| grade fraction curriculum on a test, but getting the
| large packet of fraction work that he missed during an
| absence was considered critically important. :P
|
| > reveals that schools are talking bollocks when they
| suggest that taking a few days off to go on holiday
| during termtime
|
| I do think that the kind of attitude that lets you ignore
| a bit of schooling here and there for a convenient
| vacation schedule does affect outcomes, though. I teach
| at a private school, but I think we're both aware of
| incentives for attendance, the reasons for them, and the
| areas in which they cause perverse outcomes.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _So it 's in my experience totally untrue to suggest
| that any child would have to "catch up" any learning
| missed due to sickness (and also reveals that schools are
| talking bollocks when they suggest that taking a few days
| off to go on holiday during termtime will have any
| noticeable adverse effect, but shhhh)_
|
| But it does seem true, from the point of view of parents
| and children. It doesn't matter that the curriculum is
| helical and revisits the same topics multiple times. It
| doesn't revisit the same topics multiple time _in a
| single semester_ , which means the kid doesn't get a
| second chance to learn a topic within the grading scope,
| which means they have to catch up or risk a lower grade.
| As much as we say that it's the education that matters,
| as much as it should matter - it doesn't. What matters
| are the grades. At the very least, in my experience, most
| parents have grade expectations, and the kid will suffer
| negative consequences _this semester_ if they fall back,
| even though they may recover by the end of the education
| level (where again, the final grades are all that
| matters).
|
| (Even though the immediate pressure may come from the
| parents, it's in a control loop with the grades, so the
| school can't pretend this is not happening.)
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Of course grades are fairly meaningless in elementary
| school, unless they are so bad you're needing to repeat a
| year. Being sick for a few days won't cause that. At that
| level grades are mostly just feedback to the parents.
|
| As a parent, if my 4th or 6th grader got a lower grade
| due to missing homework as a result of being sick, it
| wouldn't concern me.
|
| In high school it starts to matter more due to grades
| being a component of college admissions, but unless
| you're targeting really elite schools a couple of days of
| missed work isn't going to move the needle much. And if
| you are targeting elite schools, you're already working
| very hard and including a lot of AP courses and
| extracuricular activities and you will just buckle down
| and make up the work.
| watwut wrote:
| When i am sick my work piles up.
|
| Kids can actually take free days off. They don't actually
| have to do everything that was done while they have been
| away, usually we have done just small portion of it. Kids
| that struggle just continues struggling and kids that
| perceive school easy just continue lazying around.
|
| In no way will few days off make you fall behind.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That doesn't make it a prison: neither another student
| nor the teacher can step in and learn the material for
| your child. I don't know what you think would be an
| appropriate option there.
|
| Also, you may have a job where none of your
| responsibilities are unique to you, but that's not often
| the case outside of some types of shift work. If I take a
| vacation or sick days, I have catching up to do. No one
| is going to step in for a couple of days and pickup where
| I left off on a project I've been working on for 3
| months.
|
| As for missing school, my kids go to typical mediocre
| public schools. When a student is struggling, they're
| given a little extra help. When they miss because they're
| sick, they're given plenty of time to makeup the work.
| And if a student is struggling so much that they can't
| reasonably move on to the next year's more complex
| material, the school literally devotes and extra year if
| resources to
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _but generally people go to those places because they
| want to, or because it offers them a favorable outcome
| that they 're willing to temporarily trade some autonomy
| for._
|
| I don't think this is why kids go to school. You go to
| school because you _have to_. There is no realistic
| option not to go. If you don 't go, then you'll be
| forcefully put into a school for troubled kids. Even if
| you don't consider the above, there is still an enormous
| social pressure to go to school too.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Outside of "forced labor", just about any large building is
| going to have people & operations that occur on fixed
| schedules and have some degree of security.
| friendlybus wrote:
| When you shove 30 kids in a class or 200 students in a
| university lecture hall, you're going to value conformity and
| pulsed, factory-like processes.
| Bakary wrote:
| For the world to be organized any other way you'd need to
| essentially revise the entire economic system and social
| contract. If there are billions of people and very unequal
| resource partitions this will be the inevitable result
| dash2 wrote:
| This is one of the most delightfully overblown quotes of all
| time. But Herbert Marcuse went one better: he compared
| amusement parks to concentration camps.
| wisty wrote:
| It's funny how people complain about "motivated reasoning" and
| demand an immense amount of rigour when someone says something
| they disagree with (say, whichever side people take on the
| "Google's ideological echo chamber" argument); but are very
| willing to buy very reductionist and broad statements when
| their gut tells them it's just right.
|
| I suppose maybe there is some truth to it. But he's highly
| disingenuous with his implications. It's like a Twitter hot-
| take that's expanded into a book. Hard libertarians might argue
| that taxation is in some way equivalent to slavery, which is
| also technically true but a very biased presentation of the
| facts. Schools and hospitals are similar to prisons in the same
| way taxation is similar to slavery (you can find similarities,
| but ignoring the differences is just asinine).
|
| Every right requires responsibilities. If students have a right
| to learn, then schools have a responsibility to teach them. If
| young adults have a right to be educated in a broad range of
| topics (many of which did not interest them as children) then
| children have a responsibility to learn. Control is all about
| forcing people to take responsibility, because otherwise rights
| will be unfulfilled.
|
| The question isn't whether control exists (it can and should)
| but whether the intent and implementation is just and
| efficient. A communist dictator can claim the right to a huge
| portion of the country's wealth while its population starves,
| this would be unjust.
|
| There are valid questions to ask about control. Is it better to
| control inputs or outputs? Is it better to have a rule of laws
| and systems, or a rule of individuals with authority -
| discretion means giving more power to individuals. Are the
| trade-offs our society makes currently fair and worthwhile? If
| a punishment keeps the majority of the population responsible
| (thus giving creating rights) but hurts the occasional person
| who is somehow resistant to control is it a bad thing? But
| simply assuming that control is bad is silly.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I think the point isn't that the point of school isn't to
| learn, as you assume. It's main point is to control, learning
| is secondary.
| lldbg wrote:
| Foucault advocated for pedophilia, and that knowledge has
| tainted him for me. Can he still be a moral authority?
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| 1960's-1970s celebrity culture was full of young groupies
| sleeping with older men. Bowie, Jagger, Ozzy, etc were all
| doing it, and often brazen about it, so its not overly
| surprising that European intellectuals just wanted it
| formalized as they were doing it too. They felt it harmless
| enough for their own selfish reasons and wrapped it up into a
| 'autonomy of self' argument that, of course, was very self-
| serving. I think this is good evidence that when you stray
| outside of your specialty (adult ethics) then you can make
| some obvious mistakes in other specialized fields (children's
| sexuality). It probably doesn't help that you have both a
| strong anti-authoritarian movement and sexual revolution
| movement happening at the same time, which only added fuel to
| this fire.
|
| Its still wrong, but anachronistically wrong a bit like how
| many elements the founding fathers put in which are good
| government but did so under the unforgivable sin of slavery.
| If that's too 'ancient history' for you, let's consider
| Brendan Eich's contribution to Firefox but also understand he
| is a homophobe. We can still use and appreciate Firefox's
| technical advancements without worrying about Eich's
| homophobia.
|
| Age of consent skeptics are as old as time anyway. It rages
| on today in the modern libertarian party and incel culture.
| Anti-authoritarian and reactionary movements often become
| victimizers of children and women and racial/religious
| minorities because these groups are often protected by
| authority. When you remove authority, suddenly they are
| powerless and easy prey to whatever replaces that authority.
| The most obvious example are soldiers raping women in towns
| they take over.
| smhost wrote:
| skepticism about age of consent laws is a time-honored
| libertarian tradition. it's not even strictly foucauldian.
| and as a nietzschean, foucault didn't believe in moral
| authority.
| scandox wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_.
| ..
|
| More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment
| argued at that time for "the decriminalization of all
| consensual relations between adults and minors below the age
| of fifteen".
|
| While I agree that seems extremely stupid, it is based on a
| morally tenable argument that people under that age could
| give consent. That may be incorrect but if accepted as a
| premise would justify their position.
|
| So if Foucault believed this and his moral arguments derived
| from that, it would seem unwise to dismiss all his moral
| authority just because you believe he was wrong on this
| point.
|
| I personally think he is totally wrong and that even people
| at the age of eighteen struggle to know their own minds
| clearly with regard to consent. However I do not as a result
| think Foucault is impossible to take a moral lead from.
| watwut wrote:
| > More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment
| argued at that time
|
| Then the question is, how does one become intellectual
| establishement. Sounds like dissenters were somehow
| excluded from that nebulous subjective category.
| scandox wrote:
| Well I just meant that the roll call of names that signed
| the petition is fairly extraordinary:
|
| Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques
| Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de
| Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Michel Leiris,
| Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Ranciere,
| Jean-Francois Lyotard, Francis Ponge, Bernard Besret
| odessacubbage wrote:
| seeing how the sex offender registry in the us has created a
| legal sub-caste with no functional distinction between
| violent rapists and a 19 year old who sexted their 17 year
| old gf, while doing seemingly nothing to curb the actual
| abuse and trafficking of minors, it is hard to say the
| carceral approach has really been more effective or
| beneficial than what foucault advocated.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I think this just shows that prisons often have nicer facades
| than some schools.
| et2o wrote:
| I just played and got 10/10 right although a few were difficult.
| I don't think they are all so similar.
| oseph wrote:
| The secret is windows.
| liquidify wrote:
| Could easily make one of these for a lot of hospitals too.
| jamespwilliams wrote:
| In the UK our prisons often look nicer than our (state) schools.
| Many of our prisons are quite ancient, whereas many of our state
| schools are 1960s monstrosities.
|
| For example:
|
| * https://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/geograp...
| vs
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/James_Ho...
|
| * https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1185483.ece/ALT...
| vs
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Cefn_Sae...
|
| * https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/HM_...
| vs
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/We...
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| It's unfair to compare CLASP [1] buildings with centuries old
| stone buildings... The CLASP system was a stopgap measure for
| cost-effectively building schools for the baby boomer
| generation given the economic constraints of post-WW2 Britain.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium_of_Local_Authorit...
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| And given the purpose of a school, building it cheaply is
| very utilitarian as it allows you to build schools faster. I
| would rather have the institution be more effective than more
| pleasing to look at.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It doesn't look bad because it's cheap, it looks bad because
| it's inhuman.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Aww, I had grown to like that style of architecture while I was
| living abroad (in Holland, not England, but there was a lot of
| similarly built structures out in the suburbs where I lived)
|
| It doesn't age particularly well, though
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Related: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I thought an obvious clue would be Windows or no Windows. I'm
| wrong.
| ineedasername wrote:
| A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges.
|
| In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water
| whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and
| hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't
| needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota
| the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have
| to use the toilet during a given period of time.
|
| Seriously, it seemed like a revolutionary concept when I hit
| college and realized "Hold on, I can just _get up & go?_." Or
| that (absent computer labs) I could bring a cup of coffee or
| bottle of soda with me to class, and that common etiquette even
| allowed for a bit of food if it wasn't noisy to eat or have a
| powerful smell.
| dorkwood wrote:
| When I was eight years old I had a teacher who told us that if
| we needed to use the bathroom, rather than ask "can I use the
| bathroom?" we should instead say "I'm going to the bathroom".
| She said she would never stop us from going, but that we should
| at least let her know why we're leaving the room.
|
| I never got to experience that again at school after I left the
| second grade.
| lemonspat wrote:
| I had the same college experience. I nearly raised my hand to
| request permission but saw other kids just leaving class
| (sophomores I think)
| JorgeGT wrote:
| I'm an assistant professor and every year some student will
| indeed ask if they can go to the bathroom...
| ineedasername wrote:
| I've been an adjunct professor and received that question
| too. My response is generally "You're the customer here. In
| my class, you can literally do anything you want if it
| doesn't interfere with other students learning or me
| teaching."
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I might have been one of those. It took me years to fully
| internalize that university classes, despite superficial
| similarity, aren't run by high school rules.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| In my experience it depended on the class.
|
| Business school classes were very much like high school,
| at least the ones I took (I was not a business major).
| Assigned seats, attendance taken, etc. Don't recall if
| bathroom trips needed permission as I always handled that
| before class started.
|
| Math and science classes were generally much more
| informal. Class met at a specified time and place, and
| nobody paid much attention to who was there or not. I
| would occasionally sit in on other classes I was
| considering taking, to see if I liked the instructor.
| bettem wrote:
| > hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids
| hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental
| quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that
| should have to use the toilet during a given period of time.
|
| This is a fairly reductive statement. Dealing with children is
| incredibly taxing and difficult. Teachers are [in my country]
| underpaid and under-appreciated and I believe this kind of
| rhetoric doesn't do them justice. People began to appreciate
| teachers during the pandemic's home schooling period, but that
| seems [anecdotally] to have dropped off since children have
| returned to regular schooling.
|
| > when I hit college and realized "Hold on, I can just get up &
| go?."
|
| Because you were [likely] an adult now who needs to be able to
| regulate their own behaviours. No surprise here.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _People began to appreciate teachers during the pandemic's
| home schooling period_
|
| People began to appreciate them for the daycare aspect and
| not really teaching. The statement might be reductive, but
| it's also the experience that many kids have with teachers
| and school.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| So children shouldn't be allowed to use the bathroom at will
| because teachers are overburdened and underpaid?
| ineedasername wrote:
| The stress level and difficulty of teaching (while accurate
| statements) are not relevant to this issue. You can't excuse
| poor treatment of the biological needs of students simply
| because you have a very difficult job.
|
| My comment was also not a reductive statement when I've been
| told "no" when I ask to go to the bathroom, or told "3 people
| have already gone to the bathroom, you'll have to wait until
| next period."
|
| Both of these specific situations, and variations, happened
| to me. I watched a classmate pee their pants once when they
| were denied access to the bathroom.
|
| Want to talk about job stress? Think about the stress an 8
| year old goes through when every time they feel their bladder
| getting full they start worrying about whether they'll be
| allowed to pee, or have to wait until the next class or
| recess/lunch, learning nothing in the meantime and hoping
| they're not the next kid that has to have their parents bring
| a change of clothes.
|
| I don't know what country you're in. I'm in the US, and
| quality of pay varies greatly from state to state. Workload
| (class size) often varies with the socioeconomic status of
| the people in that school district. What doesn't vary in any
| conversation I've had with people on this topic is that my
| experiences are very much not unique.
| emayljames wrote:
| The right take a toilet break anytime is a very basic human
| need and right. Why would anybody not extend this without
| question, to kids. Sure, kids at some point might take
| advantage, but the magic would wear off very quickly. Is like
| putting a button infront of someone and saying don't press
| it, they will really want to, and finally pressing it and
| being underwhelmed. Is lazy caretaking.
| [deleted]
| pewpew_ wrote:
| > meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate
| # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given
| period of time.
|
| In grade school, every time someone asks permission to use the
| bathroom they stop the flow of the lesson and valuable time is
| lost. In college the idea is that most of the students are
| responsible enough to handle the bathroom and food.
| fuzxi wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're agreeing that students shouldn't have
| to ask permission. It does interrupt the lesson, after all,
| and does very little besides reinforcing in children an
| obedience to authority, even above their own basic biological
| needs.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That's not a strong argument for strict bathroom rules.
| That's an argument for guidelines that don't require explicit
| permission: let kids go any time they want, and they silently
| signal it by holding up 2 fingers as they get up & go.
|
| And how much valuable time is lost here, weighed against the
| extreme distraction a student has if they can't go? Besides,
| once the student has raised their hand and been called on,
| the flow is already disrupted. Answering "yes" or "no" is
| irrelevant at that point.
|
| Do you have a proposal that both meets biological needs and
| doesn't run the minor risk of disruption? Disruptions occur
| constantly anyway every time a student asks a questions when
| they don't understand, even when most others do.
|
| I simply fail to see how "stop the flow of the lesson" is
| either very relevant to unpreventable biological needs, or an
| unsolvable problem in its own right.
| input_sh wrote:
| Yeah I got kicked out of class once in high school (affecting
| my attendance) because I couldn't hold it until the end of the
| class, the teacher said no, and my choice was between
| disobeying or whipping my dick out and peeing on the floor.
|
| I of course chose disobeying, but I'm pretty sure that the
| teacher would be far less strict in the future if I went the
| other route.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The latter could have gotten you in some serious trouble.
| Better and more effective to just go in your pants.
| pengaru wrote:
| Yeah, because students won't turn that into your permanent
| nickname mr. peepeepants.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water
| whenever you want. In school you need special permission [...]
|
| Uhm. Where in the world do you live?! :O
| fuzxi wrote:
| The US, I'd expect. It's very common here, you can generally
| expect kids to get a lecture, at minimum, if they leave the
| classroom for any reason without permission.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The US. It's not a very dignified setup in prison with 4
| people in a cell, but most prisons have a toilet and a sink
| in each cell.
| [deleted]
| meekrohprocess wrote:
| A fun anecdote from my youth near a US seaboard was that our
| elementary and middle school buildings were designed by the same
| person who designed a few prisons around the area.
|
| When I bounced around cities later in life, I was surprised at
| how many of my peers said the same thing as a conversation piece.
|
| Maybe they used the same governmental bidding process. "Needed: a
| building. One food preparation and eating area. Hallways suitable
| for lining up and proceeding in rows with many small rooms. One
| yard with sporting facilities."
| kiba wrote:
| It's a series of boxes. That's the default setting for
| buildings.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Both are often government contracts so they are often going to
| attract the same firms and contractors. They share a lot of the
| same requirements; large and cheap. The exterior facade needs
| to be easy to construct and unremarkable in that government
| building kind of way.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I did quite well by measuring "overall area of ground level
| windows".
| danielheath wrote:
| See also "Is the front door designed to let one person through
| at a time, or many".
|
| School buildings move their entire populations through the
| entrance in the space of 10 minutes. Prisons are more-or-less
| entirely designed to prevent exactly that from happening.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It was my criteria as well and the only one that failed me was
| https://www.holmesmiller.com/project/hmp-grampian
|
| Which looks really nice for a prison. I suspect it is an
| administrative building, or just the entrance. Not the place
| where inmates actually live.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I have to admit I cheated on that one by recognizing "HRP" as
| the UK-typical naming scheme for prisons.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| It shows no windows at all, beyond the reception area.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The photo in the quizz is cropped. You see less of the
| wall.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| my biggest complaint about schools at least in the US is they all
| are specially designed. they usually have an architect involved.
| it's style is specific to the land it's on. and each one is so
| expensive to build. then the community can show off its fancy
| school, great, it's a snowflake
|
| i would rather the state appoint an architect group to design
| like 5 model schools that are modular. and then any time a city
| needs to build one you just get to play some lego on the modular
| design. this would make school construction faster and cheaper
| and maintenance easier
| musingsole wrote:
| Schools are one of the most universal community hubs that the
| largest majority of a community will interact with regularly.
| No one wants a cookie cutter community center.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > No one wants a cookie cutter community center.
|
| The specific point of the parent comment is that they _do_
| want a cookie cutter school. Saying "no one wants that"
| isn't really a substantial counter argument.
|
| I suppose the problem with them all being so similar would be
| if you spent every day visiting a different one, you would
| tire of them all being them same. But no one does that - you
| spend many years in a single one, without much awareness of
| others. In the end it's important that it's effective to
| spend long periods in, and its uniqueness is basically
| irrelevant to the people that actually use it.
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| This is fantastic. I love how if you do it long enough, the
| results go way down, and after a while you can no longer tell, or
| be certain one way or another.
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