The first several years of school is indeed childcare. Childcare mixed with education.
I am confused by people who use this as a derogative.
I learned drafting, how to type, welding, library science, color theory, woodworking, BASIC programming, the internal anatomy of a piglet, resume writing, how to play the cello, calculus, and how to sing the names of all 50 US states in alphabetical order in middle school and high school.
That is not childcare.
edit: forgot darkroom photography, yearbook editing, extemporaneous speaking, and Robert's Rules of Order.
> The first several years of school is indeed childcare. Childcare mixed with education.
Yes. Former teacher here to tell you I cared about the children. :)
But seriously, in the United States teachers are considered "In loco parentis" which "refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. "
At least used to. Last few years Finland's PISA scores as measured by the OECD have plummeted and now they are just a bit above average but nowhere near what they used to be.
I always felt like the teaching method in primary school was very much like "no pupil left behind". Teachers really tried their best to keep everyone up to speed on what they taught. If you were a huge troublemaker or just couldn't keep up with the (slowish) pace you would get moved to a special class where you would get more attention (even smaller class sizes) and wouldn't slow the rest of the group down.
As a "smart kid" it sometimes felt like waiting for everyone in class to grok something before moving on was a waste of time and that personally I'd learn very little, but ultimately I think it worked very well to ensure that everyone was on common ground.
At some point it was deemed that the current system wasn't inclusive enough so the special education for the troublemakers was gutted and they were put back into regular classrooms. At the same time, due to lack of funding and lack of teachers, class sizes ballooned from <15 to up to 30 or even 40 students per class in larger cities. I think there's some critical point where that system breaks down and now we're past it. The teacher has too many students to make sure everyone is up to speed, and giving too much individual attention in such a large class wastes everyone else's time.
Immigration has also played a role I think. Finland used to be quite monocultural, but that has changed. There are now more and more students who speak Finnish as their second or third language and as such have trouble keeping up. I don't think the solution is to stuff them into their own schools either as that promotes segregation and makes integrating into the society as an immigrant harder, and I don't pretend to know the perfect solution (if one even exists), but one thing's for sure: the Finnish school system was 100% unprepared for it.
The solution is almost always more teachers (though at some point you have two teachers per kid and that’s likely to be excessive).
A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as possible.
You can artificially increase the number of “teachers” by combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.
Some common themes in the conversation are neoliberal cost cutting, failed attempts at inclusion and immigration.
* Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations.
* Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces building costs and is also sold as a trendy new innovation in pedagogy.
* Special needs and gifted students are no longer put into special classrooms where they can receive the extra attention and care they need. Instead, they are put in with the other kids to the benefit of no one except the state budget, but at least it feels more "inclusive" to some research professor in their ivory tower.
In summary, Finland has brought the policies that have caused much destruction in other Western countries into their own education system, where those policies have also caused destruction, much to everyone's amazement.
Yep, this country is no longer that special by European standards. Childcare is still good, but later education and healthcare are very mediocre.
In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what right wing governments want I guess.
It's usual in Finland to let babies sleep outside in the strollers (even when it's cold) but in this case no one checked how the child was doing for 3 hours.
> * Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations.
Politically, isn't this the ultimate fate of most developed nations? I haven't yet see an answer to this. How do you deal financially with this? The obvious answer is for people to be in charge of their own late stage health but is that possible for the average minimum wage worker?
In Finland 16 olds are not allowed to drink and access to alcohol is state controlled.
IMHO learning foreign languages, math, history, biology and physics is not child care.
This is in preparation to getting access to upper secondary education (vocational or academic). Usually you start this at 16.
This is not a simple question but one part of the answer is that students are a) ready for upper secondary education b) their grades can be used to grade access to schools with top upper secondary schools being extremely hard to get into.
Ofc if you ask “why would a society do this” I guess the reason is that an educated population is expected to be more productive AND because the law requires schooling up to 18 it also implies all students must have access to free schools with close to zero material costs. So it’s intended also to level the playing field for all social classes.
Is this worse or better than germanys system is impossible for me to tell.
In my experience and observation, as the age and school level increases, there's more actual learning going on.
By the time you're 16, I'd say a significant amount of school time is decently geared toward learning, and you're old enough to supplement that yourself during spares or downtime if you want to.
At younger ages though, it definitely seems like more of a daycare service than a learning focused environment. The free daycare is important, but I do feel bad for the kids who are stuck in that absurd environment. Someone can come up to you and stab you with a pencil for no reason and that's just par for the course.
In my nation 16-year olds may work outside of school hours (school is mandatory until they are 18 years old). There are other hard limits on which types of jobs and the time of day they may work. Work shall never interfere with school.
Which suggests that the child labor laws for 16-year-olds are there to keep 16-year-olds in school, rather than school being there as a place to put 16-year-olds who are banned from employment.
In a very real way, adolescents rise to the responsibilities given to them. Usually teenagers that need modulating is a reflection on their upbringing rather than any innate flaw.
They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.
That's exactly the point. It's a middle ground ABV where there aren't a ton of products and below which are mostly fermented beverages and above which is distilled liquor.
In Switzerland, it is 16 for beer and wine, and 18 for spirits (or drinks that contain spirits, like "alcopops", even if they have a low ABV). I think Austria and Germany are the same.
People who make statements like that are the kind of people you dread will pick up your pull request. You just know you're going to go from maybe spending an hour cleaning up some suggestions to a 3-day philosophical battle to get them to a point where they deign to accept your PR.
Not at all. If the code is decent and shows effort I have no problem. If it's sloppy it shite code.
I really don't have time to care about what my peers think of me. It's work. I don't want to communicate with them outside work. Work is just another mind space that stays at work. I am strict when it comes to code, I expect the same.
I want working maintainable code to enable me to do my job. If people dread submitting a PR because they can't write code with effort, good. I like my ships built strong not weak.
If they fix their problem, good. Trust given, more than happy to salute however time and time they've proven to me they don't.
These developers have proven to me they won't. These are developers who are those who do not fix the issuing code and will just move on to the next problem hacking it to make it work.
If you've never worked with such, then lucky. If this sting for you, time to put more effort in to your work.
No, they really don't. They submit their code. I submit mine. If they have a problem with mine, I'll fix what they have issues with if they are reasonable, why wouldn't I?
Where I work in enterprise your peers change daily. With my role and importance to the company implementing hacky code puts me at risk and so I will of course push back. The people I knew last months may not even work in the company.
The view of I must be a horrible person comes from the Comment OP being angry at me for having a reasonable standards to an Enterprise standard of code. "It works im done. Next please"
If their code isn't up to scratch I will tell them and reject it. The issue I have is lazy developers who implement hacks and don't actually go and fix the code.
I am being made the bad person from someone's angry hospitality. All I was saying is that lazy developers are lazy developers and that I axe their work because it's sloppy and doesn't deserve to be on show.
I'm not to engage further as you're only ever going to repeat yourself in more obnoxious ways, but I will say that if you treat people in real life the way you comment here, you will only ever be tolerated at best. Never respected and never liked.
Even the people you consider peers will abhor that you think and speak like this about people.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Is this a JavaScript complaint and they were meant to use a for..of? Are you an FP purist and think they were supposed to use map/filter?
This sounds like you have some very specific trauma around a very specific "foreach if loop", because I would personally never throw around such a specific-but-not-specific example of tech debt. Tech debt is extremely contextual.
