• @m532
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    23 years ago

    Children deserve more free time than they currently have. This is a step in the right direction.

  • @FuckTheGlobalists
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    -13 years ago

    Sounds like a good way to make it harder to get a tutor. Why is china so removed?

    • @ttmrichter
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      13 years ago

      That’s the entire fucking point. Like literally, the point went sailing way the fuck over your head.

      • Jack
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        23 years ago

        I’m completely uneducated on this; is this good because kids should have more free time?

        • @ttmrichter
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          23 years ago

          It’s good on several levels.

          1. That much schoolwork does the opposite of its intent. We’ve known for over half a century that even simple homework is ineffective for learning. What do you think eternal classwork is going to do? Burnout is a thing and it’s a thing I’ve seen far too many promising students fall to here, with often heart-breaking consequences. (One of my favourite students tried to kill herself—thankfully unsuccessfully!—by jumping out of a fifth-storey window. At age 12. Ponder that shocking number for a bit.) It’s one of the reasons I stopped teaching here.

          2. Play is a major component of learning and growth. Unstructured play, not fucking soccer moms taking their children to one organized event after the other, helicoptering at the sidelines. Got that image in your head? Now magnify it by ten. That’s Chinese parental control of child activities. Children get no unsupervised time. No chance to form social bonds. No chance to learn the soft knowledge they need to become well-adjusted human beings. And these fucking cram schools, again, amplify the problem by removing even the structured play in favour of mindless rote recitation “education”.

          3. Let’s presume for sake of argument that #s 1 and 2 aren’t important. (They are, but just for sake of argument let’s pretend they aren’t.) Who goes to these cram schools? Do you think access is fairly distributed? That peasant villagers’ children get the same opportunity to access high quality supplemental education as wealthy city-dwellers’? (Hint: no.) Schools in the city already have massive advantages over schools in the countryside. Hell, schools in the wealthier districts of cities have massive advantages over schools in the poorer districts! This is a problem that has already led to some stability problems as disgruntled poorer people denounce how Party officials’ kids always seem to be able to get into the best schools and have the most opportunities after leaving school. These cram schools (again) amplify this issue beyond all reason. There have been near-riots over the advantages connected/wealthy people have in educating their children. If it’s not reined in quickly, there is going to be bloodshed. And on a massive scale.

          Eliminate the cram schools and you can work on fixing the educational system so they’re not needed. You can work on evening out access to quality education. Cram schools are a sign of an intense illness in education and they’re a band-aid … on a necrotic limb. They need to be turned into public services, not for-profit ventures that favour only the wealthy assholes.