I suspect many adults involved in education find it convenient to minimise school bullying, but as OH clearly understands, for some unlucky children it is reality that they are forced to endure for years.

But the school experience is a compound of many things that may well be helpful in later life (incl social survival) and that's why online and home schooling, to me, are not useful substitutes for attending state schools. Unless you live in the Arctic Circle or some other place with an unreliable bus service, online/home schooling seem to me like an admission of defeat, and a failure, on the part of society, to provide a counterbalance to weirdo parents' indoctrination/abuse.

My solution would be to allocate more public funds to existing schools - with the most important goal being to crank up the ratio of teachers to children. If class sizes were halved, they would be easier to monitor and educate, and if you're really lucky, you might find that a small class develops something akin to team spirit.

Until that golden day arrives, a more mundane approach to bullying might be to install cc cameras in schools, the way they are now installed in many cities.

... and yeah, to follow your gist, DougMcC, more parent/outside involvement in schooling would help too. On American tv I see schools that invite parents in to talk to classes about their professions, but that probably only happens in sitcom land. Can't imagine it ever happening in the schools OH describes.

Just on a sidenote, small class sizes sound so obvious it can't solve anything, but holy **** making it so your class is like ten people at most makes such a huge difference that more than that should be illegal. After that people start drifting into groups and see actual class as just the sideshow to the main event of talking amongst themselves when the teacher isn't looking.

It’s hard for me to understand why so many people think school is universally right for every kid. Even if you think school is on balance the best choice for the vast majority of kids can’t you recognize that for at least some outliers it’s a total disaster to the point where whatever silver lining you might be able to point to like socialization and survival lessons are irrelevant? I mean hell I’m just going to say that this outlier of community kids definitely exist. For some kids, school is absolutely a net loss. And for some of those NOTHING is gained. It’s just bad. So it baffles me. I’m incredulous even as to why people are so insistent that EVERY kid must attend school.

For some kids school is so painful suicide is the right choice. Same as someone who doesn’t want to go through end game Alzheimer’s. Not for many. It may be very rare but for some it is like that. And they ****ing kill themselves.

I also suspect that the suffering that some children endure just going to school is greater than all the suffering caused by a school shooter in total including that of bereaved parents of the students who are murdered.

There are kids who decide they would rather die and then actually kill themselves because that’s how adverse they are to going to school. But still, even in the face of all that the singular message is: STAY IN SCHOOL.

**** that

If it’s got you ****ed up do something else. It’s honestly not that ****ing important for EVERYBODY.

I agree but I will mention one drawback. At under ten it can be really hard to maintain the formality. A little larger herd actually tends to monitor itself better in some ways. If the kids are well adjusted 23 is a very reasonable class size. If they’re not an extra adult with authority like a co-teacher or an aid or a behavior specialist is probably a better first step than lowering attendance below 18.

It's about defending the comfortable status quo that forged you as a kid. It's like kids who get the **** kicked out of them by their parents laughing about it like it's a rite of passage that makes them stronger people. It's just easier than questioning your entire upbringing.

I did go to military school where the teachers couldn't hit us but they did have very good disciplinary measures to keep us in line, and we were also a bunch of middle and upper class kids who thought that school was a gateway to money and privilege cause that's what it was for us.

But do you have experience with problem kids in small class sizes (like, actually ten or lower)? In my experience the informality of those classes is almost like democracy where we know the teacher, the teacher knows us, we all know each other, so there's a feeling of equality that humanizes us and encourages us to be laid back and not think of ourselves as just another faceless cog in the education machine. Like we could have conversations with the teacher as a group but at the same time it could be a casual thing and then it was time for class and it was like "Take it away, Teach" as opposed to "Sit down and be quiet while I take roll call".

I mean in military school I had class sizes so small that there was absolutely no comparison to any class I ever had in public school and a difference of even a few students could have changed that dynamic, so a class of 18 would have been a completely different beast to a class of 8, which is something I had back then regularly.

My mom taught special education (kids with learning disabilities or physical issues) for nearly forty years. My dad was the IT solutions architect for some of the world's biggest corporations. They wouldn't have been able to provide a home school environment for me even if it was something they were interested in.

I went to public school, but at the same time I wonder how different things would have been if the freedom that that Internet offers (in regards to access of information) was more readily available back then. Smartphones were a pipe dream. Compulsory education seems like bull**** to me when it doesn't seem to give anyone a grasp on how to handle what comes afterward.

This right here is absolute. People don't really use checks anymore but back when I was in school they did and I remember only once ever being taught how to balance a checkbook and it was like an afterthought because it wasn't "core education". Why doesn't education teach you about bills and budgeting and all those other things that are important to actually living life beyond the career stuff that's too basic to help the majority of kids who never go to college anyway? There are so many vastly important things that I guess is assumed will be left to the parents because that's probably how things were done when public education was invented but now that the government educates children parents assume everything will be taken care of and they can take their eye off the ball.

I did. At one point I did this thing where I cycled kids out of class for remediation in groups of six and I was surprised by the new set of challenges the small group presented.

But I also want to point out that the first thing I said was I agree.

There’s pros and cons but I still think 23 is a great number if the kids are well adjusted.

I also have to confess that the overly casual atmosphere may have been entirely my fault thinking I couldn’t **** it up with just six kids and then bam I managed to lol

There should be more but there’s probably more life skills stuff being taught in schools than you realize. Black community leaders rightfully insist on it in the inner city schools.

I took a life skills class senior year instead of math that taught me how credit works, how to file my taxes, what employers look for in resumes and interviews, how to change a tire, etc. and we played this semester long career game that taught us about living within our means and monthly budgeting. i'm pretty sure it was all the idea of this one solid teacher i had and the class was only available that one year because as all good teachers did she turned down tenure and moved to the rich district we got all our hand-me-down computers and textbooks from lol