Thread

1. armchairhacker · 1790606533 · focus · HN ↗

   My understanding is that it’s normalized by administrators, and the public doesn’t think much about it. Another issue is that some schools have heavy police presence and prison-like rules.

   I think a solution to both is to expel students who, for example, assault other students or teachers. Other commenters are blaming parents, and sure we should incentivize and facilitate better parenting, but in the short term what is more successful at reducing violence is expelling violent students.

   1. myrmidon · 1790607310 · focus · HN ↗

      Disagree with this.

      You are just pushing the problem down the road if you have an increasing number of violent kids and expel them all from school-- how are they ever going to become productive members of society? You just end up with society either paying for them being in prison, subsidizing them (because uneducated and unmotivated labor is close to worthless) or paying to literally clean up their shit because you basically routed them into a "careeer" as homeless person.

      If parenting standards have slipped so much that violence in schools becomes a significant problem, you need to either fix this by getting the parents to do better or by having the education system itself patch those deficits; any other "simple solution" is just gonna result in immense costs to your whole society that compound for decades.

      1. armchairhacker · 1790608167 · focus · HN ↗

         How will they become productive in school? Instead of wasting at home or on the streets, we could send them to the therapy they need. School shouldn’t be that therapy, it degrades the other students’ education.

         And maybe subsidizing them is the cheapest outcome: better we give them a small amount of money and get them to leave us alone, than spend more trying and failing to get them into schools, the workforce, or prison.

         1. myrmidon · 1790611559 · focus · HN ↗

            > Instead of wasting at home or on the streets, we could send them to the therapy they need.

            I'm not advocating against this. But keeping their education timeline somewhat on track is highly preferrable in my view (inserting "fixed delinquents" into classes of younger children seems very undesirable to me).

            > And maybe subsidizing them is the cheapest outcome: better we give them a small amount of money and get them to leave us alone, than spend more trying and failing to get them into schools, the workforce, or prison.

            I honestly don't see how this could ever apply.

            You have basically an average >$200k investment from the parents alone, plus all the direct/indirect subsidies starting with day care. Between low-wage working adult and "worthless person" there is at least a $50k/year swing in expected value to society every year they work, too.

            Even if your success rate of "fixing" child delinquents is laughably low (say 15%), and costs you like $100k per attempt it is easily worth it; its not even close.

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