Time To Rethink the School Desk? 405
theodp writes "As part of its reimagine the 21st-century classroom project, Slate asks: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture? While adults park their butts in $700 Aeron chairs, kids still sprawl and slump and fidget and dangle their way through the day in school furniture designed to meet or beat a $40 price point. 'We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases,' says Harvard's Jack Dennerlein. 'Is the same true for children? I can't see why not.' For school districts with deep pockets, there are choices — a tricked-out Node chair from IDEO and Steelcase can be had for $599."
Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Me thinks that someone wants to sell furniture.
Luxury! (Score:4, Funny)
You had furniture in your school? We had to make do with moldy cardboard boxes for desks and sharp piles of rusting scrap metal for chairs, and we had to collect the scrap metal ourselves from train yards and storm drains. But try telling that to kids these days, they won't believe you!
Re:Luxury! (Score:4, Insightful)
Moldy cardboard? Wow, you were pampered! We had to use each other as furniture, even though we weren't allowed to eat on weekdays and had to walk naked through five feet of snow for three miles, uphill in both directions. And we used each other as paper too... scratching our notes onto each others' backs with out dirty, cracked fingernails.
Re:Luxury! (Score:4, Insightful)
You had furniture in your school? We had to make do with moldy cardboard boxes for desks and sharp piles of rusting scrap metal for chairs, and we had to collect the scrap metal ourselves from train yards and storm drains.
We had to use cleverly arranged FedEx boxes [xpda.com] Sure, we sold out, but we all got free mouse pads!
Re:Luxury! (Score:5, Funny)
We didn't even have a building. We held school out in the open; under a tree if we were lucky. And no writing materials either: we just scrawled our equations, diagrams and other lecture notes in the dirt. And that was good enough for us.
--Aristotle
Re:Luxury! (Score:5, Insightful)
I was watching a National Geographic show the other day about some public schools in Pakistan where they don't have desks, chairs, or even a freaking building. Kids sit on their butts in a brickyard with no shelter, and the school has a single blackboard.
You know, granted, I've never been a teacher in a public school, but when I was a military instructor I always found that teaching outdoors worked better than anything else. I had a classroom with computers and a projector and powerpoint slides coming out of my ass, but just taking them outside seemed to get much better focus from the students, and their marks went up accordingly.
Don't get me wrong - I love technology, and sometimes you certainly DO need a high-tech environment to teach certain subjects. But maybe we've gone a bit overboard. Why in the world should geography be taught indoors? Or English, for that matter? I'm fairly certain that Shakespeare didn't come up with his ideas by spending 8 hours a day sitting in a room, staring at a blackboard or a screen, so why should his works be studied in that environment?
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
This is BS, get the metalshop and woodshop to build and maintain the desks. They'll learn to build things to survive the worst and if they have to sit in them anyway they'll make them comfortable too. The higher schools can build for the lower where they don't have the facilities and give it to them at cost since they're learning, kinda like the hair stylist and cooking schools.
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Do you really think you could get that one past the lawyers? One kid gets hurt on some 'shop contraption and the school district gets its funding sued off.
Lawyers are why the world is so boring today.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Woodshop? Metalshop? We're talking about the USA here. We don't have those things here any more. They're too dangerous; some kid could lose a finger, and then the school would be sued for millions. Besides, why would kids need those skills? They're not going to use them after they leave school and either work in an office or in a service or retail job. American kids don't need to know anything about how to make things; that's for people in countries like China to do for us.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
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Me thinks that someone is trying to convince schools that these are not just the same old desks with wheels on the bottom.
If you've spent any time in a schoolroom in the last 15 years, you're familiar with the high pitched whine of metal scraping against linoleum, as students rearrange their chairs and desks to whatever activity is going on. It seems like a minor annoyance, but it's a serious design problem: School furniture was largely designed 50 years ago for static, face-forward teaching. It isn't suited to the myriad forms of teaching that take place in the modern classroom.
OH GOD, THE HIGH PITCHED WHINE that echos forever preventing any learning from happening! If only that antiquated furniture was designed for the myriad of desk configurations needed in today's fast-paced modern classroom.
In my day when we had to move desks around, we just slid them. On the snow, uphill at all times. There was at most a minute of squeeking and then the desk distraction
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Definitely depressing. I used to teach full time, but before that, I subbed. I spent a week writing a script to send out (that later got me in touch with a Hollyweird agent, so it did its job) and after that week, went back to sub at one school I liked. That break of doing something I loved put me in a different frame -- when I drove up to that school, I started getting really depressed and realized a lot had to do with the building itself. We design offices so we like them. The same with homes. But schools are still, more often than not, dull and functional and uninteresting buildings. It's a wonder kids can stand them or teachers will put up with working in many of them.
There's also a story in education reform where there were a few men shopping for desks and noticed they all had small surfaces and went to someone who sold furniture to schools. The described what they wanted and he said, "Oh, you won't find that. You want a desk where students can work and be creative and functional. These desks are designed solely for listening."
Really a sad statement on the abuse we foster on our children in the name of education.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
We design offices so we like them.
You and I have worked in *vastly* different offices.
Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
> if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases
As far as ROI goes, I think a better investment might be teachers, books, and paper.
Just sayin'
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We managed to do it all that with the same teachers and books and paper that the grandparent was talking about though.
Since we all, presumably, made it through school and got jobs why should we ever have to change anything about the way we teach kids?
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Since we all, presumably, made it through school and got jobs why should we ever have to change anything about the way we teach kids?
Other countries improve their methods, and their children perform better in adulthood, but we stagnate, they outperform us, we become marginalized, and eventually we fade away. Ancient Egypt was once the mightiest and most advanced empire in the world, but now it's an underdeveloped (3rd world?) country.
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Oh great, the old "education is much better in the 3rd world" argument. Please. If their education systems were better than ours, they would have better economies.
Here's the reality. In third world countries they sit around memorizing things all day. So when it comes time to take a math or history or english test, they blow it out of the water. But when it comes time to solve a problem, take risks, or do something new, they're... at a complete loss because they don't know what "creativity" is.
The Ameri
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Oh great, the old "education is much better in the 3rd world" argument.
Um... that's not what I was saying at all. I was simply pointing out that other countries are improving their education, and if we don't do the same, they will eventually outperform us. I'm not saying that they are, but if we don't continue to improve our methods until the absolute best method is achieved, then they will. When you're on top, you can't just sit there and enjoy your status, or someone else will come along and steal your position. This was in answer to the GP's question asking why we shou
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... "lets never improve anything because some of us managed to make due in totally different conditions almost a century ago" ... yea... good for you managing to get somewhere in a world where skills weren't generally required for jobs, and it was possible to get a job without a high school or college education. Cause, you know, nothing has changed in the past century. It is not about making due, it is about improving systems to make them better. You know, improving things.
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Spending the money elsewhere like on better curricula and more i
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I thought the chairs in my school were quite comfortable.
They were made of plastic, but molded to fit the curve of the body. And remember that kids have more body fat than adults, so a hard surface doesn't really bother them. And finally you can't give office furniture to a student because he'll just take his pen and scrawl on it. That's no big deal when it's a disposable $40 chair, but could get rather expensive for a $700 chair.
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(And I was hating on the teachers' unions before Waiting for Superman, so :b in advance)
Re:Return on Investment (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume you left out a word in that first sentence and meant to say "low enough" or "bad enough". And to a large extent, that's true. It's also true for most other industries. One of the biggest problems the U.S. has is its own success. On the one hand, you have communism where there's no incentive to do better because you don't get any more, so nothing gets done very well. On the other hand, you have pure capitalism, where the vast majority of people are slave labor to the people at the top, with only a few fields breaking the rules at any given time and providing a means to actually get ahead of the curve. So all the smart people flock to those fields, those fields achieve wonders, and nothing else gets done very well. What you really need is a system in which everyone in every field is rewarded equally for their achievements, which is, unfortunately, a hard system to design and sustain. For example, such a system precludes the existence of multi-million-dollar CEO salaries because nothing outside of the management field can possibly achieve similar levels. The problem with this, of course, is that somebody who does a wonderful job as a waitress can't feasibly be paid as much as somebody who does a wonderful job as a software engineer at a multi-million-dollar company because we can't afford to pay ten grand for a meal. And that's why economic systems are fundamentally inequitable by nature. Eventually, automation will render much of this moot, but in the short and medium term, it's a problem.
In the medium term, though, our society is going to be really screwed if we continue to pay teachers the salaries we pay them. But before we can pay teachers more, we have to have money to pay them with. This means that we either have to lower the number of teachers (which is already too low in many districts), raise taxes, or cut spending somewhere else. That's the harsh reality. We've built up a system of government that taxes and spends (Democrats) or borrows and spends (Republicans) right up to the very edge of its means, without saving for tough times, without any long-term thinking about the eventual costs associated with its choices, focused solely on what the bottom line will look like around election day when it matters to them, and that's bad for many, many reasons. We have to start by tearing down that system, one large swath at a time, cutting deeply but judiciously into government spending, and frankly, the only way to do that is to spend money.
Give proportional bonuses to manager-level personnel in the public sector for finding ways to cut costs without cutting services. Provide additional temporary jobs to aid in doing so, as needed. As soon as you implement such a system, you'll likely cut 20% out of your budget in the first year. Right now, the tendency at all levels of the government is to horde resources---to concentrate resources within each individual administrator's fiefdom, knowing that if they don't use it, they will lose it. And indeed, we see this in business, too---managers saying things like, "If they think you're working on something that they don't think is important, they'll say we have too many resources and cut our budget," a policy that only encourages people to disguise what they are working on from upper levels of management so that they can get done the things that need to get done. There are three differences, though. First, businesses periodically clean house, whereas government only does so up at the top (the elected officials). Second, businesses give bonuses for cutting costs. Third, (well-run) businesses do not generally cut the budgets of departments that do not use all of their budget. They reward it. Fix those last two things, and you might get away with not having to do the first.
For example, most government departments could be vastly improved in their efficiency by taking cumbersome tasks and throwing computers at the problem, yet many of these departments still use technology that borders on stone age, like passing Excel documents
Re:Return on Investment (Score:4, Interesting)
you have communism where there's no incentive to do better because you don't get any more, so nothing gets done very well.
A common misconception. I once edited a business management book, and one of the case histories they gave was a Soviet factory. The Soviets started off with a 5-year-plan, and assigned quotas to different industries and different factories or farms. Suppose the factory was building window glass. The factory manager would bid on the amount of product that he wanted to manufacture that year. If he produced exactly that amount, he got a bonus (and so did the workers in the factory). If he produced more, they got less of a bonus, and if he produced less, they got no bonus at all. So the Soviet Union had a clever incentive system.
I'm not sure what went wrong in the Soviet Union, but I'm not sure it was Communism. When they converted from Communism to capitalism, things got *worse*. (The health care system collapsed, and life expectancy declined by about 10 years. Journalists get shot in the streets. Ethnic separatists set off bombs.) The Chinese continued with Communism, gave the factories more autonomy, and now they're the world's industrial engine (prosperous in the coastal regions, still impoverished in the rural regions).
The more I read the Wall Street Journal, the more I think this free market/socialist dichotomy is just an ideological battle by people who simply want to cut taxes for the rich. Well-run government agencies work very well. But if George W. Bush appoints one of his campaign contributors to run an agency, it will fail, just as GWB's businesses failed.
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Let me take your academic mind through this simply thought exercise.
"The Soviets started off with a 5-year-plan, and assigned quotas to different industries and different factories or farms"
And what happens if you didn't meet that quota? What happened if you didn't do what the government wanted? Yes... off to jail or worse.
The fundamental problem with communism was force. Only an academic could like communism treating people as little parts to be manipulated. And damn those little people for not wanting
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"Meanwhile, in order to get warm bodies into public schooling, the standards for certification just get lower and lower."
What reality do you live in? The standards for certification have increased. Massively. Ever heard of NCLB (No Child Left Behind)? If you have an advanced degree (or any degree for that matter) you are actually UNQUALIFIED to teach in public K-12 schools. The standards for teaching are far higher than most jobs. In my field, I need a degree to be hired. To teach in the schools, I n
Re:Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
Changing the start time has also been shown to increase scores dramatically. Best of all. It's "FREE". Instead of 7/8 - 3. Do 10-5.
Don't most studies show kids get into the most amount of trouble (sex, drugs, rock and roll) after school before parents are home?
Start them at 10. They'll sleep until class starts. Wake up, be awake in class and be home when their parents get home.
Re:Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we do that for corporate America, too?
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The cool thing about being an adult is that you have free will and are free to work the hours you want. Personally, I find a few hours during the afternoon and a few hours late in the evening work best for me, but you can go with what works best for you.
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So instead of getting into trouble in the afternoons, kids would get into trouble in the morning, and then skip school, too. I think we should just make the school day to 9-5, and use the extra time to add back the art, music, exercise, etc. that's been cut to make more time for test prep. Of course, that would cost real money, so it's not going to happen any time soon...
Re:Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of getting into trouble in the afternoons, kids would get into trouble in the morning,
Yeah, I remember waking up early all the time when I was in high school. Oh wait. No.. never.
I think we should just make the school day to 9-5, and use the extra time to add back the art, music, exercise, etc. that's been cut to make more time for test prep
Or even better, we could give kids free time so they can explore things they like rather than shoving things you like down their throats.
Re:Return on Investment (Score:4, Insightful)
You get plenty of free time after college.
Yeah, since your "childhood" is only ~1/4th of your life. Wasting that is no problem at all.
Yes, I'm still bitter I didn't stick with piano lessons.
I, on the other hand, am bitter than I wasted so much time in pointless classes when I could've been learning to program.
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They don't get up in the morning... that's the point.
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Australians do it that way, starting at 10 am, there was an article about half a year ago on mindhacks about the adolescent sleep behaviour, with a lot of useful details.
For the furniture problem ... well, we're talking amercan students, so you should use steel, lots of it.
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No we don't - at least not in the high school my daughter goes to, nor any of the other schools I've heard of.
(Nor, by the way, do schoolkids ride to school on kangaroos - I just thought I'd confirm that).
That said, the 10-5 regime sounds a really good idea - except for just one thing. They'd use that as an excuse to go to bed even later.
The problem seems to be the adolescent brain being determined to stay awake as long as possible, but the adolescent body needing sleep. Result - late to bed, real trouble g
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For single parents and families where both parents work, they will not be able to drive their kid to school anymore thus increasing the need for buses.
Are you kidding? How about these young people walk or ride the bicycle? Or are young people not fat enough?
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Seriously. If there is not already school bus service to your home, you most certainly do not need a ride from your parents.
Re:Return on Investment (Score:4, Insightful)
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Everyone I knew studied in their rooms- they were far more comfortable. The libraries were there for when they needed to look up references and to get large groups together. And with the internet the first became less useful.
Re:Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
You know the saying "People with kids can't have nice things"? Well, it's true. Keep them in the wood/metal/plastic chairs. Anything with padding is a waste of money.
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School chairs could be improved without getting "nice" chairs. For example, all of those one-piece desks would be infinitely more comfortable if they weren't one piece. Similarly, moving chairs slightly farther apart, and keeping chairs from squeaking.
The chairs at my college aren't particularly uncomfortable except for the problems I mentioned above, and they're all cheap wood and plastic.
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exactly, folks are asking for practical, not posh. A proper chair and a proper work area are different. The big problem is that classrooms were designed for half the students they have now and furniture shrunk to accommodate. Larger work surfaces wouldn't really cost more than what we got now... nice large tables and chairs that promote proper posture would work great.
I bet the school administrators, or even the lunch lady has better work areas than the students. That's the point really, if the equipment is
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The chairs attached to a small writing pad (like the one linked to) are just horrible for a lecture or class. You can fit no more than a small notebook on the surface: want to get out your other notebook, a handout, or your laptop, and take a look at both at the same time? Tough luck!
You think those are bad for most people? Try one if you're left-handed. I've been in rooms with desks like that bolted to the ground where it's about equally comfortable to use the "desk" attached to my chair as it is to use th
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I think improved furniture would be a boon, but not to the tune of this ridiculous shit at $600.
First there's price. Yes, a $50 chair of ergonomic contours and aesthetically pleasing lines and tone would be better than a $5 chair of plastic shit. Perhaps wood, polished, gently curved and indented such to offer support without pressure points-- even cushionless this can be done. As much as this sounds like some major research, it's not; the concepts are roughly well understood and something roughly mad
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As far as ROI goes, I think a better investment might be teachers, books, and paper.
Just sayin'
Yup. Currently the U.S. ranks 33rd in educational achievement:
http://www.geographic.org/country_ranks/educational_score_performance_country_ranks_2009_oecd.html [geographic.org]
I suspect it is not because the 32 nations above the U.S. have better chairs.
Cheap -- to Replace! (Score:5, Insightful)
Has the author ever looked at the typical school desk? Kids destroy these things--carve them up, knock them over, etc. Durability is worth something, but more importantly, this cheap furniture is cheap to replace. Lord knows it won't make it through more than a couple school seasons without taking a terrible beating. Expensive and comfortable stuff isn't likely to last very long, and is too costly to replace when the kids finally kill it.
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I say ditch the desk part altogether.
I learned more in collaborative discussions with my teachers and peers than I ever did by reading and taking notes.
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Math is the rare exception where for whatever reason the school system spends 10% of the time introducing the concepts and 90% of the time reinforcing them. It is one of the only subjects where I've seen students consistently get 100% - because there is only 1 right answer, the teacher can't judge with any kind of prejudice, and once you understand the concept the only thing to improve on is how long it takes you to do it.
I didn't collaboratively discuss my way through long div or trig - but it did help a l
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Then the solution is to make desks out of whatever they made them from in the 60's/70's... because the school desks I used back then were well nigh indestructible.
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It's called "wood". You get it by chopping up those big leafy things in forests... what are they called? Oh, "trees". Google has some pictures of them.
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Actually I think he may be talking about Bakelite or another substance similar to it.
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I learned about chopping trees in minecraft, try it! It's the closest thing to actually getting outside, or so they say.
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Here [max-secure.com] is some durable, school appropriate furniture.
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Fabulous. I love how a "feature" of each of their products is "attractive look". I have to disagree.
SURE! Why not?? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SURE! Why not?? (Score:4, Insightful)
When the summary said "For school districts with deep pockets..." it really meant "For school districts that are able to reach deeply into the pockets of the local property owners..."
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Because there's ample evidence that spending more money creates better results. That's why children are 3 times more educated than they were back in the 1950s.
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Where are you? It's hard to believe that any district would be able to call for 10% per year increases in this economy without there being some serious reasons behind it. I live in one of the most affluent counties in the US, and our school budget is frozen. Had there been freezes that they're trying to make up, or what?
The 'Right' Chair Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
'We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases,'
The 'right' chair is my desk chair at home. My productivity is always better when I'm working from home rather than being on-site at a client.
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I already told you, you can't telecommute!
Pointed-Haired Boss
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
$40 Price point ... for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you seen what kids are capable of doing to furniture?
It is hard enough to replace a $40 chair, and for $500 I can replace a dozen or so of the "elite" chairs. No thanks. It is simply amazing how easy it is to spend money, when it isn't yours.
And working in classrooms all day, I can tell you the chairs are the least of the distractions in the classroom.
I don't think so.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually when I was in school, I never found the seats to be a problem.
What I _did_ find to be an annoyance was being stuck in them for hours at a time. This was particularily bad in the earlier grades where you tended to stay in the same room.
Even today I have no problem working in the most uncomfortable chair as long as I can get up every half hour or so and stretch my legs.. even if it is just a quick walk around the building.
I think this should some how be adopted in schools. I don't know how the logistics would work as I remember just getting everyone back after recess was a chore.. but I think getting away from the desk, even temporarily, is going to do way more than some new fangled "node chair".
As a side thought: most uncomfortable chairs I find are the ones who either don't have a locking back, or have a back that can't quite be adjusted to the right angle (that is, you have a choice of 90 degree perfect right angle, or fully reclined).
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Grades 1 through 6 for me had 30 to 45 minute sessions throughout the day, and you almost always changed classrooms for each session (This room is the Math room, that room is the English room, that Room is the Music room) - so anytime you switched subjects you were basically switching rooms.
Ultimately, Junior high came around, and it was basically the same, except classes were 45 minutes to an hour ish, and you had lockers, and slightly more time in between classes. Then High school came around and it was a
balancing act (Score:2)
Think of the children (except when it's money) (Score:2)
If they care so much about the children then they should be pouring money into all aspects of education. They can't really afford more that $40?
I think they are pervs because they only think of the children in aspects of porn.
Chairs?? (Score:2)
How about
- Train and pay teachers (yes this is socialism)
- Gut "no child left behind"
Or.. yknow.. put the cheetos and mountain dew generation into Aerons, that will fix everything
fat kids (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny that I saw this article earlier today.
"CHILDREN have grown too big for their school chairs, a survey of 750 schools revealed.
Teachers said "desk and chair sizes were often inappropriate".
It is understood the NSW Education Department has been taking orders for custom-sized chairs.
Paediatric dietician Susie Burrell said children who were overweight often didn't carry obvious fat but instead looked older than their age."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/school-children-are-now-becoming-too-fat-to-fit-in-class-chairs/story-e6frf7l6-1225944436838 [heraldsun.com.au]
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Actually, this is a real problem at the college level too!
I was just recently reading the story of a gal who started college and was unable to fit in the desks provided in one of her classrooms. She was determined not to let that get in the way of earning a credit in the course, so she started sitting on the floor. Unfortunately, she was told she wasn't legally allowed to do that (fire hazard, in case people scramble for exits and trample you in the process, or you serve to block them from exiting safely
Re:fat kids (Score:4, Funny)
This is how it works, aim at the parents (Score:3)
So you tell the parents, "Your kids will be smarter if you use product X." Parents in the hyper competitive nature of schools today will do whatever it takes to make sure their child gets the $500 aeron chair. The parents will scrambled to pump as much money as they can into making sure their kid gets the advantage.
What do you think Apple is doing trying to get iPads into every classroom? Because Apple makes more money off of selling 10million iPads every year to schools, then it does when they buy books/pencils/paper.
Think of the children and your wallet will open up.
Kids like to stand (Score:5, Interesting)
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NY Times had a terrific article [nytimes.com] on this a while ago.
At last, a sensible education idea (Score:2)
We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases ... Is the same true for children?
- Jack Dennerlein, Harvard
This makes so much sense, if we attached fixtures to hold their arms in place, the kids would be unable to reach away from the desk, forcing them to focus on their work thus greatly increasing the efficiency of the education system. I want my tax dollars being spent on sensible projects that will help my kids to learn, and this one is a prime example - when you think about it, it has multifaceted benefits. For example, the kids would no longer be able to throw paper balls in
Not the problem. (Score:2)
No (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
Next question?
I'm sure... (Score:2)
that this is the difference between our public schools and those in countries that are eating our lunch in math and the sciences. "If only our kids had good chairs like the schools in Japan...." School should be about productivity but learning. As a kid, I could never sit still long enough to notice the fit of the chair anyway. This sounds like someone has some chairs to sell at a nice profit margin.
Regardless, I know there's a Steve Ballmer/chair joke to be made here but I can't seem to put it together
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Answer: Because there is more to education than the measures used to tell us that Japan and England keep kicking our butts. The reality is that there is education for education's sake and there is education for the real world. And Japan and England are failing miserably at the latter.
Real answer: Because Nobel prizes are given for past achievements and the median age of laureates is very high (over 60 I believe and rising). In other words you can have the shittiest K-12 education system in the world but if 50 years ago you had a monopoly on higher education (like say if the rest of the world was still rebuilding from having most of it's cities razed to the ground) than you'll still be getting a lot of nobel prizes.
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Follow the link to List of Nobel Laureates, and look at the individuals. Note how many of those "American" Nobel prize winners were of foreign nationality and moved to the US as adults.
What we have is money.
get rid of the chairs and desks entirely (Score:3, Insightful)
Dubious (Score:2)
A $600 plastic chair huh? (Score:2)
Oxymoron (Score:2)
Isn't that an oxymoron? Either that or I'm being too US centric...
I thought all of the fat kids lived in America (Score:2)
Wait, I thought child obesity was only a problem in America! There are fat kids in the rest of the world too!?
Riiiiiiight (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah. Most of my career my butt has been parked in whatever aging POS I could scrounge that wouldn't fall apart.
Insofar as I do have a nice new chair now (my first), may I observe that those who DO have $700 Aeron chairs do so because they are creating wealth, not just absorbing material. (Those unclear on rules of logic are reminded that the last sentence does not mean those who do not have an expensive chair are not creating wealth.) One EARNS comfort as a matter of surplus, it is not "deserved" by simple existence and presence. The expensive chair sat upon is a consequence of productivity, not a primary means thereto.
The "to improve education, throw more money at it" crowd fails to realize that by far the biggest factor in education is the student's own willingness to learn. If they don't want to be there, students will squirm just as much in an expensive chair as a cheap one, and get just as little out of the experience.
Let's start with bad ideas first: (Score:3, Informative)
For a classroom, here's things we can't have:
Wheels that enable the desk to slide --- Two words: Bumper Cars
Swivel seats --- Because it's just an excuse to fidget
****Better yet... NO MOVING PARTS****
Required specialist maintenance --- Because it won't be provided
Real, non-particle board wood --- It's too expensive and warps.
Any plastic aside from the seat and the chair back --- They're too easily carved, melted, bent, broken, etc.
Arms/Wings --- Because they're always too sharp and not good for fat kids
The chair presented in the article is a triumph of design, but it won't work for anyone with any internal child. Yes, that means college students down to kindergartners. It's a Ferrari of desks when schools (ALL schools) look for steel-block engine trucks that require little maintenance beyond a wash and an oil from time to time.
They should have designed around the restrictions of the user instead of trying to redefine the user with design.
Exercise Ball (Score:3, Interesting)
My kid's class has a half dozen of those big exercise balls. For the more fidgety kids, sitting on the ball at their desk allows them a little wiggle so they can let their minds do what they want. Nobody falls down, and not every kid benefits from the "ball-chair", but it helps certain kids a LOT.
Face it: most office chairs allow at least a rotation axis. If your desk chair didn't rotate a little you'd spend a LOT of time fighting the chair. By allowing a little freedom of movement, you can work with the tool and not against it.
Hell, yes (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, maybe not these overpriced toys. But a rather large number of the chairs I was stuck with in primary and secondary school had a molded and textured plastic seat and back with large metal rivets holding the back and seat to a metal frame. Never mind the ordinary discomfort of such an apparatus. Consider what happens when cloth moves against plastic... you get a static charge. Guess where that discharges? Right through the metal rivets. So in dry weather, sitting in such a chair meant constantly getting shocked in the back, legs, and butt. Real conducive to learning, that.
Here [worthingtondirect.com] is one incarnation of said torture device.
Oh yes, it must be the chairs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seat with a small desk attached to it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, it is.
When I was in elementary school, we had these. We started out with openable desks that you could put your stuff in, you could get comfortable, arrange your chair however you wanted. It was nice, there was no left or right handed distinction. They were always right in front of you.
As I moved through the grades, my left-handed self was forced to use right-handed desks, which caused cramps and gave me a 'hunch.' There was no storage on or under the desk. There was no getting comfortable. Just 3 hour stretches of nothing but discomfort. If you were tall or fat, you'd be uncomfortable all day long.