Me too, man
-
But we don’t have a society where it’s safe to let teens run around by themselves,
Really? By all accounts it is safer now than ever AND has tracking if you want. Add to that the fact that every teen I know left to their own devices would not bother running around anyways. They would stay at their computer/tablet/phone as long as they could.
Oh? What's your source for that claim?
The US population in 2014 was 318.3M. In that year, 186 amber alerts for children were issued. Last year (2024), the population was 340.11M, and there were 188 alerts. That's almost unchanged (0.56/0.58) in the past decade. In 2011, there were onu 158 alerts in 311.56M people, lower than today (0.51) (amberalert). There have been years where there were more, and years when there were less; 2006 was pretty bad (0.87).
I can't get reliable statistics from 1880, when 72% of the population lived in rural communities. The population flipped from predominantly rural to urban in 1920 (1910: 54% rural; 49% rural in 1920, c.f https://www.seniorliving.org/ has a handy yearly breakdown), but the next best thing is to count alerts per million by demographic, and the metrics don't break it down like that, unless you count % alerts by state, and measure the population in each state and the rural/urban breakdown. I'm not sure that'd be valid for extrapolating back into history to estimate how much safer children might have been from strangers in 1900. Anyway, amber alerts don't tell us anything about stranger danger, since abductions are as likely to be by family members as not.
The point is, from amber alerts alone, 2011 was safer than 2024. The alerts/pop/year are all over the place, and claiming that it's safer than it ever has been is wild, and I'd like to see some substantiation before I swallow that - even if we count only recent history for which we have reliable metrics, which is necessarily going to exclude anything earlier than, say, 1950.
-
Oh? What's your source for that claim?
The US population in 2014 was 318.3M. In that year, 186 amber alerts for children were issued. Last year (2024), the population was 340.11M, and there were 188 alerts. That's almost unchanged (0.56/0.58) in the past decade. In 2011, there were onu 158 alerts in 311.56M people, lower than today (0.51) (amberalert). There have been years where there were more, and years when there were less; 2006 was pretty bad (0.87).
I can't get reliable statistics from 1880, when 72% of the population lived in rural communities. The population flipped from predominantly rural to urban in 1920 (1910: 54% rural; 49% rural in 1920, c.f https://www.seniorliving.org/ has a handy yearly breakdown), but the next best thing is to count alerts per million by demographic, and the metrics don't break it down like that, unless you count % alerts by state, and measure the population in each state and the rural/urban breakdown. I'm not sure that'd be valid for extrapolating back into history to estimate how much safer children might have been from strangers in 1900. Anyway, amber alerts don't tell us anything about stranger danger, since abductions are as likely to be by family members as not.
The point is, from amber alerts alone, 2011 was safer than 2024. The alerts/pop/year are all over the place, and claiming that it's safer than it ever has been is wild, and I'd like to see some substantiation before I swallow that - even if we count only recent history for which we have reliable metrics, which is necessarily going to exclude anything earlier than, say, 1950.
abductions are as likely to be by family members as not.
So if it is family members, it really doesn't matter if they are out and about does it?
Can we take a minute to say how something is very fucked up in Texas? People have talked about his before here. Texas is a fucked up state for children. 54 Amber alerts in Texas in 2024. California, Ohio, and North Carolina have the bulk of the rest, but they are like 15 and 16, not 54!
Remember I said Teens. So looking at Amber alerts as a statistic: the VAST bulk of the kids are 0 - 6 years old. For teens (ages 15-17+) there were only 12.
So have you compared the teen rate over time?
-
One reason for the early starts for high schools is that by staggering the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary school, school districts can use fewer buses and fewer drivers. If all the schools started at the same (more reasonable) time, you'd need three times as many buses and drivers and each driver would only get one or two hours a day (and thus would find something else to do, making the existing shortage of drivers even worse). The district I drive for has a transportation budget of about $3 million a year - we would not be able to afford $9 million a year and still afford our administrators' enormous salaries.
If you just started all schools later by an hour, the elementary school kids would start at 9:30 AM which would not work out very well, either.
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don't need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
-
They don't need to push everyone later, they just need to start the younger kids early, and the older kids later, which is the opposite of what most districts do now. Pre-teens have no problem getting up at 6AM.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Parents fight that because then they can't have the older kids take care of the younger kids when they get home from school.
-
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don't need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
Not sure which ones you're talking about, but in Hong Kong, schoolchildren just walk to school. There's usually a school attached to each housing estate.
-
Many African American slaves did not know they were slaves until about age 6, because they were not given work when too young to be useful. Sounds familiar...
Going to school is not comparable to literal slavery
-
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don't need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
With trains all you have to do is add an extra passenger car or two for the peak times and keep the number of trains running the same. You could also increase frequency during peak times if you have the track, train and driver availability to do that
-
This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Started 7:15, lived an hour by bus away so I woke up at 5:10. Bus was at 5:36. That was some uphill both ways shit for me. We did have weekly intermittent afternoon and morning schedules though. So one week we'd start at 7:15 and one week it started at like 2PM. Afternoon weeks were nice when I'd come home at like 9 or 10PM.
-
Generally, I don't think that applies to high schoolers. They can manage themselves in the morning. We should have their school start last
America also has some deep structural issues that children aren't able to get to school by themselves. In Japan, grade school children are able to get to and from school by themselves in most of the country. In America, parents aren't allowed to leave children unattended, and certainly aren't allowed to let them go to school alone
Yea missed the part about high school but those time schedules pretty much sum up my primary school times as well, hence why the reply. high school is a bit of a grey area depending on the country, I agree.
-
Schools - and some businesses - see getting up early as some kind of achievement, a trait to be proud of. A thought that was mirrored in the influencer scene with the insane 'grindset' videos. Get up early and get done more than the others... Completely ignoring that the amount of sleep we need doesn't change with how early you get up.
Some people get up early and have no problem with that, but that's not the case for everyone. In the dawn of time, it was better to have some people who get up early and some who prefer to stay up late: that way the tribe was better protected because the time where everyone was sleeping was minimized.
Now everyone who biologically tends to be more productive when they can work late and get up late is painted as lazy and forced to work against their inner clock.
At one workplace we had 2 sysadmins, one who takes sleeping pills at 7, is up at 5am and would make sure everything is up and running before anyone has even thought about going into the office, and another who stays up late and sleeps in. The end result was really good out of hours coverage for emergencies.
-
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don't need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
I think los angeles does this too, now.
-
Schools near me have shifted high school start times to later. Its been that was for years now.
It is really weird to see it in mainstream news now, and even RFK is for it (that fucking weirdo).
I thought letting teens sleep in late was blue state woke and would never be nationwide.
Fox news found a Hypnotist that said teens should sleep later. A hypnotist... really fox? Even when they are right they are still stupid fucks.
Fox news found a Hypnotist that said teens should sleep later
Probably just the only "expert" in their rollodex who answered and said they were available
-
Started 7:15, lived an hour by bus away so I woke up at 5:10. Bus was at 5:36. That was some uphill both ways shit for me. We did have weekly intermittent afternoon and morning schedules though. So one week we'd start at 7:15 and one week it started at like 2PM. Afternoon weeks were nice when I'd come home at like 9 or 10PM.
Sounds like that would make it impossible to maintain a consistent sleep schedule, which is also helpful.
-
With trains all you have to do is add an extra passenger car or two for the peak times and keep the number of trains running the same. You could also increase frequency during peak times if you have the track, train and driver availability to do that
I dunno, that sounds like socialism.
Good thing we were saved from the horrors of broadly accessible and efficient mass transit decades ago.
-
And god forbid your circadian rhythm doesn't align and you fall asleep in class.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
I had a friend trauma & sleep psychology profesor visiting; she said improvement of school performance with better scheduling was proven in few real life (cross-sectional?) studies.
-
I dunno, that sounds like socialism.
Good thing we were saved from the horrors of broadly accessible and efficient mass transit decades ago.
Could you imagine how dangerous mass transit would be if it was full of middle schoolers, calling out your biggest insecurities, while you’re just trying to get to work? John Mulaney educated us on the danger of them years ago.
-
This post did not contain any content.
the timings for school and its length were not dictated by health needs nor education needs.
it was chosen to match parents work schedule, and to aclimatize children to factory work.
so its not out of ignorance of the childs well-being, but indifference to it
-
I think los angeles does this too, now.
You get a free pass as a student, but public transport in most of LA still requires a (relatively) long walk. Depending on where you live, might be a deal breaker.
It is much cleaner/safer than most people think though.
-
Not sure which ones you're talking about, but in Hong Kong, schoolchildren just walk to school. There's usually a school attached to each housing estate.
Japan, Korea, mainland China
-
You get a free pass as a student, but public transport in most of LA still requires a (relatively) long walk. Depending on where you live, might be a deal breaker.
It is much cleaner/safer than most people think though.
long walk
Really? Not my experience.
