I don't see how individualized likert scales for your children is going to be any better than having open conversations about what those scales are there to represent about the lives of said...
I don't see how individualized likert scales for your children is going to be any better than having open conversations about what those scales are there to represent about the lives of said children. Having a conversation with the class about how sleep can affect mood and encouraging the students to track their own sleep if they are having issues seem to me like it would accomplish the same thing without putting a burden on the children. Making it a part of schoolwork seems exceptionally risky, as school is an institution which is supposed to be trustworthy. Outsourcing data collection to another company will only erode trust in an institution and asking children to be collecting this kind of information about themselves before they can fully understand the implications of that data collection and sharing will erode trust, as the article states, may not be 'an ideal approach when it comes to children’s well-being.'
This makes me think about my own childhood, and going through therapy and talking with a psychiatrist and how my own mental health was evaluated and reviewed. While I believe everyone involved truly wished for me to exist in a happier and healthier state, the perverse incentives of the various actors did nothing but sabotage all efforts and make me lose trust in all individuals of power (parents, psychiatrist, school, etc.). The psychiatrist was mostly concerned with getting me on a specific regimen of drugs, driven by pharmaceutical system or a simple lack of time (not a therapist, mind you) to engage with me. He was also taught by the system to listen to my parents and my teachers and not me, and seemed to ignore the fact that I was not tolerating any of the drugs prescribed and would simply switch me to another similar drug for which I had the same intolerance. My parents were concerned about how I was acting up in school, and as working professionals who perhaps were a bit too invested in their own professional lives were more interested in solving the symptoms than the problem itself. Thus they did not care that I did not tolerate the drugs and forced me to take them (well, they tried, at least) because they assumed it would solve the school problems. The school seemed to be mostly concerned with ensuring that the right paperwork was done - that I was sent to the appropriate individuals so that they could take appropriate action against me if I was causing trouble in the system. The only person who seemed to care about solving the root cause of the issue was myself. I worry that a system based around these metrics of happiness, sleep quality, physical exercise, etc. will fall prey to the same issue. Much like how schools in the US often teach in order to get better test scores rather than to teach their children, quantifying metrics of health might lead the Danish public education system to push children into simply reporting higher scores by whatever means necessary to avoid unwanted attention.
Good point re: trust and authority. When I was suffering from depression in middle school, I apparently wrote a disturbing poem which my teacher shared with the school social worker, who then...
Good point re: trust and authority. When I was suffering from depression in middle school, I apparently wrote a disturbing poem which my teacher shared with the school social worker, who then asked to see me. It felt like a therapy session, but I knew it was an evaluation. There was a lack of transparency—what did they want to evaluate of me? What were they going to do with that assessment?—that made me distrustful of the system.
I do think that vulnerable children do need safe spaces and figures they can take refuge in and engage with on their on terms, without any opaque machinations.
On the flip side, excellent individualized mental healthcare is both very expensive and has virtually zero scalability. Given the modern explosion in mental illness cases, it may be a necessary stopgap measure to leverage technology to assist in tracking students' mental health and identifying which ones need more help than others.
Ideally it wouldn't be necessary, but with classroom sizes where they are, these kind of tools are necessary to get answers while also completing the yearly curriculum. I don't like them either,...
Ideally it wouldn't be necessary, but with classroom sizes where they are, these kind of tools are necessary to get answers while also completing the yearly curriculum.
I don't like them either, and they would not be necessary if classes were like 10-15 kids max, and surely, there are ways around them, especially if those ways include teachers spending more time with kids when they aren't teaching them new material. I think there's absolutely a valid argument to be made that we need less technology here, not more. More teachers would help for sure. Overreliance on these tools will surely make the entire system worse.
At the same time, I'm just not seeing the investments into education that are needed to accomplish this. I think there's value in those tools, and would not universally call them bad. Just like in your personal history, the tool cannot be a replacement for actual human contact. I wonder if they use this for older kids as well, because I imagine that the reporting becomes a lot more inaccurate as the kids age into teenagers, who surely are going not going to be interested in "properly" participating, and rather like you say, in being left alone.
Right, to be clear I'm not saying they're universally bad. I think I was trying to focus on the ways in which they can be misused, or where it might be troublesome to implement them. There's a...
I think there's value in those tools, and would not universally call them bad
Right, to be clear I'm not saying they're universally bad. I think I was trying to focus on the ways in which they can be misused, or where it might be troublesome to implement them. There's a serious issue with quantifying and measuring things, especially in spaces where we want to measure people's output or input. What ends up happening most of the time, is that people find ways to get out of the system. The unhealthy focus on test scores in America and our troubled history with attempting to "standardize" education I think are front of mind when I read this article. I just don't see a lot of benefit out of a program like this whereas I see a lot of potential for abuse as the world gets hungrier for data and we don't have a good grasp on how constantly measuring someone's mood through an institution might affect the way they perceive both the institution and others throughout the rest of their life. It sounds incredibly intrusive to me and I worry it might breed trust issues and resentment in these children in a way that's incredibly hard to undo.
I don't see how individualized likert scales for your children is going to be any better than having open conversations about what those scales are there to represent about the lives of said children. Having a conversation with the class about how sleep can affect mood and encouraging the students to track their own sleep if they are having issues seem to me like it would accomplish the same thing without putting a burden on the children. Making it a part of schoolwork seems exceptionally risky, as school is an institution which is supposed to be trustworthy. Outsourcing data collection to another company will only erode trust in an institution and asking children to be collecting this kind of information about themselves before they can fully understand the implications of that data collection and sharing will erode trust, as the article states, may not be 'an ideal approach when it comes to children’s well-being.'
This makes me think about my own childhood, and going through therapy and talking with a psychiatrist and how my own mental health was evaluated and reviewed. While I believe everyone involved truly wished for me to exist in a happier and healthier state, the perverse incentives of the various actors did nothing but sabotage all efforts and make me lose trust in all individuals of power (parents, psychiatrist, school, etc.). The psychiatrist was mostly concerned with getting me on a specific regimen of drugs, driven by pharmaceutical system or a simple lack of time (not a therapist, mind you) to engage with me. He was also taught by the system to listen to my parents and my teachers and not me, and seemed to ignore the fact that I was not tolerating any of the drugs prescribed and would simply switch me to another similar drug for which I had the same intolerance. My parents were concerned about how I was acting up in school, and as working professionals who perhaps were a bit too invested in their own professional lives were more interested in solving the symptoms than the problem itself. Thus they did not care that I did not tolerate the drugs and forced me to take them (well, they tried, at least) because they assumed it would solve the school problems. The school seemed to be mostly concerned with ensuring that the right paperwork was done - that I was sent to the appropriate individuals so that they could take appropriate action against me if I was causing trouble in the system. The only person who seemed to care about solving the root cause of the issue was myself. I worry that a system based around these metrics of happiness, sleep quality, physical exercise, etc. will fall prey to the same issue. Much like how schools in the US often teach in order to get better test scores rather than to teach their children, quantifying metrics of health might lead the Danish public education system to push children into simply reporting higher scores by whatever means necessary to avoid unwanted attention.
Good point re: trust and authority. When I was suffering from depression in middle school, I apparently wrote a disturbing poem which my teacher shared with the school social worker, who then asked to see me. It felt like a therapy session, but I knew it was an evaluation. There was a lack of transparency—what did they want to evaluate of me? What were they going to do with that assessment?—that made me distrustful of the system.
I do think that vulnerable children do need safe spaces and figures they can take refuge in and engage with on their on terms, without any opaque machinations.
On the flip side, excellent individualized mental healthcare is both very expensive and has virtually zero scalability. Given the modern explosion in mental illness cases, it may be a necessary stopgap measure to leverage technology to assist in tracking students' mental health and identifying which ones need more help than others.
Ideally it wouldn't be necessary, but with classroom sizes where they are, these kind of tools are necessary to get answers while also completing the yearly curriculum.
I don't like them either, and they would not be necessary if classes were like 10-15 kids max, and surely, there are ways around them, especially if those ways include teachers spending more time with kids when they aren't teaching them new material. I think there's absolutely a valid argument to be made that we need less technology here, not more. More teachers would help for sure. Overreliance on these tools will surely make the entire system worse.
At the same time, I'm just not seeing the investments into education that are needed to accomplish this. I think there's value in those tools, and would not universally call them bad. Just like in your personal history, the tool cannot be a replacement for actual human contact. I wonder if they use this for older kids as well, because I imagine that the reporting becomes a lot more inaccurate as the kids age into teenagers, who surely are going not going to be interested in "properly" participating, and rather like you say, in being left alone.
Right, to be clear I'm not saying they're universally bad. I think I was trying to focus on the ways in which they can be misused, or where it might be troublesome to implement them. There's a serious issue with quantifying and measuring things, especially in spaces where we want to measure people's output or input. What ends up happening most of the time, is that people find ways to get out of the system. The unhealthy focus on test scores in America and our troubled history with attempting to "standardize" education I think are front of mind when I read this article. I just don't see a lot of benefit out of a program like this whereas I see a lot of potential for abuse as the world gets hungrier for data and we don't have a good grasp on how constantly measuring someone's mood through an institution might affect the way they perceive both the institution and others throughout the rest of their life. It sounds incredibly intrusive to me and I worry it might breed trust issues and resentment in these children in a way that's incredibly hard to undo.