Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penalizing-boys-for-not-being-able-to-sit-still-at-school/276976/ <comment><USER2> School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren't aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning/work into a day at school. Kids just don't have the attention span. College isn't taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can't handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can?

I think the reason, is that we're always behind other countries trying to "catch up"\--50 years ago it was the Soviets, 20 years ago the Japanese, now it's the "global workforce".

In our frantic rush to compete with everyone else we end up forcing an overambitious curriculum on kids. How much time can kids really spend learning everyday? A few hours at the most?

I have a friend who teaches 1st grade, she knows kids at that age can't spend time on focused learning for more than 20 or 30 minutes, but the school districts forces here to teach in 1 to 2 hour blocks and spend almost 6 hours out of the day instructing

(they get 15 minutes, no more, of recess; 30 minutes lunch, many times in silence because the lunchroom gets too loud; and on some days 45 minutes of focused PE).

What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day?

<comment><USER3> Historically many, many children have sat still at school and behaved themselves.

That doesn't mean that others should be stigmatized, but it's not like this is impossible and unprecedented.

<comment><USER2> First, historically mass education of the type we now employ is only about a century old, and designed to produce factory workers not to promote creativity. Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of primary importance to a factory worker.

Second, much of this is unprecedented. When my parents were children, they didn't attend Kindergarten, and first grade was a half day. When my parents younger siblings were children, Kindergarten was a half day. When I was a child, I didn't attend preschool.

In 3 generations we've added more than 2 years of education for every child, and that education is qualitatively quite different, even from what I experienced (Kindergarten 23 years ago)

When I was in kindergarten the majority of the day was playtime, we had 30 minutes of recess, 45 minutes of mostly freeform PE, 30 minutes of naptime, and a few hours of structured playtime (drawing, making crafts etc...).

From friends of mine who are teachers, since no child left behind, all of that has been removed or severely restricted. Recess is now 15 minutes, PE is more structured and not every day, no more naptime, and they don't have time for freeform activities because the curriculum is so dense.

In Kindergarten we spent almost the whole year learning the Alphabet. Now the curriculum assumes that children already know it.

Teachers know this doesn't work, but schools are obsessed with testing and metrics to the determinant of real education.

<comment><USER4> > _First, historically mass education of the type we now employ is only about > a century old, and designed to produce factory workers not to promote > creativity. Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of > primary importance to a factory worker._

Actually it is the inverse. The higher classes (from rich upper class families to wealthy lawyers, doctors, scientists etc) were those that sat down and studied without much fuss, in quite demanding schools. Those classes had a high respect for education, and very demanding curriculums.

It's the working classes (factory workers then, office drones to McDonald burger flippers now) that did and still get by with laxer schooling, less "boring stuff", and more "creativity".

Most of the factory workers in days past didn't even get to go to school, or stopped very early. That they learned "to handle monotonous labour" and "obey orders" at school is a myth. They learned it by necessity at the factory. It was either that or not getting to eat at all.

<comment><USER5> > that did and still get by with laxer schooling, less "boring stuff", and > more "creativity".

Creativity is inherently good. It's literally what brought us from the plains fighting large animals to making monolithic structures that battle the elements. We can harness the power of the electron to post, critique and posture ideas in nanoseconds because of _extremely_ creative people. The "boring" stuff matters just as much as the "non-boring" stuff. What kills me is that the STEM and liberal arts side of the education debate are arguing from extremes - and both sides sound like morons when it comes to creativity. Creativity is harnessed by two things: a wealth of experience and knowledge (ie learning Calculus is good, just like skipping rocks on the river), and treating idea generation like play and not like work. Obviously it's a little bit more nuanced than that, but that's the distillation and the point remains. The boring stuff matters. The non-boring stuff matters. Everything is relevant and we should be creating a culture of education that not only understands that, but actually does something about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a H.S. teacher admit to my mother that she was grading me on a scale that included how "distracted" I was by my girlfriend in the class. Little did she know that we had broken up months prior, and every guy in the class was probably distracted by her at some point.

I had a second teacher that was giving myself and my friends lower grades in computer class, because we were "goofing off" \-- making websites, chat portals, playing with VB, etc. After completing our weekly assignments in the first day of the week, we were applying ourselves to higher levels of computing, which she equated to us not doing our work; in reality, she had no idea what we were actually doing or what a computer could be made to do that wasn't outlined in her spiral-bound curriculum. Let's take it out on these meddling kids!

<comment><USER7> That reminds me of the time my History teacher called up my mom when I was in 9th grade.

Teacher: Yes, hi. Your son isn't taking notes in class, even though he is required to.

Mom: Well, what did he get on his midterm?

Teacher: 100

Mom: :| Goodbye.

<comment><USER6> My parents were rather "amused" that I could almost be failing a class that taught you how to Open a document, bold text, and save, while at the same time as having self-made business cards and brochures and revenue from teaching Office '97 to professional folk and another service of building corporate web- portals.

My HS was really progressive, as the other 5 in town barely offered a typing class, and it's only gotten better for my school -- a Charter school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although I was a generally calm student (I am introverted and not into causing mayhem or attracting attention), I never copied from the blackboard, don't did my homework, slept during classes, or instead kept drawing, or later writing ASM code or toying with physics formulas, or I just outright spent my time chatting about video games with whoever was nearby.

Every time I had a new teacher, my parents were called into the school, and warned that I had some sort of problem (and my parents went into full denial hell not of course my child is not crazy... later I found out I DO probably have Aspergers, seemly inherited from the father of my mother), my parents reply were: "Alright, wait until the tests, and if he fails, THEN you can call us."

Unfortunately to those teachers, and me, I did not failed... Meaning I had to endure them, and they had to endure me. Specially because I completely ignored their lessons, and in the time of the tests I answered correctly but in my own way, this was specially bad related to hard sciences because I would use formulas I invented on the spot, and I wrote in totally random patterns, forcing teachers to spend LOOOOOONG time to figure what I did, also my calligraphy is horrible, thus all my teachers hated reading my tests, yet they could not just zero them, because I always passed, so if they did that, they knew I would send the test to their superior and would get them punished.

So yes, I can totally relate to the article.

Also I STILL don't sit still, right now as I type I am vibrating one of my legs. (I guess this is a way to keep energy burning considering I stay sitting the entire day).

<comment><USER9> Ah, to have grown up in an education system where homework and in-class participation aren't counted as some huge part of the grade!

<comment><USER8> class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply.

Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I always replied, even while half-asleep, I quickly attracted negative attention, I was frequently involved in fights I did not started with the less performing boys... also girls sometimes pulled some horrible stuff, like spreading rumors or attempt to frame me)

<comment><USER10> Feels for you, bro.

I don't know if Brazilian education has improved since Feynman wrote this: [http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education](http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman- brazil-education)

I suspect not by much.

<comment><USER8> Regarding the "test" mentioned there and it being self-perpetuating.

Brazil during the cold war, caught the propaganda of sorts that anyone to have success needed to have a degree, the country needed to go from almost none degrees to everyone have degrees.

The result was a severe lack of universities, so the government started to build them like if there was no tomorrow (and they are STILL not enough for the demand), and made into law a thing called "vestibular" that is a entry test that you take to join university.

The test subject is whatever the government ministry of education decided that schools must have as curriculum, thus the test asks questions regarding everything you learn in school from 3 to 18 years old of your life, and since it tests for everything and is applied to ANY course, the government mandatory curriculum has anything a university student might need, thus we have a curriculum that is so ridiculously big, that is impossible to teach it entirely.

Because here getting the students of your school into a federal university (here they are almost on US ivy league level) or to certain state universities (those have several courses listed alongside ivy league and Oxford on best courses list) is highly prestigious, and the only way to get in is passing the stupid test, the high schools developed a system that they teach you how to pass the test, literally, your final tests on the schools many times are directly copied from previous years vestibular tests, and students on those schools know how to pass the test, and only that.

Since here in Brazil university-level education is mandatory to be a teacher, only those that passed the tests, and teach new people how to pass the tests, making things worse.

Also, here in Brazil homeschooling is a crime (yes, they ARREST you for attempting to homeschool your kids), and joining university without a normal schooling is not allowed, you can be sure 99% of university students passed by this system (the other 1% are dropouts that later did a high school conclusion test sponsored by the government).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any private all-boys[1] schools that embrace this side of childhood? Look at tiger cubs and what not: they play, they bounce around, they fight, they figure out the world around them through investigation and exploration.

I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege.

My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology _and_ the outdoors.

Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons.

Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside.

[1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate _some_ young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?

<comment><USER12> I don't know about schools, but the kindergarten that I went to was a "nature"-kindergarten, where we were out in the forest 80% of the day, no matter if it rained or snowed.

I must have catched a whole forest of insects, and investigated them.

It is very popular in Denmark, and I love the forest and the outdoor because of it, especially the different seasons and their impact on nature.

<comment><USER13> That sounds _amazing_. Google suggests "Waldkindergarten", at least as a name for the general category. Is that correct? Maybe just in Germany?

Edit: that wikipedia article is maybe the worst thing ever. Learning to be comfortable in a natural environment, more free-form play, these are good things in an of themselves. I don't understand why people need to fall back on crackpot theories to justify a program like this.

<comment><USER12> In Denmark it is named "Skovbørnehave" which translates to "Forest kindergarten".

I am actually a bit surprised that it worked, because we ran around without much supervision, but we knew exactly where we were allowed to be, and when we were too far away from the group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a long-time teacher in multiple countries, I've also had this concern. I realize it's a fairly heretical belief to hold on this site but I think boys are systematically discriminated against in most western societies.

As a child that teachers (nearly all women) tended to be biased against boys and downright dismissive of male dominated interests such as science fiction, video games or arm-wrestling. Talking with students in recent years, I get the impression that my teachers were actually _more_ tolerant of boys than most current K12 teachers are. Invariably boys get punished more severely for similar infractions, boys are more likely to be forced onto medication and more likely to receive "tough love" in the face of academic difficulties.

Compounding this is that even in this day and age when there's nearly a 3-2 ratio of females to males in college, it's the boys who get fewer grants, fewer sex-specific support organizations and less support in general. This chasm continues, even for mid-career adults. Many organizations provide women with free training in various fields, including tech (see Railsbridge, Women Who Code, etc) and allow men only as guests of women at all. In fact the _amazingly_ good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women.

Things probably still seem okay at this point due to the fact that the trends have gradually been getting more extreme and the educational imbalances weren't so bad 15-30 years ago, when much of the workforce was in formal schooling. But the swelling ranks of disenfranchised young men is a demographic that isn't going to be good news for anyone, including women.

<comment><USER15> > In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more > than women.

Is that even legal?

<comment><USER14> It's de-facto legal at the very least. AFIK all the schools do that. Actually, it looks like mine just gives $1k off for women and certain minorities. There were several students I talked to who paid 2k less than me, but I'm not sure what the reason was. The tuition price doesn't appear to have been consistent in the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was one of the calm and orderly boys in school. However, this was because merely being at school where I didn't want to be made me mostly lethargic. I didn't have any energy left to make a scene as I was busy counting hours until the day ended. To be precise, since the first week of the first grade I practically counted days till the end of high school when I knew this suffering would end.

I did get good grades not because I was interested but because school was way too easy. I never even studied for exams except the last evening before, and that was mostly glancing at the books, yet I was always among the handful of best in the classroom. That is, until teenage when I realize I don't need _all this_ bullshit and deliberately began to focus only on the few interesting subjects the school had to offer, and defocus on everything else. Didn't do too bad even after that.

I still think it was such a waste of years, and I'm trying to imagine a better way to waste it. I can come up with lots of ideas but very few of them would fit all people. I would've enjoyed a more fast-paced and in-depth classes of my favorite topic at the expense of the subjects I wasn't interested. I think different people ultimately need different kind of environment to be taught in, and I think that the current homogeneous standard schooling is likely to kill more of natural curiosity than sow it. I don't think any standard schooling works for all, unless it's so reduced down to the very, very basics (reading, writing, basic arithmetics) that everyone absolutely needs and which they can build on top of.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like this article. It looks at a severe problem (that traditional education is only reaching a small fraction of the students 'smart' enough to excel) and it suggests both a new way at looking at the problem (at least one I hadn't considered), and an approach to improvement that can be taken iteratively, without a sweeping change or expensive program.

</comment><comment><USER18> At least one of my three boys would have an incredibly hard time with this. He's definitely "aspie" in a lot of respects.

The decision to home educate our 4 children is hands down the best decision we've ever made. Highly recommend it, if you are able to pull it off logistically. Very rewarding experience so far.

<comment><USER19> I just want to say that you might want to consider public high school. There's a lot of social development going on there, even if most people come out of the entire system bitter.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. In college, the kids who were home educated before just seem . . . off. And I say that as a slightly off person myself.

<comment><USER21> > In college, the kids who were home educated before just seem . . . off

This particular bias is probably why the normal people in college who were home-schooled didn't volunteer that information to you.

<comment><USER22> It's also a result. Normal people don't volunteer that they were home- schooled, the strange ones do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Public school is essentially an obedience camp. Is it any wonder boys are lagging?

<comment><USER24> Are you arguing that boys are intrinsically badly suited to a highly regulated environment that expects them to do exactly as they are told as soon as they are told? You should tell the army.

<comment><USER25> why do you think the armies around the world have to threaten recruits with corporal punishment, prison, and even execution when they don't follow orders?

<comment><USER26> Do American football programs have to do the same thing?

<comment><USER27> Is this rhetorical? Of course they do. They're legendary and/or infamous for imposing extreme physical hardship as hazing to get kids to fall in line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One of the things they used to do for this at my school (in another country) was to have 50 minutes of compulsory physical activity or drills in the morning, at least three out of five days. (This was excluding separate gym/physical training classes.)

I feel like this could go a long way into giving boys an outlet for their physical energy. I definitely know that even as one of the most talkative and fidgety kids in class, I used to fidget a lot less if I had returned from a bout of running or whatever.

Also, I am somewhat acquainted with some of the teachers in the US school system, and have found their knowledge about the subjects they are supposed to be teaching (specially science) to be severely subpar. Kids can often perceive this very accurately, and will respect a teacher less if he or she seems to be unsure or vague regarding what they are teaching.

</comment><comment><USER29> One of the guiding objectives of the current cohort of education thought leaders is to focus on girls. So, we're focusing on girls. Boys, time for your pills.

My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools.

<comment><AUTHOR> _My personal goal is to figure out how to make enough money to keep my children out of the insanity of public schools._

It doesn't necessarily take a lot of money to homeschool children. (Been there, still doing that.) It does take agreement among the parents about what lifestyle adjustments each parent is willing to make so that children have flexibility in their learning. My oldest son, now a programmer working for a startup, sent me a very touching email for Father's Day in which he attributed some of his success so far in the business world to having been homeschooled rather than being put in public school. "That has made it very easy for me to step into a leadership position and feel very comfortable in positions of responsibility" is part of what he wrote.

Finding truly excellent third-party educational materials and programs can be inexpensive

[http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm](http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm)

or expensive,

[http://ohs.stanford.edu/](http://ohs.stanford.edu/)

depending on what your selection criteria are for "excellent" programs, and what your child's specific needs are, but some of the expensive third-party programs have significant financial aid that reaches up into the middle class, and some of the commercial materials and programs are available in a thriving used-materials or group-purchase market for homeschooling families. So shop around, and see what fits your family's needs.

There is a lot of information about how to get started in homeschooling

[http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html](http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifgetstarted.html)

on the World Wide Web, and my goal for next few years is to update my personal website (the link here) with more been-there, done-thats as I launch my younger three children into adulthood to joint their older brother in the big world.

<comment><USER3> I find it peculiar that you regularly cite scientific studies of this and that, and yet you are using this terribly misleading, n-of-1 implication that home schooling is why your oldest son has the success he has. Do you really think that children cannot do exactly the same thing coming out of a public school, and if so, why?

<comment><AUTHOR> My son has taken up my thinking about the difference between anecdotes and research studies, and he actually mentioned the issue of successful co-workers he has who are public school alumni in another part of his email to me. But I shouldn't have to quote his whole personal email to make the point for onlookers that OF COURSE some alumni of public schools turn out to be very successful, and they are much more numerous than people who have been homeschooled. But there may still be an advantage for homeschooling at the margin, simply because it is generally more flexible and responsive to individual learner needs than mass classroom education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> -This article strikes a chord with me. I remember I was placed a year ahead in math, in Algebra I Honors, and the class was so easy that I would bring little toys into class and play with them while still getting A's. The teacher, a female, sent me back to Pre-algebra as a result. In hindsight, that reaction was so patently absurd. If anything, she should have tested whether I should have advanced to Geometry Honors.

-I don't think anyone is surprised that the article claims that boys perform better under conditions which simulate actual adult workplace conditions.

-A bigger issue is really the education system targeting the median student. That means those students with the highest potential have to fight against the system to reach it -- if they ever reach it at all. And holding back the brightest people, when the economy is advanced by that small percent of bright people, sounds horribly ineffective.

This educational system is an artificial structure imposed on people with disparate learning capabilities, trying to fit every peg under the sun into a square hole, and I think we've missed out on a lot of value because of that.

Hopefully, as automation increases, this is something we'll be able to improve upon.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...

<comment><USER32> They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.

<comment><USER33> My son's classroom has employed smaller versions of exercise balls to keep some of the kids focused (including my own).

It's interesting to observe. The kids are fidgety and restless while sitting, but when you sit them on one of these the subconscious motor control going on seems to quell the foreground restlessness.

<comment><USER34> Maybe it's a metabolism thing? If they're used to burning calories a a certain rate, homeostasis will cause their bodies to seek to maintain that rate. Fidgeting burns a lot of calories. Maybe tensing up core muscles for balance fills that need?

<comment> wes-exp I seem to recall studies in controlled environments where people were not allowed to exercise, and there was a significant difference in calorie burn attributable to small movements. So the homeostasis argument seems totally plausible to me.

<comment><USER33> But if you sit that same twitchy kid in front of a video game or stimulating TV show, the fidgeting doesn't happen. Interesting...

<comment><USER31> I recall being teased for moving around while playing video games...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> During the baby boom there appeared to be an odd dynamic at work: in the primary grades, the neater, more docile girls were the teachers' favorites and got the better grades. Somewhere around or after puberty, they started to fall back behind the boys. Some of this was certainly socially motivated; a cousin said that boys didn't like to date girls they thought smarter. Some of it may have come from the teachers.

Just my two cents..

<comment><USER36> One of the most impressive girls I went to school with was kinda intimidating in her ferocious intelligence and confidence, but if I didn't dare to approach her, it was simply because it was painfully obvious she was out of my league, not because I didn't like her. She never sucked up, not to teachers and not to peers, she never failed to say what she thought, she played the piano and the violin and aced every single test anyone handed to her. And one time she passed some sweets on to me during class, and then laughed her ass off, because she had them in the mouth before wrapping them up again. If I utterly adored one girl in that time, it was her; so much I never dared to even fall in love with her.

In contrast, I never considered "neat and docile" pupils smart, just lame.

That wasn't even my two cents, just shamelessly indulging in nostalgia haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have a 6 year old daughter in a Montessori school. After a class observation I noticed the teacher spent a significant portion of her time just dealing with a few rambunctious boys, while all the girls in the class worked quietly.

Afterwards, I asked the teacher why they just didn't separate the boys from the girls, since they were obviously two different species at that age (at all ages?) It seemed to me that a class with only girls in it could learn faster w/o all the silly distractions.

The teacher got quite serious and told me that girls and boys are a form of yin and yang. The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social upbringing of each.

<comment><USER38> > a few rambunctious boys

As the parent of a less rambunctious boy, I believe that discrimination should be on the basis of behavior, not gender.

> The classroom dynamic was an absolute necessity to the healthy social > upbringing of each.

I think that it is great to have everyone learn to work together, but I don't think it has to be all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am surprised to see that none of the comments really comment or reflect upon the issue this article brings up, which is that for boys to thrive they need to be taught differently. If we can actually create ciriculum that allows them to excel why would we not do this? I know that the main point against it would be that young girls perhaps would not thrive in such a system. Yet I think we have to find a balance between them if we want true equality and what is best for all of our children.

Mayhaps it is time to reaccess if we should not have separate classes for boys and girls..food for thought...

<comment><USER40> I bet girls would do just fine, and a sane combination of approaches works best. The biggest issue with schools is that everybody _thinks_ they know how to fix stuff, but the research is spotty at best. Standardized tests and core curriculums? Differentiated learning or academic tiers? We all have opinions, and there are many in this thread, but not all of these opinions can be simultaneously right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I grew up (in Ireland) with single-sex schooling until age 12-3 (primary) and mixed secondary. That has its own potential pitfalls (eg bullying, more playground fights) but I think there are benefits too. Also, in primary school it's the same teacher all day for a full year (or two) at a time, which makes it a lot easier for the teacher to know each pupil and manage the classroom appropriately.

I'm unsure why American schools are so tied to the lementary/ middle/ high model. It doesn't confer any particular benefit that I can see.

<comment><USER35> It varies considerably. Most public schools break have either a middle school or junior high school (grades 6-8 or 7-9) between primary and secondary grades. But most Catholic parochial schools run to 8th grade. A lot of private schools run from 6th to 12th grade on the same campus, some 3rd to 12th.

I suspect that the break is because in the middle years it becomes harder to find a teacher who can do everything--reading, history, math--adequately. A lot of what is called "science" in American primary schools I would call "environmental civics"\--recycling is good; don't litter. Then in 7th or 8th grades one can actually encounter chemistry labs.

(On the other hand, in my 7th (8th?) grade science class a big chunk of time was given up to the evils of drugs; I didn't particularly disagree, but bilged the class because I found it tedious to cull clippings about overdoses or LSD flashback. And I have no idea what I might have learned in the "science" lessons of the earlier grades--how many planets, maybe.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Every time I read an article about schooling I think about the best piece I ever read on the subject.

The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher (1992) by John Taylor Gatto

[http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt](http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt)

</comment><comment><USER43> Reading this article, for me, is just a reminder of what an awesome effect a really good teacher can have... In this teacher's writing I see a lot of positive qualities reflected from some of the teachers that made a huge impact on my life and disposition. In the end I suspect that - just having a teacher that is even willing to think or write about this - has much more of an impact than any rote following of procedural formula about "how to teach boys".

</comment><comment><USER44> I had a horrible middle school experience which led me to the opinion that primary and secondary school is a much better system.

It's not just punishing students for not sitting still, though a friend was almost flunking because he couldn't sit through a class. It's teachers eating separately from students, no time for recess, and no adult to talk to without social ostracism.

Then I went to a New England Prep school; 3 sports a year, teachers eat with and openly question students, everyone feels like members of the community and people have a stake in things, and the Headmaster knows everyone's name. I can't thank that school enough; I went from failing with almost perfect test scores to really good grades and a sense of belonging.

I don't understand why at least rural schools can't follow the same model. The teachers are paid less but get better results; the students are cared for and more disciplined, and the academics and athletics are generally better. It's not about the student body, either; we had tons of kids on scholarship that outperformed everyone.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't see why we still have co-ed education in the early grades. It does boys no good to be told they're behaving badly for not being able to sit still in class, and it does girls no good to have boys disrupting class while they're trying to learn.

</comment><comment><USER46> I got this problem in elementary, still got almost the highest possible mark on our CITO test (which is an indication of your education level here in the Netherlands), went to one of the best Gymnasiums, and essentially got kicked out of 80% of all my classes because of my ADD disorder, and refusal of treatment (i.e. not wanting to take Ritalin). It also ended up me being easier to calm the class by making an example out of me. I had to drop out of this school to a lower grade, which I passed without pretty much doing fuck all, cause it was too easy.

People should learn that distracted kids crave stimulation, and the stuff you teach them is probably not stimulating (i.e. boring, easy)

</comment><comment><USER47> As a boy who still cannot sit still at 30, the only way I survived being forced to sit still at school was by programming my enormously overpriced graphing calculator.

</comment><comment><USER48> As a father of two boys, I cannot agree enough with this article. I just wonder how I can send this article to the teachers at my boys schools without offending them.

<comment><USER49> Perhaps they need offending.

<comment><USER48> Perhaps. I just worry about it being like insulting the person serving your food. Tack needs to be used.

<comment><USER50> Indeed, you might need to try a different tact.

<comment><USER48> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I definitely recommend clicking on the "related story" link to "The War Against Boys", written by Christina Sommers in 2000. American education has been failing boys for _quite_ some time now. All parents have a responsibility to educate themselves on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER52> I got in trouble a lot for fidgeting at school all the time. I got diagnosed with ADHD and had to take medicine for it, mostly because of the fidgeting. One teacher made me put a giant a big inflatable cushion on my seat everyday and it was humiliating and didn't help at all.

</comment><comment><USER53> i remember i always got shitty 'citizenship' grades because i wanted to talk to my classmates all the time.

talking - what a terrible thing for a child to do.

<comment><USER54> Talking to your classmates "all the time" has very clear potential to be highly disruptive to the teacher and other students' ability to learn. Significantly different from just fidgeting.

<comment><USER55> But yet it may have been what he needed at that stage in his cognitive and social development.

It's only disruptive to a disciplinarian, industrial age approach to education.

<comment><USER54> And what of the needs of the other kids in the room, who might need to be able to hear what the teacher is saying?

A whispered request for clarification on something the teacher just said is one thing. 15 separate conversations about the latest Call of Duty and who made out with whom while the teacher tries to explain material is disruptive.

<comment><USER56> What's also a good thing is social time with your peers. We separate kids based on age, based on which random class they're thrown in, and in bigger schools, which random lunch time they are assigned. None of these may match up with their friends outside of class time. Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together?

<comment><USER54> > Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time > together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be > the only time they could be together?

There is. School ends at 2:30, upon which point they can enlist in formal or informal shared after-school activities. Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for their time and attention isn't a great option.

Plus, most classes I took in high school had plenty of group projects, small discussion groups, etc. that allowed for social interaction with friends in a non-lecture context.

<comment><USER56> Problem is, there are no buses that take the kids home from their after-school activities. I don't know where you live, but there are many school districts in the US where kids can't walk home or expect their parents to drive them to and from school or a friend's house.

When I was in school, my house was an hour and a half bus ride from school. My parents worked in the other direction. Outside of being at school, there was no hope for social interaction unless we were in town for a festival. I'm also not arguing for turning classes into a free for all. I pretty explicitly said there should be room for social interaction _outside_ of class. In districts with split lunch hours, there's literally no free-form social interaction unless you're on one of the last buses to leave at the end of the day.

<comment><USER57> We had buses to do exactly that. The "sports bus" departed at 6 p.m. every day; there weren't a lot of the buses, because not everyone did afterschool activities, but everyone who needed a ride got on the appropriate bus (east or west, as I recall) which dropped them to their home. It was free, too.

This was a rural school district, about 60 students in my class, and the district extended something like 20 miles in each direction from the town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I felt like they were describing me that whole time. I was diagnosed with learning disabilities and told to sit still countless times. Thankfully some teachers realized keeping me in extra circular activities would offset my energy but when I moved from that school the situation changed.

The frustrating part for teachers was that I typically scored higher on exams than my peers, including standardized tests. They then saw my scores and consistently lectured me about how if I just _applied_ myself I'd be doing so much better.

I always treated exams as a challenge I sit here for 1, 2 hours at a time and try and score as high as possible.

</comment><comment><USER59> Stop pandering to the internet crowd of "misunderstood" nerds, Atlantic [0]. You clearly know your audience and you've got your litany of "I was really smart but teachers kept me down" testimonials here on HN and Reddit, but this really adds nothing new to the discussion.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic....](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER60> Overseas I used to go to school from 8am to 1pm with 40min classes(and I received much better education). In US I had to sit for over an hour per classs and until 4-5pm. Is this any wonder that kids can't sit from 8 to 4 with very small brakes in between? I didnt learn much in American HS, it was torture most of the day. All I wanted to do was to get my work done and gtfo /go home, but that system made it very difficult to do. In fact, I didnt care much for school as a result.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's unnatural for most any human to be expected to sit and focus on tedious crap for hours on end, especially children.

We live in one of the top school districts in Texas, and three years ago took our two boys out to homeschool them. No religious motivations, just got fed up with the bullshit custom we continue to call "education" in this culture.

They are learning, thriving, curious, creative and happier than ever.

</comment><comment><USER62> Kids should spend have instruction for a while and then pushed out to play for a while. Alternating back and forth, maybe an hour each way. Then we wouldn't have as many fat kids and we wouldn't have so many kids disrupting classrooms. Our children aren't automatons, they need plenty of time to be kids. There is a lot of value in play.

</comment><comment><USER63> "While Reichert and Hawley's research was conducted in all-boys schools, these lessons can be used in all classrooms, with both boys and girls."

Not true, research shows that girls do worse when their performance is evaluated in relation to others (competitively), as opposed to when their performance is evaluated against an objective standard.

<comment><USER64> Sad that I need a throwaway account to talk about this, but such is life.

Spend some time doing searches on terms like "gender grading gap" and reading the recent research. What you find may surprise you, is consistent across multiple Western democracies, and can be summarized thusly:

* When assessment is left to teachers, there is a grading gap in favor of girls; girls receive grades that are inflated relative to their performance on non-teacher assessments. This seems to be partly due to teachers including factors like "engagement" or "focus" in the classroom, which is known to favor girls, and partly due to bias by teachers in favor of students of their own gender (and many teachers are women, meaning the effect is most pronounced for girls).

* By surprisingly young ages, girls in public school systems internalize "we're better than boys" and boys internalize "we're worse than girls" (one UK study estimated boys internalize this by age eight), producing a performance/effort gap similar to that associated with racial stereotypes.

* This has ramifications all the way up the system, including an achievement gap which starts early and only grows with each milestone. Boys and young men are increasingly more likely to be held back and/or disciplined/medicated in early school years, increasingly less likely to get into advanced courses in later years, less likely to graduate local equivalent of "high school" and less likely to enter college/university or earn a degree.

<comment><USER65> I'm confused about a so called achievement gap when men still hold the majority of highest paying and most powerful jobs in the country.

I'd truly like to understand what you mean by this.

<comment><USER64> I'm confused by what seems to be a non-sequitur. I'm talking about educational achievement, and there is an absolute, well-documented and undeniable gap there.

While it's true that within the highest ranks of Western society, gender plays a significant role, it's also true that socioeconomic background -- "class", for lack of a better word -- has a sunlight-to-candle relationship to gender in terms of _getting into those ranks in the first place_. Western society has drastically limited mobility right now, and the highest ranks are, unfortunately, more conservative in their views on gender.

And as an aside, there's a good example of a broader application of Kleinfeld's thesis there. Men dominate at the extreme high end, but also at the extreme low end. Efforts toward true equality need to address the root cause of that, which has more to do with rigid gender roles imposed on both men and women than with outright favoring of men over women.

<comment><USER65> You said: "This has ramifications all the way up the system, including an achievement gap which starts early and only grows with each milestone."

And I say, I do not understand how this achievement gap, as you call it, actually matters or is holding men back when men hold most of the advanced degrees, and wealth in this society. I don't think you need a throwaway account to discuss this stuff so long as everyone stays calm.

Meanwhile, you're spot on in my opinion about the role of class as well as gender. This is very true. It's also why the "right" way of doing many things is so often a "male" way of doing things, accepted as the default. They are absolutely interconnected and probably inseparable. Most feminists will absolutely agree that rigid gender roles hurt men and women, and we want everyone to fulfill their potential, and not be stuck in those roles.

<comment><USER64> _I do not understand how this achievement gap, as you call it, actually matters or is holding men back when men hold most of the advanced degrees, and wealth in this society._

Well, at the moment women are earning more bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and yes, even Ph.Ds than men. That doesn't immediately erase a pre- existing gap among the older generations, but it does tell us that in the future we still won't have equality -- we'll have simply replaced one gap by another.

The goal really ought to be to start raising generation after generation of kids where boys and girls are equal in educational opportunity and achievement. We've thus far failed at that goal, and I don't truly understand how someone can call themself "feminist" whilst thinking that's not something that "actually matters".

The prevalence of people who do call themself "feminist" and hold such beliefs is why I shelter in my warm, snug anonymity. Pointing out such contradictions does not typically result in calm discussions.

<comment><USER66> > The goal really ought to be to start raising generation after generation of > kids where boys and girls are equal in educational opportunity and > achievement.

There are two very different goals stated there and they may not be compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is why I will homeschool my son.

</comment><comment><USER68> Or girls.

</comment><comment><USER69> 60 years ago boys had no problem paying attention in class. The problem is too many teachers today have degrees in education instead of the subject they are supposed to be teaching. They've turned schools into daycare centers. They rely on "projects", worksheets, videos, and busywork that have little to do with what the kids should be learning. When children are bored and resentful that their time is being wasted, they act out.

We can fix this by making it easier to fire bad teachers, require math, science, and English teachers to have degrees in math, science, and English, and prevent school funds from being used on new textbooks, televisions, videos, workbooks, or other wasteful materials.

</comment><comment><USER70> Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...

<comment><USER71> Sitting still is not a virtue. It literally accomplishes nothing. It's a secondary detail - whether or not the kid is sitting still does not tell you whether they're actually paying attention to the lecture and whether they're going to remember it.

<comment><USER72> You're taking a narrow perspective. Fidgeting is distracting, to everyone else. Whatever your ideals of a perfect world may be, 20 dump trucks of kids needs to be educated at one facility every day. Whatever you may think one kid is doing to help him focus, that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors. Something needs to change, but it's more than just perspectives.

<comment><USER73> "that kid is disrupting the focus of his 8 neighbors"

Whatever else Catholic churches may get wrong, apparently all of the "modern" ones I've ever been inside figured out the "crying room" technology a long time ago. Setting up a "sound diode" isn't all that difficult with modern technology. If whats really important is forcing future factory workers to line up in alphabetical order in row/column format, then flexibility might not work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> And we wonder why smart kids are all introverts...

<comment><USER75> This is not true.</comment></comment>


Beware Emotional Robots: Giving Feelings to Artificial Beings Could Backfire - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/beware-emotional-robots-giving-feelings-artificial-beings-could-backfire-study-suggests <comment><USER2> Relevant Kurzgesagt "Do Robots Deserve Rights? What if Machines Become Conscious?"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyUYg8X31c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyUYg8X31c)

</comment><comment><USER3> Consciousness requires feelings.</comment>


Passenger threatened with court for using screenshot of e-ticket - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jun/29/passenger-threatened-with-court-for-using-screenshot-of-e-ticket <comment><USER2> It's amazing how impressively flawed the thinking around this is.

You can use _this_ app to show an image of the QR code (Apple Wallet), but you can't use _that_ app to show an image of the QR code (Photos).

The only reasonable point in the article is that the Photo app doesn't know it's a QR code and therefore you could end up with an image that won't scan. Which is certainly one possible way you could end up not being able to show your ticket (or your battery could die, or your screen could break, or it could be across the network and your service sucks), but it is no excuse for not accepting a ticket that _does_ successfully scan.

The fact that they then went after this person to extort money from them after the fact — when they were a valid ticket holder — is mind blowing.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, I am pretty sure companies that hire people who would be checking those tickets don't attract the brightest kinds, too.

It's a job that probably doesn't pay too well, that also must be quite a stressful environment. You must favour the sense of power and not be able to work anywhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >After much deliberation she decided to pay, as it would have cost more in legal fees to fight.

Justice is not a right, it's a product you buy, and wealthy people can afford more and better lawyers. Wealthy people are better, and deserve more of anything they want.

It's yet another neo-feudalism example. This woman is a peasant, and the company is the lord, and what happened was a shake down. And the government is the serf who assisted the lord with this extortion. In no possible way, taking the story at face value, was she intending to commit fraud. The government has abandoned its duty to serve and protect human persons first and foremost, and the long term trust loss as a result of this corruption is not good for civil society.

</comment><comment><USER5> > The CrossCountry website says: "You can show your ticket ... as a pdf on > your phone... the choice is yours!"

PDF is OK, JPEG is not. Absurd.</comment>


What was it like to fly the Concorde - <AUTHOR> http://www.concordesst.com/flytrip.html

<comment><USER2> I flew twice Concorde twice while working on an early telepresence project back in 1999-2000. Once on Air France and once on British Airways.

Things that stood out for me:

It is REALLY small inside, I bumped my head both times getting into the plane, and they just laugh and said "first time?"

Passengers were all 50-70 year old white men, no women at all on either flight I was on, I was the youngest person on both flights.

Takeoff is violent, Landing is more Violent, the Concorde was just not designed for low speeds. I thought something was wrong both landings, but that is just the way it lands. It felt like slamming into the ground at 100 MPH.

The windows were really tiny, just a few inches wide and probably thicker than they were wide. The view outside was amazing and you really had a sense of being at the edge of the atmosphere, but it was so hard to see it through the tiny little windows.

It was pretty amazing to be at a 9AM meeting in Europe and then make it back to New York for a 10 AM meeting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I did. In the cockpit.

Well, OK, it wasnt a full-blown Concorde. It was an engine flight simulator at Rolls Royce in Bristol, England. (They made the engines.) Two of us from Control Data were installing software for a month at Rolls Royce. They let us stand in the simulator cockpit while the flight engineer controlled the engines. He had a flameout but recovered nicely.

Our office was at the en of the runway. Every day at noon, a Concorde would take off right over our office. Noisy beasties.

</comment><comment><USER4> I flew the concorde NYC->London in 2000. The actual flight experience was underwhelming. The seats are narrow and you can't really 'feel' how fast you're going. I never heard or felt anything when we crossed the sonic barrier.

As for the good stuff: I loved crossing the atlantic in 3 and a half hours. I remember enjoying the caviar and a little too much bubbly. I also enjoyed the custom boarding process - everything was so damn convenient.

Nowadays I can still relive the experience by walking through the concorde stationed at the Seattle flight museum. My boys never get tired of me explaining how fast the plane goes or how the fuselage expands by a few inches during flight.

</comment><comment><USER5> It was a different world back then (both the design and implementation of the Concorde). France and Britain both put billions into the program in the hopes of being on the leading edge of the supersonic revolution. Clearly they were the leading edge, but there was no revolution.

It was the small, slow 737 and A320 that really changed aviation. I can fly between cities for less than $50 (on special) in 2011. Price won out over service and speed.

<comment><USER6> The US spent billions on a stealth air superiority fighter which is terribly useful for dealing with the Taliban.

<comment><USER5> Got to spend money to make money.

Hmm, wait that isn't right...

<comment><USER7> Don't worry, whomever we are fighting, someone is making money out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/Flying/What-was-it-like-to-fly-on- Conco...](http://www.quora.com/Flying/What-was-it-like-to-fly-on- Concorde/answer/Rocky-Agrawal)

</comment><comment><USER9> | Concorde operations are from the International terminal at the airport, so even though we were not actually leaving the country we had to go through passport control.

I've always wondered why so many counties outside of the US require showing one's passport when _leaving_ the country. Is there a restriction on leaving?

<comment><USER10> The US does, in fact, indirectly check passports for foreigners leaving the country: they have the airlines collect and return the I-94W visa waiver counterfoil that the immigration folks staple inside the passport when stamping it. (I assume that visa holders on a white I-94 got similar treatment. Not sure how it works/will work now that ESTA has entirely replaced the visa waiver cardboard thing; I'll be finding out in February.) The airlines in turn check passports against tickets to ensure that (a) the right person is flying, and (b) they're legal at the destination (so the airline doesn't get fined).

Presumably it gives them a chance to check for over-stayers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I flew on the Concorde at the EAA AirVenture (or whatever it was called back then) fly-in in 1994.

The thing I remember most about it was the ridiculously steep takeoff angle - that was when you could really tell you were on a different breed of aircraft than your standard Boeing.

</comment><comment><USER12> My dad flew on the Concorde several times for business trips. He was actually on one of the flights that had to turn back to paris after an engine blew out (or something). Considering what happened to other flights, could have been a lot worse for my family...

<comment><USER13> Stuff breaks. Engine failures and "turning back" are not amazingly rare events. Like all complex machines, sometimes something fails, and it's best to fix it sooner rather than later. The engineers that design the airframes understand that things fail, and they design the system to function in a degraded state. But you don't really want to keep the thing in a degraded state for very long, so sometimes you try to land the plane as quickly as possible (even though there was almost no actual danger).

It's like when a drive fails in your RAID array. The hot spare takes care of the failure, and you aren't even in a degraded state. But you still order the replacement drive as soon as possible, because it feels bad to not have as many backup systems as you had before. Same with planes.

<comment><USER14> _The engineers that design the airframes understand that things fail, and they design the system to function in a degraded state._

The linked site has some interesting info on the technical design of some of the flight systems. There are multiple redundancies on the hydraulics, for instance. Very interesting stuff.

<comment><USER13> Incidentally, sometimes triple-redundancy isn't enough: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A good time to watch "Airport 79, the concorde" with Delon and crew. (available on Netflix Instant)</comment>


Ask HN: Side Projects Gone Big - <AUTHOR> I've heard many of you love to create side projects for fun, but I also heard that few of them actually took off and grow into a profitable business. So feel free to list if you have any. Statistics will be welcomed as well! <comment><USER3> I started both Gravatar and GitHub as side projects. I sold Gravatar to Automattic after several years (though it was never profitable and became quite painful to run during the last year that I owned it). GitHub has been profitable since the day we started charging money (6 months after we started working on it) and we are now up to thirteen employees without having taken any funding.

In both cases it was the viral element of the idea that made it possible for me to turn what was once a side project into something more. If you can't spend all day every day working on it, you need something that will grow even when you're not watering it.

<comment><USER4> Just to establish the baseline and not to over-excite everyone - how many side projects you had that did _not_ work out? :)

<comment><USER3> This is a hard question to answer. I work on a lot of side projects in the form of open source libraries and whatnot. It's possible that any of those could blossom into a business, but I've never really pursued many of them.

As for other business projects:

* I tried to resell knives and other camping gear on eBay once. I called it Wolfcastle Munitions. That was a disaster. I'm not built to do retail.

* I had an idea called Project Mothership that was going to be Rails hosting (before anyone was doing dedicated Rails hosting and much like what Planet Argon became) but I abandoned it after I realized that I'd lose my mind if my job became network operations management.

* I wanted to do a climbing sight called Microbomber that would list and categorize climbing routes across the world with photos and reviews and whatnot.

* I also thought about making custom gloves and coats for hardcore outdoor activities (wilderness hiking and skiing, etc). I have a near impossible time finding gloves that fit me well and are legitimately waterproof, and I've still never owned a winter coat that I've loved. I was also going to use the name Microbomber for this effort.

There are plenty more that I've long forgotten.

But, all of these ideas (except the first) I only spent very small effort on. I like to put small efforts towards a lot of ideas and then see what catches. That way I don't spend a lot of time and effort that is later wasted. Knowing when to abandon something and when to dive in is the hardest part, but it's essential. Call it what you want: intuition, savvy, or instinct. I just call it seeing the world objectively and not overvaluing every little idea you happen to have.

<comment><USER5> Do you feel like you truly tested any of these ideas? If so how?

I have built something that I think is good, but has not taken off. I don't think it is a bad idea, I think it is an untested idea. I would hate to drop it without anyone ever seeing it.

<comment><USER3> With a lot of effort I think they all could have been successful. But when you have to work your day job to make a living, you need something you can bootstrap on the side without investing huge amounts of unrewarded effort up front. That's why I like to start a lot of things and then see what happens. Sometimes I give up on an idea simply because it becomes uninteresting (e.g. retail). With both Gravatar and GitHub, it was almost immediately obvious that they were ideas worth pursuing. They got people excited, and I could easily gauge the interest by tracking signups. If you're not seeing signups, it means something is wrong and you'll have to decide how much effort you're willing to invest in order to fix that something. Without knowing the details it's hard for me to give any more insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://notarycrm.com> and <http://mailfinch.com> are doing pretty well for me. Still side projects but they're both profitable and steadily growing.

My rule of thumb: if you see a business using spreadsheets to manage something, there might be an opportunity there

<comment><USER7> Awesome rule of thumb Paul.

<comment><USER6> Now that I think about it, I think _you_ planted the seed about that idea through one of your blog posts last year. Thanks! :)

<comment><USER7> Ha, really? This post I'm assuming: [http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/microsoft-excel-is-the- wo...](http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/microsoft-excel-is-the-worlds-most- used-database/)

TONS of Micro opportunities here.

<comment><USER6> Yep, this is definitely the post I was referring to.

FWIW, I fundamentally believe that smart people tackling brick-and-mortar- businesses-using-spreadsheets will make obscene amounts of money over the long term. (Not only are my products examples of this but, few people know this about me, I actually bought a gas station earlier this year to force myself to _feel_ the pain.)

For anyone thinking about doing anything like this, feel free to reach out - <USER2> want to help you. :)

<comment><USER8> Paul, have you found any significant points in the gas station business you think could be improved by leveraging soft-tech?

<comment><USER6> Abso-f*cking-lutely. :)

CRM: who's buying from me, what are they buying and what should I market to them so that I can make more money.

Inventory Management: what's in stock, what do I need to re-order, are my employees stealing from me?

I can keep going... :)

<comment><USER8> interesting. i'd love to hear more about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://stormpulse.com> was completely nights & weekends for the first couple years, but is now supporting two full-timers and growing. For stats on hours invested, traffic, and revenues, see: [http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping- stor...](http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/1215873671/bootstrapping-stormpulse)

<comment><USER10> That's an epic bootstrapping post. Even though it's a bit of a reality check, it's also quite inspiring. It shows how far pure determination and persistence can take you!

Well done.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I should add, however, that my next post in that vein is going to explain how much was timing and circumstances we couldn't have imagined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a lot of side projects listed here which made it HUGE, not just big :) To lighten it up a little: I started <http://uwrobot.com> which is a small niche app for finding course openings for students at UW. I started this 2 years ago, and now over 25% of the entire undergraduate population at UW uses it, and in one academic quarter registration period, it is able to pay my rent for the year.

Its definitely not big, nor huge, but its very profitable. Just some motivation for those of you out there who have little side projects that just want to make a small side income.

<comment><USER12> I'm no expert, but it seems unintuitive to have to click 'course notifier' and then 'getting started' to actually get signed up. There should be a 'Start watching courses now' link on the homepage... Most people that go to that sight probably already know what it does and are just looking to sign-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This doesn't fit in the tech startup realm at all, but I started doing martial arts for fun, got pretty good at it, got chosen to do the motion capture moves for the Mortal Kombat video games. Did that for 10 years. So I got paid to do that. I also did performances like shows, theater performances and corporate events etc. I would say it was nice money but definitely quit your job FU money. I also taught martial arts on top of my day job which means I got paid to exercise, a rarity in our tech geek community.

<comment><USER14> Are you Subzero, per the Reddit AMA?

<comment><USER13> Subzero, Raiden, and a few others.

<comment><USER14> I know hn isn't the place , but I an so completely jealous, and I think you're awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Instapaper is the (or at least, my) defacto example - <http://instapaper.com/>

Two of my iPhone apps, Color Stream and Dayta have turned into profitable businesses, even though they were just pet projects (and still are).

<comment><USER16> Awesome, I had no idea Dayta and Instapaper were the same developer.

<comment><USER17> They aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Basecamp was a side project for us.

<comment><USER19> I didn't know basecamp and started looking at your site; I really love the presentation except for one thing: the bit about the basecamp competitor founder saying blabla basecamp is the best is the "who uses it" page. When I read the part between parenthesis the whole thing really sounded to me like a phony message, and made me have a more negative look on the page.

Just wanted to let you know.

<comment><USER19> Could the person who downvoted me tell me why ? I merely expressed my opinion, to me this quote looks like a flaw on an otherwise great presentation of his project. Or am I not supposed to criticize projects here (I'm new to hacker news) ?

<comment><USER20> He was probably outraged to discover that you don't know the legend that is Jason Fried (37 Signals).

<comment><USER21> You should get used to this attitude, too -- even though 37 Signals's founders and advice are highly overrated, there are a lot of people who idolize it and take criticism of the group pretty personally. There is a really weird dynamic going on with that, it's hard for me to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Carbonmade <http://carbonmade.com> was a side project of our design studio before gaining enough traction to work on full-time.

</comment><comment><USER23> I built Upcoming.org on the side from my day job just for fun, and I didn't quit my day job until it was acquired by Yahoo two years later. It was never a big revenue generator before acquisition, but ads covered server expenses and then some.

</comment><comment><USER24> Forrst (<http://forrst.com/>) was a side project I built out of frustration in January. It's now a community of around 15k developers and designers and gets a healthy amount of traffic. Not quite profitable yet, but slowly gaining ground every month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw you've got a good amount of advertisers on the site already (as well as the cabin). Is it because the cost of hosting & S3 that makes it still not profitable?

<comment><USER24> It's mainly my (meager) salary + the cost of a full time moderator that's standing in the way at present. S3 and hosting are pretty affordable in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sifter (<http://sifterapp.com>) started out as a side project. It was literally just something fun for me to fill my time with until a handful of people encouraged me to actually try to build a business out of it. Within about 18 months of launching it was able to support me full-time.

During that 18 months, there were times where it was rather stressful to work full to part-time on another job and manage a web application that's supposed to be up 24x7.

However, I would definitely say that if anybody else is in that tough spot before your side project can support you full-time, it's definitely worth fighting through it.

<comment><USER26> Beautiful design! Nice work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Mixpanel was some kind of side project.

When I left Slide, I was initially going to build a gaming company 6 months before gaming blew up. Unfortunately, I couldn't find myself building games because I wasn't staying up till 3-4 AM excited.

One night I scrapped it and started building Mixpanel strictly to learn how to scale systems since that was interesting to me. What better project to learn about it fastest then doing analytics?

Ever since then I've consistently been up past 1 AM =). Still excited. Still learning.

This was all still being in school so I couldn't focus on it full-time.

</comment><comment><USER28> I made a WordPress plugin to add a feature to one of my own sites, and threw it up on my blog as a free download. After hundreds of downloads and comments asking for support, I rewrote it and packaged it up as a commercial product. In the next 1.5 years I made about $180,000 in profit selling that plugin, then sold the rights to the plugin on Flippa for another $90,000.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. That is impressive. Few questions:

1\. How long did it take to write the plugin? 2\. How did you find your paid customers? From what I heard, most WordPress users don't want to pay for themes or plugins. 3\. And why did you decide to sell it for that kind of high price? Were there troubles at the beginning because it was a free download before?

Thanks!

<comment><USER28> 1\. A few hours 2\. Forums, blog sponsorships, PPC ads and holding #1 organic rank on all the relevant search terms 3\. Sales were slowing and I lost interest in putting more into it, so I sold it while it was still valuable

[http://flippa.com/blog/case-studies/dan-grossman-on- selling-...](http://flippa.com/blog/case-studies/dan-grossman-on-selling- wpreviewsite-a-wordpress-plugin/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My MMO Guild Hosting site started as my own personal WoW guild website, which itself was a fork of the code powering my personal LAN Party website. After deciding in late 2005 to try to make a business out of it, I launched in May 2006 and was profitable since day one, enough so that I abandoned consulting by Jan 2007.

It's been my sole income-source since then.

It took 6 years from initial creation: the first version of that original LAN Party site was written in old ASP in 2000, and then rewritten in PHP in 2001 or 2002, and then forked in 2004 for WoW.

Hopefully some of my new side-projects turn into something useful, almost all written in Erlang with the Nitrogen Web Framework (absolutely love it).

</comment><comment><USER30> I built a url shortening service called vb.ly because my girlfriend, Violet Blue, was using url shorteners all the time for her blog.

She's an author and adds to her book income by linking people to her 30+ books on Amazon using her affiliate code. I was concerned that the various url shorteners she was using might swap out her affiliate code for theirs as a revenue mechanism, so I wanted to take it "in house".

I discovered that this .ly domain registry had "vb.ly" available (her initials) and thought it might be cool engineering challenge to get that going for her and open it up for others to use.

500k+ shortened urls later, the rest is history. Literally

<comment><USER31> Wait. Didn't your domain name get taken away by the the Libyan .ly registrar or was that another shortener service?

Edit: Nevermind, found the discussion here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772071>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bitbucket was a side project for me, and it was just acquired. I ran it for 2.5 years under my own wing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Technorati was a side project for me.

<comment><USER34> How long did you work on it before making it a full time project? And how long until you got funding/hired your first employee?

<comment><USER35> [http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/04/vv_show_32_david_sifry_o...](http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/04/vv_show_32_david_sifry_of_tech.html)

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> BCC was supposed to eventually grow to $200 a month in revenue so that I could buy videogames without delaying student loan repayment. Eventually the tail started to wag the dog. As for stats, well, right now is the start of the busy season and I predict a very happy Halloween indeed.

</comment><comment><USER16> <http://www.fantasymonster.com/> Fantasy sports app for the iphone. Launched 4 months ago. I still have a full time job but the app is pulling in 20K+ per month in sales and ad revenue. Not sure if that qualifies as "big" but it's more than enough for me =)

<comment><USER37> godaddy parked domain?

<comment><USER16> bluehost. web site doesn't actually get much traffic, 99% of sales are purely on the device. I only keep it up to maintain some semblance of web presence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> ThatHigh.com - started in February as a joke, now it pays my rent in SF.

<comment><USER39> I like the christian treatment center ads that run on the side.

<comment><USER38> haha yeah....I could actually use some pointers on how to better handle adsense in this respect. is it possible to require approval for any ad shown? is it possible in an automated way?

before we got kicked off adbrite (for our content, or something), it was possible to do this, but it was very tedious...

<comment><USER39> I think you can only stop others from serving but looks tedious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> <http://www.olark.com> was a side project: <http://www.hab.la> for a few years.

</comment><comment><USER41> I started <http://blogo.it> as a side project. It's now the third media property in italy with 11 ml/uniques month. Before Blogo I started another company as a side project, it was a web agency I later sold to a pre ipo company. Starting a project in this way is a really good way to start slowly, think about it a lot and to have no pressure at the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER42> I started Barhopolis (look at barsannapolis.com) as a hobby because we never knew what was going on until after it happened. We reach over 40,000 people a month now not including mobile, and we are growing fast. Last night we went around town with the Mast-Jägermeister executives filming, including the CEO of the company that imports Jägermeister into the US. In July we had a huge event (1700 people at it's peak), and the governor showed up and performed with the band, pretty cool. We aren't where we need to be yet, but we are profitable and growing.

<comment><USER43> I'm pretty sure that's the site I used to find a bar for New Year's Eve, which was the first time I'd been to the Sly Fox, which I am in love with.

I owe you a drink!

<comment><USER42> Must have been, we had an event at Sly Fox on New Years last year. We have an event coming up there on Saturday the 30th for Halloween, probably worth checking out if you're a fan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> <http://www.feedbackarmy.com> really surprised me. I came up with the idea from a HN user asking for a service like it. It was on the front page of delicious the week I launched it (it was a slow news week, given). Since then it's served as a source of extra income.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a topic dear to my heart, there's not much I love talking about more than side-projects.

<http://mocksup.com> is my current side-project, and while it's yet to "go big", it's profitable and growing.

<comment><AUTHOR> The site looks great! Just curious, how did you find your initial paid customers? Is it just through word-of-mouth or did you do anything more specific?

<comment><USER45> Thanks. Once we got the marketing pages/admin features to a place we thought were worth paying for, I posted a link on HN and from that we got covered by Mashable and several others. That got us profitable.

Now we're working on getting to that next level where one of us can stop freelancing and get a check from Mocksup every month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> WeatherLoop° <http://weatherloop.com> is a side project of mine. Amazing how scratching your own itch can benefit someone else.

<comment><USER47> Hey, that's very nice! Easy monetization opportunity: Signup to be a Groupon (etc) affiliate & include a little string of text with that day's deal for the user's locale along with a shortened link.

<comment><USER46> Thanks btucker! That is a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I started TwitterCounter.com as a fun weekend coding project after my partner said he wouldn't have time to start on it until he had finished some other stuff. I couldn't let it go so started coding right away. We launched 6 days later. Not it is hugely profitable and has 2 full-time employees.

More importantly: I think almost every major internet success was started as a side-project. Yahoo, Google, Apple, the list goes on and on...

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't have any myself. but here is a talk by Mitch Altman from this years H.O.P.E. conference about the origin of tv-b-gone

<http://c2047862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/tnha16.mp3>

</comment><comment><USER50> My first major side project was <http://gambolio.com> \- a browser based iTunes-style app for online games. Despite getting featured on the New York Times's website, the app struggled to attract many visitors.

So my wife and I set up a blog - <http://casualgirlgamer.com> \- in an attempt to promote it. The blog has become quite popular - more than 100,000 uniques a month - and we're now focusing completely on the blog rather than the app we originally set it up to promote.

We're not yet making enough to give up our jobs but we're having fun and have high hopes.

</comment><comment><USER51> Does Twitter count?

<comment><USER52> Only if you made it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I started my side project, BatteryBar (<http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar>) after my boss made a comment about how he couldn't figure out how much time was left on his battery. After about 6 months I went to a Freemium model and started selling a Pro version. Sales have been consistent over the last two years, not growing consistently like I'd like, and not enough to quit my job, but a nice side business.

</comment><comment><USER54> iTeleport <http://www.iteleportmobile.com> started out as a side project while one of our founders was getting a PhD.

<comment><USER16> just watched the CMU lecture by the PHD guy yesterday. Pretty inspiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> My motivation for working on side projects is not just about chasing the dream of riches or fame. I try to keep my ambitions inside the 9-5 (or whatever weird hours I find myself working on the 9-5). My motivation for working on side projects is they are fun and provide variety. Working in a team has a necessary evil - you can't just do what you want. Working on side projects provides me with this freedom.

</comment><comment><USER56> StartupDigest is a great example of this. They started with an internal listserv of 12 people and have, over the last year or so, grown to a global audience of over 68,000 people.

It seems that side projects give us the ability to stretch our creativity where our '9 to 5' lives don't allow us. My advice would be to have fun and pursue your side projects and make the leap to full-time once you have some traction and cashflow.

</comment><comment><USER57> I created www.socialadmanager.com as a side project. It has not gone "big" yet but it is profitable which i think is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've tried a lot of side projects but none of them panned out, because I couldn't focus on them long enough to get them to a state where I can leave my day job to fully work on them. Doing successful side projects requires taking small steps and a good amount of focus over long stretches of time, even if the rewards don't initially come.

</comment><comment><USER59> <http://www.difrwear.com> was a success I've had about 20 fails. Here they are [http://www.artofcyberwar.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/mike...](http://www.artofcyberwar.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/mikes-entrepreneurial-failures.jpeg)

</comment><comment><USER60> I started collecting photos from sold houses on real estate sites as interior design inspiration. One day I put them online, categorised them (bathroom, bedroom, etc) and added in a few ads. I've left it largely untouched for 2-3 years since and it pays my mortgage.

<comment><USER61> the site address?

<comment><USER60> <http://www.spaced.com.au/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The rub is that "fun" is a subjective term. If all you want to do is program you _may_ be right. If you enjoy problem solving and you do it in a way that is usable by others I don't see why not. [Currently pursuing the dream] ;)

</comment><comment><USER63> Ship Mate for the iPhone (Android coming some time in the future) is a side project, hopefully transitioning into a full time thing. It is now making me a livable wage and I haven't even started the big ideas for it yet.

</comment><comment><USER64> <http://absurdlycool.com> and <http://recreationparks.net> pay rent - they are both side projects for me.

</comment><comment><USER65> How many weekly hours of labor are you guys able to put into a side project?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just created a related discussion: Side Projects Gone Deadpooled <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772903>

</comment><comment><USER66> Side projects are where it's at, because they're typically low cost up front. You're just doing it for yourself. If no one likes it then you can ditch it or just use it for yourself for whatever purpose. No big loss. But if it turns out you're building something that people are passionate about, then you can turn it into a business without all the risk of going into it like a business from the very beginning.

<http://getclicky.com> started as an internal project for another company I worked for a few years ago. It was profitable 4 months after launch, and revenues are doubling ever year. 2010 will be about $1M. We are happy with that.

<comment><USER67> I love GetClicky

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> in beta testing <http://www.getjoined.com> should sign up and get a beta login

<comment><USER69> The donate button seems kinda alien to me, why would you be asking for money at the same time your are asking someone to signup to know more about what you are doing? I think people donate money when they see something and are impressed about it.

<comment><USER68> thank you for the feeback,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I don't think you can create a side project _for fun_ and have it turn into a profitable business. You can, however, create something on the side with a mind to sell it, and become successful.

<comment><USER70> It's okay, you can downvote me. I understand wanting to believe that it works that way, but it almost never does. You will simply make different decisions based on whether a project is for fun or for profit.

Can we at least agree that projects with no business model and no funding should be called _apps_ rather than _startups_?

<comment><USER71> I'm guessing people didn't like your first comment because it was trivial to disprove due to your word choice. If you say that something "can't" be done, you're usually wrong. Statements of probability usually work better, which was the case for your second, more successful comment.</comment></comment></comment>


Arena5 HTML5 JavaScript game - <AUTHOR> http://www.kevs3d.co.uk/dev/arena5 Glowing 3D vectors - retro gaming style - like Geometry Wars in your browser! Seems to run best on Chrome/Safari. <comment><USER2> Very nice!

The collision detection on the shots seems a bit loose --especially on the larger objects it often seems like shots pass through if they aren't centered enough. Also, the sparks from damaging-but-not-destroying objects need to be more visible. As they are, many hits feel like misses because the feedback is difficult to notice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes the collision detection is pretty basic currently, just a bunch of circle intersection tests, so it could certainly do with improving. I'll make the enemy "damage" more visible on hit also, thanks for the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To understand the Geometry Wars love see some of the top players scoring Highscore records for pacifism mode. Gets progressively more exciting so don't stop till the end. Worse case skip past half way:

[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=geometry+wars+2+...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=geometry+wars+2+pacifism&aq=2&oq=geometry+)

<comment><AUTHOR> The high scores vids are amazing. Some of the tight movement is unbelievable...!

The problem I found when developing Arena5 is that the browser is struggling with a lot of enemies, so I had to go with "tougher" enemies later, rather than just adding more.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My math foundation is weak, can HN recommend useful math resources? - <AUTHOR>

I've realized that my mathematical foundation is a bit weak, can you guys recommend some useful mathematical resources (articles, books, documentaries, papers, videos, etc.) to relearn or better my foundation of Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and some of Calculus?
Also, are there any articles, books, papers, documentaries, or other resources about interesting math or mathematical phenomenon that you guys would recommend?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> _are there any articles, books, papers, documentaries, or other resources about interesting math or mathematical phenomenon that you guys would recommend?_

A book list I posted in answer to a similar question a while ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497796>

And another list:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=755416>

Books and links to articles:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862115>

</comment><comment><USER3> Project Euler offers an interesting set of challenges.

<http://projecteuler.net/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) definitely!

</comment><comment><USER5> Try going through the videos and exercises of the MIT OCW materials.

<comment><USER6> Khan Academy FTW

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> With math, the one thing that works best is practice. Get some high-school math books and start solving problems. Solve all of them, then get yourself another textbook and solve the problems there.

</comment><comment><USER8> "ocw scholar" at MIT. Start with calculus, then do linear algebra. By the time you're done, they'll have their DE course refactored for independent learning too.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try PatrickJMT</comment>