Slashdot Mirror
Time To Rethink the School Desk?
theodp writes "As part of its reimagine the 21st-century classroom project, Slate asks: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture? While adults park their butts in $700 Aeron chairs, kids still sprawl and slump and fidget and dangle their way through the day in school furniture designed to meet or beat a $40 price point. 'We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases,' says Harvard's Jack Dennerlein. 'Is the same true for children? I can't see why not.' For school districts with deep pockets, there are choices — a tricked-out Node chair from IDEO and Steelcase can be had for $599."
Me thinks that someone wants to sell furniture.
. .
> if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases
As far as ROI goes, I think a better investment might be teachers, books, and paper.
Just sayin'
Has the author ever looked at the typical school desk? Kids destroy these things--carve them up, knock them over, etc. Durability is worth something, but more importantly, this cheap furniture is cheap to replace. Lord knows it won't make it through more than a couple school seasons without taking a terrible beating. Expensive and comfortable stuff isn't likely to last very long, and is too costly to replace when the kids finally kill it.
My school district just declared that their budget is going to increase by 40% over the next 4 years, to over $180 million! Why not throw some of these in there too?? They already announced those numbers so they can let us know that unless we pass gargantuan levies over the next three years, they'll be $70 million in the hole by then - why not throw in some incredibly expensive chairs, too?
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
'We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases,'
The 'right' chair is my desk chair at home. My productivity is always better when I'm working from home rather than being on-site at a client.
School systems with deep pockets eh? /sarcasm I guess that is true. You know, I've always just kept spending more and more all my life. It's a great way to survive, look cool, and generally act as a good little consumer.
Am I the only one that sees the idea behind this as just insanity?
Have you seen what kids are capable of doing to furniture?
It is hard enough to replace a $40 chair, and for $500 I can replace a dozen or so of the "elite" chairs. No thanks. It is simply amazing how easy it is to spend money, when it isn't yours.
And working in classrooms all day, I can tell you the chairs are the least of the distractions in the classroom.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Actually when I was in school, I never found the seats to be a problem.
What I _did_ find to be an annoyance was being stuck in them for hours at a time. This was particularily bad in the earlier grades where you tended to stay in the same room.
Even today I have no problem working in the most uncomfortable chair as long as I can get up every half hour or so and stretch my legs.. even if it is just a quick walk around the building.
I think this should some how be adopted in schools. I don't know how the logistics would work as I remember just getting everyone back after recess was a chore.. but I think getting away from the desk, even temporarily, is going to do way more than some new fangled "node chair".
As a side thought: most uncomfortable chairs I find are the ones who either don't have a locking back, or have a back that can't quite be adjusted to the right angle (that is, you have a choice of 90 degree perfect right angle, or fully reclined).
Its crucial that a student be able to comfortably adjust their space between the chair and the desk.
I was an overweight child in elementary school, and at times not having a properly maintained desk meant that I would be extremely uncomfortable at times.
Though the state of school chairs could definitely be improved (at least the ones circa 1989-2001 when I was in school), cost is a huge factor, and too much comfort will just put them to sleep.
If they care so much about the children then they should be pouring money into all aspects of education. They can't really afford more that $40?
I think they are pervs because they only think of the children in aspects of porn.
How about
- Train and pay teachers (yes this is socialism)
- Gut "no child left behind"
Or.. yknow.. put the cheetos and mountain dew generation into Aerons, that will fix everything
You had furniture in your school? We had to make do with moldy cardboard boxes for desks and sharp piles of rusting scrap metal for chairs, and we had to collect the scrap metal ourselves from train yards and storm drains. But try telling that to kids these days, they won't believe you!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
and I thought software sales was a tough business...
Would rather have excellent and inspiring teachers.
Also good cafeteria food.
Funny that I saw this article earlier today.
"CHILDREN have grown too big for their school chairs, a survey of 750 schools revealed.
Teachers said "desk and chair sizes were often inappropriate".
It is understood the NSW Education Department has been taking orders for custom-sized chairs.
Paediatric dietician Susie Burrell said children who were overweight often didn't carry obvious fat but instead looked older than their age."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/school-children-are-now-becoming-too-fat-to-fit-in-class-chairs/story-e6frf7l6-1225944436838
The American education system is mind boggling. They pay teachers shit wages and cut funding for schools. So teaching isn't an attractive career path for somebody with say a biology degree who'd want to teach real science, or somebody with a math degree, or any kind of real specialized training that would be beneficial to children. The goal in the states is apparently to do these quick fixes that look good but don't actually help. You've got a teacher with an English specialization teaching physics with a class of 40 students, and the kids aren't doing well? Duuuh must be that all the kids don't have comfy chairs.
but then I realized you were joking. You are joking, aren't you?
So you tell the parents, "Your kids will be smarter if you use product X." Parents in the hyper competitive nature of schools today will do whatever it takes to make sure their child gets the $500 aeron chair. The parents will scrambled to pump as much money as they can into making sure their kid gets the advantage.
What do you think Apple is doing trying to get iPads into every classroom? Because Apple makes more money off of selling 10million iPads every year to schools, then it does when they buy books/pencils/paper.
Think of the children and your wallet will open up.
My wife teaches 2nd grade and most of her students prefer to stand while they work. So she lets them stand. The tables in the class room are adjusted to be comfortable while standing (thanks to her nerd husband who always carries tools) and the kids love it.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases ... Is the same true for children?
- Jack Dennerlein, Harvard
This makes so much sense, if we attached fixtures to hold their arms in place, the kids would be unable to reach away from the desk, forcing them to focus on their work thus greatly increasing the efficiency of the education system. I want my tax dollars being spent on sensible projects that will help my kids to learn, and this one is a prime example - when you think about it, it has multifaceted benefits. For example, the kids would no longer be able to throw paper balls in class or stick gum under the desks, thus improving the experience of teacher and janitor alike - we would probably see a decrease in those teacher strikes.
Obviously Idea and Steelcase are out to make more than their share of money, such a system needn't be greatly above the current market average. Sure, a lock and key mechanism might bring the price up slightly, but we should still manage under $100 per unit. The potential increase here is just too great to be ignored; I for one will be presenting this option to my the board of trustees at my son's school, of which my wife happens to be a member.
Someone tag this 'suddenoutbreakofcommonsense'
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
No amount of comfort is going to help a child pay attention to a subject they aren't interested in. A more comfortable position won't help me pay attention in my history class. On the contrary, it will only help keep my mind focused on a distraction, or worse doze off.
why not rethink the entire educational system instead of changing desk... I mean... WT*
http://www.quasarcr.com/
No.
Next question?
Caveat Utilitor
Seat with a small desk attached to it? That must be an American thing due the fact that where I went to school, desks and chairs were always separate things. That also provided a decent sized desk to use.
that this is the difference between our public schools and those in countries that are eating our lunch in math and the sciences. "If only our kids had good chairs like the schools in Japan...." School should be about productivity but learning. As a kid, I could never sit still long enough to notice the fit of the chair anyway. This sounds like someone has some chairs to sell at a nice profit margin.
Regardless, I know there's a Steve Ballmer/chair joke to be made here but I can't seem to put it together right now.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
make them all stand at tables and do their work. Nothing brings focus to a task like having to stand to do it.
While a few stupid adults park their butts in $700 Aeron chairs, kids still sprawl and slump and fidget and dangle their way through...
There, fixed that for you.
When the summary said "For school districts with deep pockets..." it really meant "For school districts that are able to reach deeply into the pockets of the local property owners..."
Having two elementary-school-aged kids, I have observed that the quality/ergo/comfort of furniture is mostly irrelevant to kids. I do not know why this is, perhaps because of a different weight:surface area ratio, or some similar physiological difference. My son's mattress is a "kids" mattress, and it is the most uncomfortable mattress I have ever been on. But he sleeps fine, and he's unable to talk about the difference between his mattress and my mattress. My daughter does her homework at the dinner table, in the most unergonomic way possible. I help her get more comfortable and rearrange things to be better, but I often get the feeling that I do so in vain since she happily completes her homework either way.
So I find it dubious that a kids aeron would make a big difference in a child's ability to learn or focus. But what do I know? I'm curious if there is more data on this.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
I'm not sure what makes this chair so much better than the existing desks kids use. It doesn't appear to be padded, although presumably the seatback flexes a bit? It's on wheels that will be clogged up with gunk in a year and mean that the chairs will never sit still properly. It has one of those obnoxious swivel desks that look great until you realize that there's nowhere to swivel them to that isn't in the way. Sure there's space for a bookbag underneath the seat, a feature that has been standard on desks since they were first invented. Oh, and it costs 15 times as much as a standard desk? Somehow I don't think this is going to be a roaring success.
I read the internet for the articles.
For school districts with deep pockets
Isn't that an oxymoron? Either that or I'm being too US centric...
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Inverse stadium seating with cubicle walls - teach can see each student but none of them can see each other
Oh yeah, that'll fix the problem - let's through more money at it. I know Johnny isn't learning enough because his desk is uncomfortable. We need lazy-boy desks with iPod docks. That's the ticket.
I do believe that a big part of the solution might be eliminating people from the decision making process. (Like whoever is trying to sell a lot of premium desks to schools.) AKA, eliminate Bureaucracy. Let's start by closing the Federal DOE and then having States eliminate a lot of their Administrative overhead. After the system has time to adjust to that, let's then ask the Teachers what they need to best educate the children. I bet you'll find that it's not desks by Cadillac either.
Oh, and who in the world gets a $700 desk chair at their desk besides the CEO? I work at a primarily desk job and my chair is some $50 bargain special that was thrown out by another department twice before I was able to get it. It's uncomfortable with no lumbar support, squeaks like no tomorrow and could fall apart at any minute. So, before you squeeze more tax dollars out of me for Little Johnny's premium desk, how about you let me keep enough that I can afford to by my own comfortable chair. GEEZ!
My office chair cost well under the $40 price point, and I'm quite happy with it, thanks. I don't see any need at all for anything more expensive: this one does everything I need. It moves up & down so I can position it at the right level, it's on casters, and it swivels. It has a base, arms, and a back, all of which are padded and covered in artificial leather. What more do you need?
Kids don't weigh as much as adults, in general, so the quality of their furniture isn't as important. Also because they have so much fidgety energy.
I have a hard time believing there is anywhere remotely close to $500-$1300(new Aeron) in materials and amortized research and development in the cost of those chairs. They are priced prohibitively high.
There is no doubt in my mind if they reduced the prices the chairs 1/4 to 1/3 of the current prices, the company would still turn a descent profit on each unit, and sales would explode.
As a recent escapee/graduate of a High School institution, I can say that the desks actually were in fairly good condition. Though I was in more upper-level classes, so perhaps the kids in them were a little bit less likely to destroy things that they knew they had to sit in day after day. The chairs were horribly uncomfortable - for someone like me who's short but with a longer torso, it was painful to lean back fully in them because their tops met my lower back oddly, but then hard to reach the ground when seated fully as well. Friends also agreed that the chairs were not the best design - is it that much more expensive to get cheap plastic chairs with slightly higher backs, so you don't end up with odd back pain and neck strain as a result of having to sit in them for 8 hours in a day?
Wait, I thought child obesity was only a problem in America! There are fat kids in the rest of the world too!?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Where are you? It's hard to believe that any district would be able to call for 10% per year increases in this economy without there being some serious reasons behind it. I live in one of the most affluent counties in the US, and our school budget is frozen. Had there been freezes that they're trying to make up, or what?
A I am not sitting in a 700$ chair on work or at home. An to boost my performance I need enough free time for things like fitness or other sports to practice (not watch). And kids perform best when they have enough exercise outside of the classroom. Also it helps when they have enough well trained teachers, classroom which are not cold in winter, wet in spring and autumn. A yes and they are better when they are not taught to compete, but learn form each other and help each other. Being an greedy egoist can be done later in life.
we had these designer desk...things.
That IDEO chair looks nice enough but it should cost about $40 on State/Federal Contract. Sure as heck aren't going to see me spending $399 on one.
...you could get the kids out of the chair for a bit by actually giving them reasonable recess periods instead?
thank fuck there are nice private schools.
Hah. Most of my career my butt has been parked in whatever aging POS I could scrounge that wouldn't fall apart.
Insofar as I do have a nice new chair now (my first), may I observe that those who DO have $700 Aeron chairs do so because they are creating wealth, not just absorbing material. (Those unclear on rules of logic are reminded that the last sentence does not mean those who do not have an expensive chair are not creating wealth.) One EARNS comfort as a matter of surplus, it is not "deserved" by simple existence and presence. The expensive chair sat upon is a consequence of productivity, not a primary means thereto.
The "to improve education, throw more money at it" crowd fails to realize that by far the biggest factor in education is the student's own willingness to learn. If they don't want to be there, students will squirm just as much in an expensive chair as a cheap one, and get just as little out of the experience.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Those "Node" chairs have no padding, practically nonexistant armrests and are completely non-adjustable. They don't look anymore comfortable than any school chair I've ever sat in.
But they have tiny wheels! and a tiny desktop! and only cost 15 times the price of a standard chair!
What a deal! I'll take two!
Where do you work that you get $700 chairs? I'd be happy with something with an adjustable back and arm rests that are in tact. I've yet to work a job where anything but the larger meeting rooms have nice chairs in them, and that's only because outside clients have to sit in there.
For a classroom, here's things we can't have:
Wheels that enable the desk to slide --- Two words: Bumper Cars
Swivel seats --- Because it's just an excuse to fidget
****Better yet... NO MOVING PARTS****
Required specialist maintenance --- Because it won't be provided
Real, non-particle board wood --- It's too expensive and warps.
Any plastic aside from the seat and the chair back --- They're too easily carved, melted, bent, broken, etc.
Arms/Wings --- Because they're always too sharp and not good for fat kids
The chair presented in the article is a triumph of design, but it won't work for anyone with any internal child. Yes, that means college students down to kindergartners. It's a Ferrari of desks when schools (ALL schools) look for steel-block engine trucks that require little maintenance beyond a wash and an oil from time to time.
They should have designed around the restrictions of the user instead of trying to redefine the user with design.
Research here in Netherlands points towards to daylight lighting having large influence on the performance of school children.
Link is in dutch: http://www.ed.nl/onderwijs/6474024/Meer-profijt-scholen-door-beter-licht.ece
Summary (paraphrased): modified lighting leads to a 15% increase in concentration of school children. Followup research must be done to prove any link to performance. Trial was done at two schools, and sponsored by Philips.
My personal experiences back this up: daylight lamps in particular are fantastic, they're more effective than coffee at keeping me alert.
We have shrinking budgets for education, resulting in teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, and deteriorating buildings, and this "intellectual" (my father's definition for someone educated beyond his intelligence) wants to spend it on **fancy chairs?**
This might fly in LA County, but I don't see a lot of public schools jumping at this.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
I've recently shifted my desk down so that I can sit on the floor and do work, game, and lounge. I've found that it has several benefits. I can stretch my legs. I can shift positions: squat, sit, kneel, as well as many variations between those positions. I have a back support that I can lean on that's designed to be used on the ground.
I suffer from scoliosis, and I decided that this is a better option than sitting in the exact same position all day, every day; which will lead to faster disc degeneration for me. I want to change my position and maintain flexibility instead of slouching in a chair. We evolved sitting on the earth. Chairs have very recently been introduced to our lifestyles, and I believe that they have negative side effects that haven't been scrutinized enough.
Sitting on the ground would also eliminate the cost of chairs, however custom desks would need to be made. But I don't think it would be that hard to make those.
I'm not sure how many of the naysayers here are considerably overweight or suffer from hemorrhoids, but the relation of comfort to performance is not superfluous.
Personally, I can hardly even bear the pain inflicted by oldschool wooden classroom chairs. In fact, even after just ten minutes of sitting, I'm seeing sparkles and walking crooked when I stand up. The pain is on par with that of a bone fracture.
Question: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture?
Test: Has the quality of furniture in the American classroom changed in any measurable way in the last several decades?
Seems like 'no' to me. Unless it was broken from the very beginning. But if this is the case, then why the need to 'fix' it?
Isn't sitting an all around unnatural posture to begin with? Isn't the population getting obese and not getting enough exercise? Scrap the chairs altogether and start designing classrooms to fit with the natural and easy human tendency to stand. I personally would love to have desks allow me to stand while working, it's really almost just as comfortable as sitting 'properly'.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Be glad. My school district is facing a 30% decrease over the next 4 years, due to a reduction in tax revenue, so they will be laying mandatory-class teachers off (enlarging class size), and canceling elective classes like band (and extracurricular sports) outright. Like most school boards, the budget is mostly payroll, so there's nothing else to cut once you've stopped buying new textbooks and furniture, which they've already done. The only way they can legally enlarge class size is to get an amendment to the state constitution increasing the cap on class size, which is on the ballot for a vote next week.
The fact that we will be graduating a generation of illiterate and innumerate kids seems to bother the tax-phobic voters not at all. The last one to whom I spoke on the issue said he was fine with downsizing public schools, "since private schools perform so much better anyway." I tried to point out that having a bimodal distribution of citizen education, wherein the majority, educated in public schools, are are semi-literate and a minority, from wealthy families and educated in private schools, are literate, has been tried in other countries, and didn't work out very well, but he wasn't interested in anything that happened outside of the USA.
Cutting money to schools is like the guy who tells the plant, "Grow, dammit, or I won't water you!" Investing in schools, on the other hand, is about the wisest thing a society can do.
Having had to sit in the school chairs for parent/teach conferences I can agree that schools do need better furniture but the problem is where are they going to get the money? Schools these days are under funded. That's why students are still using chairs/desks that their parents/grandparents used in school........ minus the ink well.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Adults need fancy chairs because they've abused their bodies over time and their bodies can't adapt as quickly. Children are extremely adaptable and their plasticity should enable them to sit on rocks. Therefore, it is merely a cost issue. Since children tend to stick gum under desks, carve into their tops, and bowl them all over the place, they needn't be built to last the test of time. They need to be robust enough to tolerate a decent about of abuse and then get replaced in a few years.
If you're now thinking that better chairs would prevent that body abuse in adults, I'd argue that you're misguided there, too. It's a posture and ergonomics issue more than anything else.
Disclaimer: I don't subscribe to the need for $700 chairs. My Staples Berwell Luxura Task Chair was $90 and is, in many ways, just as comfortable (though not as adjustable) as chairs that cost 2-5 times as much. It does everything I need it to do. If it falls apart or is destroyed, I'll buy another. I've been in a lot of fancy offices and labs with a lot of really nice (and expensive) chairs. The Berwell isn't as nice, but it's 90% of the way there and simply precludes any reason for me to consider something over the $100 price point.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Where I did my undergraduate, one department spent money on the Hermann Miller Aeron chairs in a large purchase. As a public university, all our purchasing decisions had to be shared with the state, so of course those chairs were known to have been purchased by the department who chose them. Mind you, the Aeron chairs were not the most expensive for the purpose they were going for - in particular these were chairs for employees, not students, to use.
Around the same time it was announced that the Aeron chair would be included in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC. Those who have been to or are familiar with MoMA know that there are a lot of items at MoMA that are recognized for their utility or design that are not necessarily of high price.
Nonetheless, those two news items reached one news station in town close to simultaneously. This quickly then became one news item for them - "Local University Purchases Museum-Quality Furniture with YOUR tax dollars" - which of course brought way more attention to an office chair purchase than should ever be bestowed.
In the end, the University decided that it simply wasn't worth the hassle to even keep the Aerons in the regular list of available chairs for departments. The Aeron became a "special order only" item, that almost required a chiropractic evaluation before the university would approve state funds for it's purchase. Yet other, similar, chairs were available, at and higher prices than what we were quoted for the Aerons.
So the moral of the story is don't do it. Improve something less controversial, like lunchroom food or overhead projectors. Hell, buy Bose speakers for your auditorium if you want. Just don't buy well known expensive furniture or you'll be dealing with pitchfork-wielding protestors.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My kid's class has a half dozen of those big exercise balls. For the more fidgety kids, sitting on the ball at their desk allows them a little wiggle so they can let their minds do what they want. Nobody falls down, and not every kid benefits from the "ball-chair", but it helps certain kids a LOT.
Face it: most office chairs allow at least a rotation axis. If your desk chair didn't rotate a little you'd spend a LOT of time fighting the chair. By allowing a little freedom of movement, you can work with the tool and not against it.
When the summary said "For school districts with deep pockets..." it really meant "For school districts that are able to reach deeply into the pockets of the local property owners..."
And what you really mean is "For school districts that are able to reach deeply into the pockets of the local property owners who are willing to let them do so in the knowledge that better test scores in the local school district will have a positive effect on their own property value as well as being a good investment in the future since there is no better investment than in the education of children."
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I really can't stand this culture of entitlement; these millenials who need to be pampered in every way. And ironically, despite all this money dumped into this feel good crap these students continue to perform poorly in schools. Americans would be shocked at the classroom environments students in Asia face, especially the huge classes with upwards of 30 students. And yet, academically, they run rings around Americans. Kids are in school to learn, not to feel good, not to have fun.
Kids fidget because they don't want to be in class. Stick them in $5000 recliners and they'll still be antsy to get out of class. Either that or you'll have a classroom full of sleeping students.
Want kids to excel in school? Instill in them the value of working hard, the value of an education. Don't let them slack off. Stop instilling in kids the unrealistic expectation that work can be fun; that our lives will only be fulfilling if we're constantly doing crazy, unproductive things or partake in a hyperactive nightlife. That the guy who has a regular job and is raising a family is a loser who's given up on life. Of course, it's hard to fight this when the entertainment industry is constantly perpetuating this attitude.
Also extremely important is to not over-emphasize the importance of socializing. It is important to interact with people and have friends, but it is not the most important thing in the world. That's a huge mistake I see parents make all the time and it seems to be a surefire way to ensure kids perform poorly in school.
I went to what many would consider an inner-city school. Those who went on to be successful, some of whom went to ivy league schools had parents who stressed these principles to one extent or another. And given that their parents weren't necessarily all that well off they didn't didn't have the money to spoil them. The best part is when parents acknowledge their kids are spoiled but continue doing it anyway.
Has anyone noticed the kinds of cars college kids are driving nowadays? It's shocking to see all the expensive, brand new cars. I find it ironic when I go past the bus stop and see foreign students waiting there. Most of those college kids with the nice cars would give an impassioned argument about how they need that car to survive, but I guarantee the foreign kids on the bus will be the valedictorians at graduation.
Okay, end of rant.
I paid for part of my degree by working as a custodian in a school district near my home in New Jersey. I'm not quite sure what their newer desks are made of, but it's certainly not Bakelite - it doesn't have the characteristic smell.
The problem with putting even low-to-moderately nice-ish things in a school is two-fold:
First, kids from middle school and up (even kids in a decently well to do area) seem to love destroying stuff. There's two basic types of desks in this district, the kind with a particle board desktop with some kind of 'tough' plastic outer coating, and the kind with a solid hard/resilient plastic desktop. The main mode of failure of the first kind is some wise-ass will start to use a mechanical pencil or similar to start etching something asinine into the top of the desk. Then someone will start to pull at the scar and will eventually peel back and rip off the whole outer plastic coating. With the second kind, it's apparently far more entertaining to just break off the whole top of the desk since it's brittle and will fracture nicely.
Second is that every summer, the whole school gets cleaned with some rather interesting commercial cleaners. In order to get off all the pencil/pen/marker marks, there's an even harsher cleaner that's used. So if you try to use some kind of fabric or softer material, they simply won't get cleaned. It's hard enough to get a school full of hard surfaces cleaned in a summer without having to clean fabric furniture and worrying about mold/mildew/stains/etc. With parents being what they are, they won't stand for their little precious snowflakes having to park their asses on dirty furniture - so that's out.
Think about it like this... why do you suppose that there's no nice stuff available in public parks? Some people (not everyone, but enough to be a problem) just like breaking other people's stuff. It's not theirs, why should they worry? Take what you see in just about any publicly available restroom and now apply that to furniture. It's a problem of attitude and personal responsibility.
...the kids. Despite the preference to blame everyone and now every thing, why can't we admit that kids who want to do well, do well, and those who don't, don't? Despite the nation's apparent lackluster majority of schools, somehow, good students still tend to be produced. SO maybe we should look at why the good students are good students and not base things on tangential possibilities like furniture. Also, let's be honest. When you were in school, there were maybe a few handfuls of kids who did well and were receptive to the necessary hard work. The rest seemed to be there, just because they had to be. Now, is it better to spend a ton of money on developing schools to a very high level when only a handful care, or should we have a few pretty awesome schools per large city where those kids receptive to education can attain their full potential?
At that price point there are important features missing...
Anybody look at the article linked for the $40 price point? It's advertising a cheap folding chair with a built in desk. The style of desks I remember from middle school were selling on that web site for $100-$150 each.
They weren't the most comfy things in the world, but when I was a kid I was far less prone to get sore from sitting in weird ways or get random backaches and such.
Youth is wasted on the young. But that's beside the point. I think schools are already spending well more than $40/chair.
Why the f**k do americans always bolt their desk to chairs? Why?
Hey idiots! TFA doesn't say _anything_ about spending $500 per kid on Aeron chairs. Here's a few choice quotes from it since you were too lazy to RTFA and thought you'd dazzle the world with your ability to have an opinion on everything without actually knowing what you're talking about:
If a chair is too big for a child, his or her feet dangle and the hard edge of the seat digs into the hamstrings, both of which, Dennerlein says, forces the brain to pay attention to something other than geometry worksheets.
[snip]
Alan Hedge, a professor of ergonomics at Cornell University, once helped a school-furniture company design an adjustable chair for students. It cost between $60 and $80. Purchasing guidelines, which can be as rigid as a melamine chair, tend to set the price standard closer to $40, so it didn't sell.
[snip]
Educators might cringe, assuming distractions, but ergonomists who have watched well-behaved children at standing-height tables or in bouncy chairs in Sweden or New Zealand or Canada insist that innovative furniture makes students pay more attention, not less.
Next time you want kids to sit on a plank of wood with nowhere to work, I hope you'll be willing to forgo your nice comfortable office chair and show them how it's done.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The best chair I ever sat in was when I worked for Sun in Scotland (LLG03, if any ex-Sun folk are in the house). I'd love to find out what sort of chair it was.
Fully adjustable setup, shoulder-height back, floating recline that actually worked, sculpted foam inserts. Awesome. And Sun replaced the foam back and seat every couple of years. Must have been expensive to fit out the place with those chairs, but there's no way anyone would have put up with 12 hour shifts without them.
C-x C-s C-x k
they will complain that things are more expensive to accomplish in US.
Sure, give elementary school kids ipads where a cheap paper notebook will do, give them aeron chairs when a simple wooden desk and chairs will do (I mean, human race is still walking okay after having been educated by sitting on wooden chairs for 200+ years), given them..
In the meantime, do not teach them values, do not ingrain in them the importance of learning, teach them to respect football jocks and 'popular kids' more than disciplined ones with their head screwed on straight. and complain about declining academic performance in the USA.
yeah, rock on guys.
... one of those big, high backed chairs with a wide bench seat and high armrests. Just like the ones they have in the VIP section of the strip clubs.
Have gnu, will travel.
I find the $500 chair from Humanscale that my work assigned to me to be a miserable and uncomfortable. It has a million adjustments, but nothing can make the back firm enough for me to be comfortable. I would be happy with that $33 steel folding chair if getting up every 45-60 minutes was mandatory (secondary school students have to switch classes about that often). My chair is so ergonomic that I now consider it a parody of ergonomics because it isn't actually comfortable at all, it just looks comfortable and healthy from the brochure. (like most ergonomic products)
I had a very old wooden bankers chair that I found perfect for programming all night, but I wiggle so much in my seat that most chairs rip apart after a couple years. (my poor parents!)
A chair that is simple, cheap and moderately ergonomic that is combined with good practices such as posture and taking breaks should really be good enough for a happy, productive worker or student.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Where the hell do you work, and do they need help? Where i work you are lucky if the arms don't fall off on a regular basis.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Because there's ample evidence that spending more money creates better results. That's why children are 3 times more educated than they were back in the 1950s.
OK, maybe not these overpriced toys. But a rather large number of the chairs I was stuck with in primary and secondary school had a molded and textured plastic seat and back with large metal rivets holding the back and seat to a metal frame. Never mind the ordinary discomfort of such an apparatus. Consider what happens when cloth moves against plastic... you get a static charge. Guess where that discharges? Right through the metal rivets. So in dry weather, sitting in such a chair meant constantly getting shocked in the back, legs, and butt. Real conducive to learning, that.
Here is one incarnation of said torture device.
The teachers suck, the schools suck, the curriculum sucks, the textbooks suck, the culture sucks. QUICK SOMEONE FIX THE CHAIRS
I will amost certainly be modded down for this, but it seems more and more blatantly obvious that the US public school system exists to benefit teachers, and not students. Students are the necessary catylist for the teacher's paycheck.
Why do teachers get high end 500$ chairs, anyway? I am lucky if my ENGINEERING workstation has a 40$ office chair. What, are their butts made of solid gold or something? In dire risk of developing pressure sores that they need extra choushy padding?
I mean, WTF. (Don't even get me started on the 50 page process to fire a bad teacher.)
Perhaps what is really needed to fix the broken public school system, is to cut-back the power of the teacher's union? I am not suggesting that it get scrapped totally, but like all unions it operates best at equilibrium with the harsh realities of operational costs and requirements-- That means that the current "No, you CANT fire a teacher! If you do, you have to go through this rediculous paperwork first, and expect appeal!" standard practice in public education needs to stop. As long as the schools exist to benefit teachers, and not students, public education will always be lacklustre, no matter how cozy the student's desks are.
Well this story has a US focus but much like broadband and healthcare we should look at other countries, or are you saying it's only the US kids that are hard on furniture?
If you noticed on the new Star Trek movie, the Vulcan "school" consisted of hemispherical depressions in which students were forced to stand while being bombarded with questions. Lets do that.
The pressure per unit of seating area for adults is much greater than for children because volume (and thereby weight) increases at a greater rate than surface area as one grows. Similar principles account for why insects are so strong for their size, why elephants can't survive moderate falls, and why cells are so small. Sea creatures have water to support them so they can grow to much larger sizes. Money would be better spent on rigorous physical activity and nutritious meals that fights childhood obesity to decrease the mass per seating area of children than on comfy furniture that gets destroyed in a couple years. I was scrawny all through childhood but I don't remember the hard furniture at school as particularly uncomfortable. Sitting in a hard chair now becomes torture after a few minutes.
Ha, I have an Aeron chair at work and guess what, its not that great. I still get back pain sitting in it all day. I did not even notice it was one for about a month after I started. Those chairs are mostly hype. Many studies (and my personal experience) shows that the act of sitting on your ass all day is not good for you. Spending $700 on a chair will not fix the fundamental problem. I don't know how to improve the situation, except maybe having kids standing and using desks at arm level, but I don't think buying new chairs will help anyone except the furniture salesmen.
I can see this MAYBE in a private school, but NEVER in public schools. Having graduated from HS 2 years ago, I am able to say it is ridiculous how stupid kids are, and how little they understand concepts, such as money.
The chairs would be destroyed within a month. A chair isn't really going to motivate someone to do better in school; students will either do well or they wont, it is up to them to not fuck around and be little show-off pricks for their friends all the time.
Though, as I am sitting in my Aeron right now, I can say I would have loved to have them in HS.
Standing sure works for the fat-ass teacher 8 hours a day. I think we should just put every stooodent on treadmills while they do their classwork, so they can generate power that will turn the school's Air Heating & Conditioning System as well as provide electricity for lighting so they're off the grid. And every stooodent should have a McBook and TI Calculator rather than a NetBooks & programmable CellPhone PDA Calculator just so we can be inflexibly compliant to the Hipsters in the Durpartment of Educastration.
Apparently sitting harms health. One company has people standing on slow moving treadmills for the entire work day while using a chest level desk designed for standing. Weight and health issues apparently are addressed by this type of technique.
of having children well enough disciplined they don't wreck everything in their path? Seriously, people in Europe and Asia don't do that crap, so why the hell do Americans?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These, 'If only the kids werkd (sic) harder' crowd. Education starts at home. When mom & dad get home at 9 o'clock dead tired from a ruff scrabble for existence that doesn't leave much time for junior. Shmucks point to Abe Lincoln and his log cabin school and ignore the other 50 kids from his school that died of cholera & gangrene from buckshot wounds in the war.
/. crowd can come by and take all your stuff and harvest your organs for the Black^W Free Market.
The point of civilization is so we don't have to 'earn' a basic level of comfort, and so the standard of what's 'basic' continues to rise. If for some reason you don't feel that way please post your home address so the
Jesus, even your sig is dumb, and you got modded up. What the hell is this country going to do?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Come on! So now the fault for the poor state of US education is that... children don't sit on $1k aeron chairs? Lets just put more $$$ on stupid things (even though the US outspends most other countries and manages to get pathetically low results in any comparison). Want REAL improvement? Put $$ into early education (budget has just been halved for it here in MO) and then provide good support to teachers etc etc. Chairs... just what we needed.
Fixing the American classroom is definitely necessary. American high school kids now rank below average on academic skills amongst developed nations. But furniture is the least of it. Money is also not the problem - we spend far more than we used to, and still results are going down. How about these:
- Scrap teacher's colleges, and scrap teaching degrees. For primary school accept any of several college degrees, plus a couple of courses in child psychology, plus passing a general competence test. Above primary school, require a degree in what the person wants to teach, plus a couple of pedagogical courses.
- Save money by eliminating bureaucracy. The previous city I lived in, there were more people working in school administration that there were teaching. Fire most of the adminstrative staff.
- Get rid of teachers' unions. Their sole purpose is to be to prevent any teacher - no matter how incompetent - from being fired. When the lousy teachers continue to get paid for doing jack all, how can you encourage and support the good teachers?
- Reinstate advanced courses and limit them to the best students. For every $1 spent on special-needs kids (bottom-end of the bell curve) we ought to spend $5 on students at the top-end of the bell curve. It's not PC, but these are the students who will be driving the economy in 20 years.
- Last but not least, return control of the schools to the local communities. State and federal involvement only adds more layers of bureaucracy.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I learned all I needed to know by actually working through the ranks of employment, training others to fill the position I would graduate away from while those above me did the same unto me. What is not to like about that, to be paid while doing productive work while being educated and volunteered to this line of position whereas State and local governments push dis-advantage onto the younger peers to coerce them into tedious repetitive studies from a faculty that couldn't get a job in the real world.
Push politics back into the ocean into bloody shark-infested waters, and whomever survives can write a book about it and maybe I'll buy it from a Book Store rather than forced to buy it for $150 from some f*cking State-regulated and accredited College or University.
Don't get me wrong, I understand it, and am willing to part with money in order to help the school district handle more students, keep par with inflation (so they don't have to gut all the goodies and extras, which in the end are some of the few truly valuable parts of the institutions), and all that good stuff, but I am still waiting for the study that links higher school district budgets with more educated students. I wouldn't be upset if they could justify it. But they don't bother!
Schools seem to be one of those few industries where they can mandate steep price hikes practically overnight in order for you to get... the same damned thing. The only other one that springs to mind is telcos.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
I've got nothing against the Aeron chair per se, but ergonomically it's mostly theater. You stay more alert, and your back feels better, if you more or less perch on the edge of your chair - pretty much any chair - with your feet on the floor. That is to say, it doesn't matter what the back of the chair is made of. And w.r.t. desks, the lessons they used to teach in typing class are still true when it comes to keyboard height. None of this is exactly rocket science, but for those who want to know more about the ergonomics and history of furniture there's a terrific book called The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz.
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
The "to improve education, throw more money at it" crowd fails to realize that by far the biggest factor in education is the student's own willingness to learn. If they don't want to be there, students will squirm just as much in an expensive chair as a cheap one, and get just as little out of the experience.
And the most effective way to ensure that students are willing to learn? I'd say making attendance optional.
The most valuable learning I achieved, I achieved in my own time and under my own direction; either from internet tutorials and public library books (programming), or by parent-paid tuition in a free market (musical instruments), or by self-paid tutoring software (touch typing).
The important things I learned in school (math and english), school spent way too much time on and/or gave me way too little of. In return, school required that I spend my time on various activities that were useless to me (making drawings and telling stories spring to mind; music class was okay but somewhat redundant; ...). And I probably had the motivation to learn mathematics and english that in the absence of school I would have wanted some non-school tutilege (e.g. a private teacher).
I've worked in the schools for over 20 years. Trust me, schools need a lot of help, but better, more expensive, chairs is not anywhere on their list of their needs.
I appreciate designers' desire to help. But if they want to help, they should volunteer a couple hours per week at a local school. Or, if they are trying to drum up work for designers, the designers would be welcome to work as teachers. We'll even pay them!
Our children and our schools need a lot of help, but what they need is good people willing to work in the schools.
Is that the best way to fix things, throw money at it? How about you pay the teachers more and you will get more qualified people that will be more motivated to do a better job. G.d.
It's not just a price point. Due to the fact that a room may be used with classes of various sizes, the chairs (and to a lesser extent, tables and desks) must be able to fold or stack so they can be moved out of the way without having to call in movers each time. Aero chairs are nice (except when you need to fart, in which case it's nicer to have the generic $50 chair) but they DON'T STACK.
Have you been to a casino? They don't put out great chairs either (though they're better than school chairs), except for the dealers. Why? Because they need to be able to move them between tables or on/off the floor entirely, and to do this it helps a great deal if they can stack them.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
and am willing to part with money in order to help the school district handle more students, keep par with inflation
You know you didn't directly say it, but i've heard people say "we need to raise taxes to keep up with inflation". That is complete bunk, all the major tax structures are "inflation" tied. Not necessarily to the official inflation numbers, but indirectly. Sales taxes are a percentage of the product "value" that means when the price of an item goes up due to inflation, the taxes go up. Same with "property" taxes, and indirectly income taxes too. Heck all three are also tied to increased population growth. More people, means more houses/apartments to tax. So basically the only real problem happen when people stop buying stuff, get laid off, or property values decrease.
But that's why we base our budgets on slightly pessimistic estimates, rather than best case ones and save anything remaining in the good years, for the years that might be a little worse than our estimates. Furthermore we always set the taxes/costs equal to the actual long term costs, so we don't run into cases were we cant afford to replace something because we have only been paying the maintenance costs on it, while ignoring the fact that the item wears out... right???!!!!
You're right. You have proven that. That's easy to do because what you have proven IS my point: creature comforts, marginal effects aside, do not lead to production of wealth.
What has been proven is your level of reading comprehension is atrocious, probably due to blind rage induced by sheer bigotry regarding "conservatives".
You "demand data and experiments demonstrating the assertion that student's 'willingness to learn' is the biggest obstacle"? Fine.
I'm a professor. Long stories short, every opportunity, tool, and motivation is afforded my students. Those who do the work pass, those who don't don't. One third don't - not because the chairs are not comfortable, not because of the level of funds spent, but because they opt to not do work which they are entirely capable of doing. There is no excuse.
I teach the same material at the same time using the same resources at different locations. There is a discernible difference in results, traceable to motivation.
Sure other issues have an effect, but if the student will not do the work they will not pass, no matter the money thrown at education.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
You're right. You have proven that. That's easy to do because what you have proven IS my point: creature comforts, marginal effects aside, do not lead to production of wealth...What has been proven is your level of reading comprehension is atrocious
If that was your point, you should have written that instead of "those who DO have $700 Aeron chairs do so because they are creating wealth, not just absorbing material... The expensive chair sat upon is a consequence of productivity, not a primary means thereto."
You based your argument on an individual example, implying that you were referring to the chair being a consequence of that person's productivity rather than society's. You also clarified that you were talking about individuals and their creation of wealth. You then went on to say that the chair was a "consequence, not a primary means thereto".
The fault lies in your inability or lack of desire to clearly articulate precisely what you mean, not in my inability to comprehend what you wrote. You can't expect me to understand what you meant rather than what you wrote without much more context and background. I'm sure (well, I hope) you don't tell your students to "write papers in a style" then fail them for using APA instead of MLA.
I apologize for attacking the argument you wrote rather than the one you intended to write. If you meant to say that a $700 chair probably isn't the best investment for an underfunded or underperforming school/student, I agree with you.
As for the rest of your reply...
I think it was pretty clear that I was talking about funding in education during the formative years, although I could have been more specific. Your university/college example does counter the notion that additional creature comforts would be beneficial in colleges, but it doesn't support your original entire thesis:
The "to improve education, throw more money at it" crowd fails to realize that by far the biggest factor in education is the student's own willingness to learn.
If you meant "the biggest factor in higher education is the student's own willingness to learn", you should have written that instead. My rebuttal against what you actually wrote still stands: for a very large portion of the educational system, funding has one of the largest, most widely interactive relationships I know of. My examples dealt entirely with lower education as I'm not all that concerned with increasing funding to higher education for the same reasons you aren't.
Obviously there is a point below which a lack of creature comforts impedes learning. I argued that, in many schools, funding is so low that "throwing more money at it" (to include the procurement of functional furniture, paper, and even chalk) really will solve or alleviate many problems.
Likewise, there is a point beyond which you would expect diminishing returns. This would certainly apply to most university students in the US.
If I had known you were a professor, I probably would have inferred that you were primarily concerned with postsecondary education. Nothing in your post, however, states this, and this article was discussing use of these chairs in the full spectrum of educational institutions.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling