Can we have a fierce discussion of teens and privacy?

[Pen]

4 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

 

No, you weren't but I don't think it's typical for students to be together all day at school in most high schools. Your choice of class periods isn't usually self-determined. Comprehensive high schools in most of America operate with multiple lunch periods, class periods, and different schedules. Being in the same building doesn't guarantee "together time". There are less than 8 minutes between classes and lunch is 30 minutes or less.

ETA: In my graduating class 25 years ago we had 400 people in my graduating class. This was a semi-rural, suburban district in NW Arkansas (FFA, spit cups in class, smoking courtyard). No, we didn't get to choose our schedules to meet with friends. No, we didn't have lots of time between class periods, and no, we did not have 7 hrs a day with our significant others. I never saw my BF the whole time. He was actually at a different campus (vocational) for most of the day. This isn't so much about you, Pen, as I don't want HS parents to have some outsize view of the social opportunities that PS, HS offers. We had a lot less supervision, in fact we had an open campus and could go to fast food places for lunch, than my DDs school today.

 

🙂

ok   You’ve clarified that the majority of kids are going to be at bigger schools.  

 

Im not sure about the “most of America” concept.  I have no idea if most of America has multiple lunch periods.  Could be. I haven’t studied that. 

 

 

In our wider area, I think the average size of around 750 students may be around true—but made up of a few schools with 1000s in cities— and way more schools with around 100 students average in rural areas.  And even the big schools that I’m aware of don’t have multiple lunch periods here.

Locally kids would not be able to ask to have class with a particular student by name, but if there’s only one drama class, or one ___ class, and two friends sign up then they’ll be in same class.   

Most of the non city schools where I know people who have kids at them have only one 9th grade English class, one Spanish 1 class, etc.  

[Arctic Bunny]

I’ve been reading this thread with interest (14 yr old boy who looks at girls, but has declared them to be too much drama at this point, lol). But I just had to comment on the civility of the posts in a thread asking for a fierce discussion....

[Scarlett]

5 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

Well, yes, there is. I also attended three high schools in CA, AR, and WA. There were many differences in terms of club/course availability and academic expectations but choosing to take classes with a buddy wasn’t one of those. The average high school in America 750 students. That’s mean, not mode. That’s a lot of students in one lunch period.

You went to high school in AR? Me too. 

[Sneezyone]

12 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

You went to high school in AR? Me too. 

yep. I probably overstated the size of my graduating class too...lol...by a lot. I spent the last two years at FHS. You can’t even have high schools with fewer than 350 kids there now...consolidation by judicial fiat. 😂

Edited October 15, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Scarlett]

35 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

yep. I probably overstated the size of my graduating class too...lol...by a lot. I spent the last two years at FHS. You can’t even have high schools with fewer than 350 kids there now...consolidation by judicial fiat. 😂

Where is FHS? I graduated in a small town of 5000. 135 in my graduating class.

[Sneezyone]

11 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Where is FHS? I graduated in a small town of 5000. 135 in my graduating class.

Fayetteville.

[Momto6inIN]

I reserve the right to check my kids' anything, although I've never actually done it.

We frame the whole privacy issue as an accountability issue, not a discipline or punishment ot lack of trust issue. As in, we are all accountable to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. So for example, my DH and I have accountability apps on our phones too, not just the kids. But that only works because my 3 teens have all had a born again conversion and sought out that kind of accountability with us. Not sure how that dynamic would change if we had a teen who didn't want accountability, but I'm sure it would.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, arctic_bunny said:

I’ve been reading this thread with interest (14 yr old boy who looks at girls, but has declared them to be too much drama at this point, lol). But I just had to comment on the civility of the posts in a thread asking for a fierce discussion....

I was pre-emptively bracing for it to be fierce! 😆

But then again, you never know what might trigger folks...it could be cupcakes. Or shopping carts not returned. 

[Scarlett]

8 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

Fayetteville.

Oh wow.  I lived my entire adult life until 7 years ago in Fort Smith.  Now I live in OK, but not far from Fayetteville.

[Sneezyone]

7 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Oh wow.  I lived my entire adult life until 7 years ago in Fort Smith.  Now I live in OK, but not far from Fayetteville.

My only experience with Fort Smith was as a visiting football team. At the time, they were the ‘Rebels’ and played ‘Dixie’ during the games. We were lectured on the bus not to react to epithets.

[Scarlett]

1 minute ago, Sneezyone said:

My only experience with Fort Smith was as a visiting football team. At the time, they were the ‘Rebels’ and played ‘Dixie’ during the games. We were lectured on the bus not to react to epithets.

Oh my word. Well it would have been worse on down south where I went to school.  

[Joker]

3 hours ago, Pen said:

 

🙂

ok   You’ve clarified that the majority of kids are going to be at bigger schools.  

 

Im not sure about the “most of America” concept.  I have no idea if most of America has multiple lunch periods.  Could be. I haven’t studied that. 

 

 

In our wider area, I think the average size of around 750 students may be around true—but made up of a few schools with 1000s in cities— and way more schools with around 100 students average in rural areas.  And even the big schools that I’m aware of don’t have multiple lunch periods here.

Locally kids would not be able to ask to have class with a particular student by name, but if there’s only one drama class, or one ___ class, and two friends sign up then they’ll be in same class.   

Most of the non city schools where I know people who have kids at them have only one 9th grade English class, one Spanish 1 class, etc.  

This seems so off.  I am from a very small town and there were less than 400 in my high school and less than 100 in my graduating class. We still had more than one lunch period and definitely more than one class for each subject. Of course, I knew every student but I still didn't have many classes or time with my besties/boyfriends during the day.

This thread makes me glad oldest only had one real relationship as a teen. She was sweet, they went to prom together, but then it turned into a weird Lifetime movie. Three years later at 20 he still has no desire to try again just yet. Thankfully he has a good group of friends at college and feels there is plenty of time for that later.

I would kind of do the supervision they are asking for so visits wouldn't be one sided but I would secretly be hoping the relationship ended soon. 

[Sneezyone]

1 minute ago, Scarlett said:

Oh my word. Well it would have been worse on down south where I went to school.  

Probably. My years there were a real culture shock. I can’t imagine what it might have been like elsewhere.

[Sneezyone]

2 minutes ago, Joker said:

This seems so off.  I am from a very small town and there were less than 400 in my high school and less than 100 in my graduating class. We still had more than one lunch period and definitely more than one class for each subject. Of course, I knew every student but I still didn't have many classes or time with my besties/boyfriends during the day.

This thread makes me glad oldest only had one real relationship as a teen. She was sweet, they went to prom together, but then it turned into a weird Lifetime movie. Three years later at 20 he still has no desire to try again just yet. Thankfully he has a good group of friends at college and feels there is plenty of time for that later.

I would kind of do the supervision they are asking for so visits wouldn't be one sided but I would secretly be hoping the relationship ended soon. 

I looked it up for kicks and there are some states with super small high schools, 200-300 kids on average: ID, SD, ND, WY, OK. I imagine some of them are tribal.

[Joker]

Oh, and as far as privacy being a privilege, I'm not sure how I feel. My mom was definitely one of those and I still don't trust her to this day. I've even told my kids to never leave anything out when she's around they don't want her snooping in. I've always thought if there was a good reason to check phones and such that I would. I did a few times with ds when dealing with some things but it was very rare. I don't really think it's a good or healthy thing to do.

[ktgrok]

7 hours ago, SKL said:

Actually ... the more I think about how things were when I was around that age ... the longer grows the list of dumb stupid choices that were made.  And there were girls in my class who got pregnant at 14.  So ... likely that's what the girl's mom in this scenario is thinking.  Especially if she doesn't really know Quill's family yet.

Yeah, but I bet they didn't get pregnant with their mom or boyfriend's mom in the house, walking in and out of the room at random times while they watched a movie, you know?

Like, there is supervised as in mom in the house, kids in a public room, parent walks in now and then at unpredictable moments and then there is supervised as in mom sits in the room staring at them and they can't even have a private conversation. 

[Pen]

30 minutes ago, Joker said:

This seems so off.  I am from a very small town and there were less than 400 in my high school and less than 100 in my graduating class. We still had more than one lunch period and definitely more than one class for each subject. Of course, I knew every student but I still didn't have many classes or time with my besties/boyfriends during the day.

This thread makes me glad oldest only had one real relationship as a teen. She was sweet, they went to prom together, but then it turned into a weird Lifetime movie. Three years later at 20 he still has no desire to try again just yet. Thankfully he has a good group of friends at college and feels there is plenty of time for that later.

I would kind of do the supervision they are asking for so visits wouldn't be one sided but I would secretly be hoping the relationship ended soon. 

 

My ds’s class has fewer than 20 students.  🙂 

It is one of the smaller classes though . Around 25 is more common.  

[Sneezyone]

14 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

In my area of NY, schools often have K-12 in the same building, or 2 buildings next to each other. I looked at 5or 6 surrounding towns. The high school senior class size varied from 17 to around 40. The largest town had 100 seniors

I was looking at averages. There are always outliers. I wouldn’t call schools that small the norm.
 

ETA: According to this: some 70% of PS, HS students attend schools with more than 1000 students.  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/hs/schoolsize.html

Edited October 15, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Frances]

13 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

In my area of NY, schools often have K-12 in the same building, or 2 buildings next to each other. I looked at 5or 6 surrounding towns. The high school senior class size varied from 17 to around 40. The largest town had 100 seniors. Their parents and grandparents more than likely went there, too. A majority of the teachers also grew up in the area. Sometimes that sounds sweet to me, other times I find it a bit sad. 

Growing up in rural IA, I couldn’t wait to get out of my small town and my husband felt the same growing up in a similar town. Even though I was never one to get in any trouble, I still hated everyone knowing me and my business. But as my parents aged and especially after my dad passed away and everyone was so helpful and supportive of my mom in every way, I came to see the plus side of living where everyone knows you and many generations of family live in the same town. Ironically, my family is still something of newcomers in my hometown because my parents have only lived there for 50 years and we are not related to anyone else (many of my classmates had lots of first cousins in school with them and now their children are going to school together).

Edited October 15, 2019 by Frances

[Joker]

19 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

I was looking at averages. There are always outliers. I wouldn’t call schools that small the norm.
 

ETA: According to this: some 70% of PS, HS students attend schools with more than 1000 students.  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/hs/schoolsize.html

Yeah, the high school my dc went to has graduating classes of about 700. The high school holds almost 3000 students. I couldn't relate at all since my own was so much smaller. Such different experiences.

[Katy]

5 hours ago, Pen said:

<snip> and way more schools with around 100 students average in rural areas.  And even the big schools that I’m aware of don’t have multiple lunch periods here.

 

 

So I'm sure this varies around the country but in the places we've lived there's a lot of school consolidation and busing going on in rural areas. 

I remember reading in some newspaper in Oklahoma that part of the issue with school funding there is that because of various government structures (both the state and tribal), the schools there weren't easily consolidated like in many areas. Which meant that there were many more people working in administration than there were in larger, consolidated schools, and other people who were hired solely to meet oversight requirements had to be hired for each school, rather than a whole district the size of the county, or even multiple counties in some places.

 

How do large schools do one lunch hour for an entire school? Are you in a warm area where kids can eat outside, or do the schools have HUGE cafeterias that can seat every student at the same time?

[Pen]

This purports to be a list for my current state.  I know the number of students changes week to week as kids move, but a school with 34 probably isn’t suddenly going to get 3000 or vice versa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high_schools_in_Oregon

 

I wonder if saying 70% of Hs students go to schools with more than 1000 is just a way of saying schools where the population is dense tend to be larger, and most people live where the population is dense?

 

[Sneezyone]

3 minutes ago, Katy said:

 

So I'm sure this varies around the country but in the places we've lived there's a lot of school consolidation and busing going on in rural areas. 

I remember reading in some newspaper in Oklahoma that part of the issue with school funding there is that because of various government structures (both the state and tribal), the schools there weren't easily consolidated like in many areas. Which meant that there were many more people working in administration than there were in larger, consolidated schools, and other people who were hired solely to meet oversight requirements had to be hired for each school, rather than a whole district the size of the county, or even multiple counties in some places.

 

How do large schools do one lunch hour for an entire school? Are you in a warm area where kids can eat outside, or do the schools have HUGE cafeterias that can seat every student at the same time?

“One lunch” at DDs school is only once a week but the kids aren’t all eating. It’s about 60 minutes and there are are activities that draw kids away from the lunch area...ping pong, basketball, club meetings and teacher office hours. There was a Supreme Court ruling in AR that mandated consolidation of districts with less than 350 students.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Pen]

3 minutes ago, Katy said:

 

So I'm sure this varies around the country but in the places we've lived there's a lot of school consolidation and busing going on in rural areas. 

 

There’s lots of bussing here—our local school has kids coming from a more or less 40 miles by 18 mile area.  It still has only around 150 students, and is by no means onevof the smallest in state.  Cascades Mountains and Coastal mountains limit the ability to consolidate in those directions. 

3 minutes ago, Katy said:

I remember reading in some newspaper in Oklahoma that part of the issue with school funding there is that because of various government structures (both the state and tribal), the schools there weren't easily consolidated like in many areas. Which meant that there were many more people working in administration than there were in larger, consolidated schools, and other people who were hired solely to meet oversight requirements had to be hired for each school, rather than a whole district the size of the county, or even multiple counties in some places.

 

How do large schools do one lunch hour for an entire school? Are you in a warm area where kids can eat outside, or do the schools have HUGE cafeterias that can seat every student at the same time?

 

It’s usually not too cold here to eat outside.  Plus gym and cafeteria areas 

[Sneezyone]

2 minutes ago, Pen said:

This purports to be a list for my current state.  I know the number of students changes week to week as kids move, but a school with 34 probably isn’t suddenly going to get 3000 or vice versa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high_schools_in_Oregon

 

I wonder if saying 70% of Hs students go to schools with more than 1000 is just a way of saying schools where the population is dense tend to be larger, and most people live where the population is dense?

 

I think it means most high school students do not attend small schools. Katy is correct that there’s been a national move to consolidate tiny schools/districts to reduce administrative expenses and improve course offerings. I remember when the AR SC ruled that small districts were unable to provide an adequate education as required by the state constitution. Lots of small towns lost their high schools after that. The ideal size of a comprehensive high school is supposedly between 600-900 students.

[SKL]

2 hours ago, Joker said:

Oh, and as far as privacy being a privilege, I'm not sure how I feel. My mom was definitely one of those and I still don't trust her to this day. I've even told my kids to never leave anything out when she's around they don't want her snooping in. I've always thought if there was a good reason to check phones and such that I would. I did a few times with ds when dealing with some things but it was very rare. I don't really think it's a good or healthy thing to do.

In my house, for young teens, the phone is a tool for them to do things that are not private.  They know I check everything (or may check) and I've told them to inform their friends of same.  (My kids also know that their friends' parents check phones.)  It would be different if I let them treat it as a private diary and then decided to read it.

I find this to be a very healthy arrangement for my young teens.  It may not be right for your teens, and probably isn't best for much older teens.

One thing to remember - sometimes kids need and want an out when it comes to difficult interpersonal situations.  If I see something unhealthy going on in the text messages etc., I can provide an appropriate intervention and relieve some of the pressure.  When I was a young teen, my folks had no way of knowing how I was struggling with peers, because telling them didn't feel like an option.  (But, at least I was safe at home in those days ... nowadays tough peer stuff follows kids wherever their phone goes.)

So far my kids haven't complained about me reading their texts.  They are a little less excited for me to see what they have been doing on the internet.

[Pen]

6 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

I think it means most high school students do not attend small schools. Katy is correct that there’s been a national move to consolidate tiny schools/districts to reduce administrative expenses and improve course offerings. I remember when the AR SC ruled that small districts were unable to provide an adequate education as required by the state constitution. Lots of small towns lost their high schools after that. The ideal size of a comprehensive high school is supposedly between 600-900 students.

 

Interesting.

I think in my current state that few are in that size range. Most bigger or smaller

how did they decide that was best? 

[Pen]

I tried to answer my own question and could not but did find:

https://www.newvisions.org/pages/small-schools-study

[Sneezyone]

4 hours ago, Pen said:

 

Interesting.

I think in my current state that few are in that size range. Most bigger or smaller

how did they decide that was best? 

 

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/hs/schoolsize.html

 

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, Pen said:

I tried to answer my own question and could not but did find:

https://www.newvisions.org/pages/small-schools-study

 

This is a little skewed. Student engagement/performance increased in some areas, yes, but that was at the expense of other subjects. The smaller school within a school programs were unable to offer robust performing arts (specifically band and orchestra) programs.

[Tanaqui]

Here in NYC Bloomberg was very taken with small high schools, so every time they closed a failing "large" high school they shoved 4 - 6 smaller schools in the same spot.

Now people are taking a long, sober look at these smaller high schools and saying "Wait - but they turned out not to be a panacea after all!" (No kidding.) But there's no push to open up larger or even middle-sized schools again, or even to have the multiple small schools on the same campus band together to offer certain not-very-much-in-demand classes that none can support on their own, though they do band together to offer sports and you're allowed to do after school sports at another school if your school doesn't offer them.

Meanwhile, the middle schools are still pretty freaking enormous, and nobody seems to have noticed or cared.