Thursday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday's most active thread was one I didn't even know about until this morning. Yet, it managed to reach 17 pages in just one day. Titled, "Check your phone at the door" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum, the original poster says that she noticed in other threads that some parents have a policy of having their children's friends leave their phones at the door when they come over. The original poster thinks such a policy would be appealing and encourage socializing rather than having all the kids sitting around staring at their phones. I would have never guessed that this would turn out to be such a controversial topic. Several posters say that they would be offended if their child were asked to turn over their phone and that they would expect their child to refuse. These parents can't fathom not having the ability to immediately get in touch with their kids. One poster goes so far as to suspect that parents with such policies plan on abusing her child. Other parents either have such policies or see the benefits of them. One parent seems fixated on porn and appears convinced that if she didn't take the kids' phones, they would all be watching porn in her basement. Another parent describes having her child's friend video a tour of her home and then put it on TikTok. One irony I noticed is a number of instances in which phones were confiscated, but other screen-oriented activities such as video games or movies were allowed. I am not sure that exchanging Instagram or TikTok for Grand Theft Auto really encourages socializing, But, my main takeaway from this thread is that there are a significant number of parents who consider it essential that their children have their phones with them at all times. More than one parent described buying their children Apple Watches so that they could still be in touch even if phones had to be turned over.

In yesterday's blog post I mentioned that I really don't like the genre of threads about things people don't like. Probably getting even with me for writing such an ironic statement, yesterday's second most active thread was another of that type. This one posted in the "Off-Topic" forum was titled, "What's something that you get really sick and tired of having to explain to people?" The original poster is tired of explaining that natural intelligence is more important to success than socio-economic status. Other posters disagree with this assertion and explain that it is not always the case. However, these posters fail to stipulate whether they are sick and tired of having to explain this, so it is not clear that their posts are on-topic. Similarly, other things mentioned such as masking to prevent Covid and promoting breast feeding were not accepted as fact. This resulted in some thread hijacking as these topics were debated. Generally, however, this thread stayed well-behaved and many of the posts were on the humorous side. Based on the responses, there are a wide range of things that folks are sick and tired of explaining.

Third was a thread titled, "Petition to bring back SROs" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The topic of school resource officers (SROs) or police officers assigned to schools has been the subject of many threads in most of our school forums. Montgomery Country removed SROs from their schools prior to the 21-22 school year. Since then, several highly-publicized incidences of violence in MCPS schools have occurred. This has caused many posters to demand the return of SROs and the original poster of this thread wonders whether a petition could be effective for showing support for SROs. Because this is a fairly well-tread topic, there is not much new in this thread. Supporters of SROs cite Board of Education documents supporting the effectiveness of SROs, while opponents claim that studies show the SROs do little to prevent crime. Proponents argue that school principals support the return of SROs, while opponents argue for more social workers and counselors. Much of the thread is focused on school shooters and whether or not SROs are effective in such situations. Considerable attention is paid to the Parkland and Uvalde school shootings in which SROs were present but did nothing to prevent or stop the shooting.

The final thread at which I'll looks was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Once you get into a T10 school, the competition really begins", the original poster describes a student at Northwestern University who has twice failed to get accepted to a competitive finance club, even after writing essays and giving presentations. The poster warns that getting admitted a top university is only part of the battle. Just about every word of the original poster's post is disputed at least once in this thread. Some posters claim that this phenomenon exists outside of the top 10 universities. At least one poster disagrees that Northwestern is even a top school for business. Some posters think that membership in a finance club is irrelevent and does nothing to boost a student's qualifications. Others argue that the student should spend less time writing essays and more time schmoozing the club's members. One poster whose child is also studying at Northwestern says that the "it's who you know not what you know" approach worked for her child who was able to join a competitive finance club. It looks like this thread degenerated to posters hurling personal insults and questioning each other's intelligence. The original poster, for his part, doesn't seem to have returned after the first post.