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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

I see no mention of the guiding principles for schools of the past. They were built to be cheap, long lasting, and durable (storm shelters). Every one of these newer building looks like a high priced and high maintenance design. I don't see any problem with the old bland cinderblock design. I feel that much of the psychology around the building looks is forgetting that people get used to things and that bland isn't necessarily bad if the other content and decor are the primary focus (as they should be Inna school).

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This was very much my first thought as well, that the costs of these buildings are far higher than schools of the past. It's good to want nice things, but there is a tradeoff.

There is a new highschool being built in my community to replace an aging one. The time and cost overruns of the custom designed building, featuring a towering atrium/lobby and ascetically pleasing frontage, has pushed back the move-in date to midsemester/next year.

Part of me loves that these schools look so much nicer and contain an environment better than the ones I went to growing up---another part of me knows that we have _many_ schools that need replacing of the same age as this new one's predecessor, and hardly a budget capable of doing so if they all are to be completed similarly.

Our drive and desire for "nicer" things (or at least things that dress up well), when we can barely fund the necessities, seems to be a hard dichotomy to deal with. How do we accomplish both?

This feels like a very important question: why the hell don't we seem to be able to do this efficiently, despite our vast resources and all the advances we've made in engineering, materials science, and automation in recent decades?

As much as the leftie in me wants to say we're not funding it, we are. Per-student, inflation-adjusted funding for education has gone up a full 50% in my lifetime [1], to more than $18k per student-year. $18k is a lot - for a classroom of 30 students, that's half a million dollars a year. We have the money, and indeed far more money than we once had, in a world where things are cheaper and easier. We should be able to do everything we did generations ago and then some. Sure, there are demands we make now that we didn't make then (like "maybe not with the asbestos", "kids with wheelchairs should be able to get places", and "maybe people with learning disabilities should get a chance"), but I have a hard time believing that those are adding >50% in real terms.

To me, the interesting question isn't the trade-offs, it's why we need to make them at all. It seems like we shouldn't.

The most appealing explanation to me is that there's a sort of low-grade hum of background corruption that is hard to detect but acting as a sort of friction on public-works projects. But that's hard enough to falsify that it's hard to be too confident in it, either.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

30 kids in a class... what, did you attend private school?

More money for education doesn't necessarily mean more money for buildings- they often have to be floated by bonds separate from the main budget.

Schools have more features than 75 years ago- better hvac, higher power requirements, better comms.

Government construction has to follow all the regulations, including a bunch specific to the government to fight corruption or waste.

> higher power requirements

Arguably, the power requirements have been trending downwards since the 90s. Switching teachers and students to laptops instead of chonky desktops almost certainly has made a dent in power consumption. Further better insulation and hvac systems has almost certainly cut down on power costs.

I was thinking more construction costs- now every room needs many outlets instead of the one that the overhead projector cart plugs into. Power efficient lights, insulation etc. require higher construction costs but reduce operating costs. My middle school was a neat piece of 1920's architecture, but lacked a lot of amenities that would be considered necessary now.

The answer is simple, we've been ever expanding the number of roles for maintaining a school.

For example, pretty much every school now-a-days has 1 or multiple SROs assigned to their schools. Cops get paid quite well which means throwing an additional $250k+ into everyone's budget.

Every school now has an IT department which practically did not exist in the past. That costs money.

Then there is just general admin bloat that takes an excessive chunk of money out of schools (For example, PR and marketing for public schools... which is a bit ridiculous, but you district almost certainly is employing them).

There are also just general infrastructure bills coming due with construction prices being higher than ever. Schools built in the 70s are often in desperate need of repair/refurbishment.

Corruption may play a role, but I suspect the way it mostly manifests itself is a principle hiring their do-nothing family member in a role they aren't qualified to fill (so they double fill it).

Why would school need a cop?

Because who else is going to handcuff and tase a 7 year old before arresting them and taking them to juvie for not turning in their homework?

For real, though, it's because we've made it a social taboo for teachers to touch children or to strike back to defend themselves, and the troubled kids whose parents gave them up for emotional adoption to Youtube and Tiktok know this and would nefariously exploit the power imbalance if it were not for the very real and plausible threat of being tackled by a 40%-chance-of-being-a-wife-abuser washed up former highschool football player too stupid to get a bach degree that is legally allowed to execute them without consequence.

The social taboo isn't, IMO, necessarily wrong. There should be a check on adults that need to physically handle a kid. Abusive teachers exist and having a check on anyone working with kids is important.

I'd also point out that smaller (and or older) female teachers can be overpowered by teen boys.

But using cops as a solution is frankly idiotic. Kids do idiotic shit and bringing down the full force of the law against them is insane. For all the reasons you point out, a cop is the worst possible person to rely on for physical restraint.

"But using cops as a solution is frankly idiotic. Kids do idiotic shit and bringing down the full force of the law against them is insane."

SROs tend to be lenient and try not to file charges if possible, or even get involved if it's a minor thing.

From what you're saying, the problem isn't having police in schools. The problem is that the laws can be harsh - for juveniles or adults, in school or elsewhere.

Touching kids is a no-no over here, across the sea, but security is only patrolling overnight. Not during school hours.

Seems the need for police goes a bit further culturally...

Yeah, it's pretty common for teachers in some schools in the US to be assaulted by students. Many schools have metal detectors and other security measures.

> Corruption may play a role, but I suspect the way it mostly manifests itself is a principle hiring their do-nothing family member in a role they aren't qualified to fill (so they double fill it).

But (assuming that this is a correct claim, which seems plausible but which I don't think I can prove) that IS corruption. What else would you call that? It's people in whom we entrust our public resources funneling them to their friends.

Our society is like an old software project where we have hacked things on (bureaucratically) to address bugs one by one until we are left with an insane hydra system.

Build schools is expensive because of everything but building the school. Surveying the land. Getting approval for noise and traffic. Ecological impact studies. Permits for everything. Minor plan changes requiring re-approval of everything. Not to mention all the legal parameters and latent threats around every decision.

Yes, corruption flourishes in red tape. But it is not exactly the source of the problem.

> Our drive and desire for "nicer" things (or at least things that dress up well), when we can barely fund the necessities, seems to be a hard dichotomy to deal with. How do we accomplish both?

Check out the book and concept “Pretty Good House”. You can have nice design without breaking the bank by making the right trade offs in the design process. I think this can be adapted to institutions. Probably ICF walls for high insulation values and lower operating costs, slanted roofs for lower maintenance, heat pumps, larger windows on certain facades for light and interior enjoyment without bringing in intense summer heat (also, overhangs on southern windows), modest entries, etc etc.

Another idea: I don’t understand why every school is designed by a different architect starting at a blank page (even within the same school board let alone the same state/province). Why don’t they have standard sets of optimized designs for different size institutions and figure out all the mechanical and electrical and structural once at the beginning and use the same design for 10-20 years with only small refinements as technology progresses? Lots of money is being wasted on consultants.

Even worse when the school building is aesthetically designed for a limited number of viewpoints or even just one viewpoint.

My own school growing up had a boring rear entrance but a brochure-worthy front entrance that looked traditional and dignified. Unfortunately, that front entrance was virtually never used since the playgrounds and parking lots were much closer to the rear entrance. As a result, us kids were sentenced to staring at the boring posterior of the school and never took away much inspiration from the architecture.

I'd be more concerned with a lack of inspiration from the schooling. Relying on architecture is a poor lesson in inspiration and creativity. People with creative mindsets can create beauty in how they decorate and use the space, just as much or even more so than relying on the space design itself.

Evidenced based design studies on how some designs better than others at promoting healing in hospital design. Not familiar with school studies but I imagine at some point schools should be calibrated to facilitate learning instead of storm shelters (or in US, securitized against shooters). IIRC old enviromental-psych, "nice" enviroments reduce stress, increase attention etc. Regardless why get used to bland? It's good to just be in a nice built enviroment.

My point is, what defines "nice" is based on one's experience. If you get people used to luxury, they will demand it and see declines if it's not met. Most of the hospital improvements are not about having pretty rooms. The pretty rooms are usually only one part of a much bigger group of changes to make things more tolerable. Those other changes are likely bigger factors in comfort.

Evidenced based design is an architecture field. They try to quantify what aspects of built enviroment improves XYZ. I don't disagree with your gist, but sometimes it does come down to more expensive layouts (i.e. trying increase light/window coverage) or finishes that pushes per sq cost up in institutional buildings.

I can't tell you if a lot of these designs are architecture wank, or actually seriously informed by literature, although architects do pour over relevant literature if only to post rationalize / sell designs.

A lot of newer urban public libraries look like the buildings in the pictures. If it works for them it can work for a school where we send our kids for a big part of their life. I think it's a good investment when building new ones, probably at a way higher priority than most things the gov wastes money on.

> Every one of these newer building looks like a high priced and high maintenance design

Not really possible to judge from pictures, as it depends on material selection, durability etc. Good architects can make nice things without breaking the bank.

Just cleaning the vaulted ceilings and all the high windows is a big difference that can be seen in the pictures. Multiple large windows are also a contraindication for it being a storm shelter.

are schools in china traditionally used as storm shelters? perhaps they have separate buildings for that kind of thing

China's imperative is to build cheap and even disposable buildings. The difference in storm shelter paradigms and design considerations is a tangent at best considering we don't share the same concerns here or whatever alternative buildings you are insinuating.

No, but in large parts of China they're supposed to be earthquake-resistant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake#Collap...

Why would it need to be a storm shelter? The only place in the world where schools need to be storm shelters is the midwestern US.

Perhaps the frequency of storms. For example, Europe doesn't have many storms of the same intensity as the tornadoes of the Midwest or the hurricanes of the South.

These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons).

Architecture that looks bad is effectively communicating to its occupants what the institution running it thinks of them and what the institution is about. If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes.

Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing.

"These sorts of schools were modeled after prisons (and actually were designed by the same people designing prisons)."

TFA says this is mostly legend more than fact.

"Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing."

This is survivor bias and tends to include expensive private schools and higher education. Most of those designs have similar "negative" features that the article describes as many of them are gothic, built in a time when glass was limited in size or expense, etc.

"If you model it like a prison, then think about what this communicates and internalizes."

Have the kids spent time in a prision? If the kids don't have a baseline for a what a prison is like, then this conjecture about what it communicates is moot as the fundamental exchange of the idea isn’t present. People reiterating that they are built like prisons are more detrimental than the design itself.

You see prison on TV even as a child. remember the first time I saw my US high school in person and my first thought was that it was clearly a prison inspired design. They had an interior balcony where the each level was viewable from each other level. Unlike a mall the walls were opaque and each door identical with a number.

If the school was properly organized it could be in an actual prison for all would have cared. I think de-streaming is far worse than bad decor.

It's because they're built by tax dollars and the last thing you want to do is be seen to be wasting tax dollars on frivolous things. Nice private schools look great because the clientele expects that and pays for that aesthetic. Also consider that often the highest tax payers and most influential people in a community won't send their kids to the local school so have no interest in having higher taxes fund a nice building. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that it is.

> Before the prison/factory campus came into existence, we did have beautiful schools. And they're still standing.

The nice ones are. There are likely many old school buildings that were cheaply constructed and didn't stand the test of time.

The nice old school building in my town had to have hundreds of millions of dollars put into it because it didn't have AC, a staircase collapsed, and about 100 other serious issues that needed addressing to modernize it. Our community voted YES to funding it through a raise in property taxes but our community is already affluent and the town did a good job specifying exactly what the money would be spent on.

So it costs money and often times people don't see the value in that.

Most private schools by numbers are religiously affiliated and relatively plain. Many are in older buildings. The newer ones have mostly the same design of corridors with identical classrooms.

"The nice ones are. There are likely many old school buildings that were cheaply constructed and didn't stand the test of time."

Yes, that's what survivor bias means.

> Yes, that's what survivor bias means.

I understand that which is why I described it to a person that appeared to not be familiar with it. I wasn’t speaking to you though. So I’m not sure why you’re replying to me about it lol.

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