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The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#121

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

SkyBelow wrote: post #77
griffinkelly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan they don't use any computers etc until a much older age in school; interestingly much of that stems from a worry of hindering a student's ability to write kanji.

Having dabbled in kanji, my initial assumption is that such a worry is justified. With English you have 60 or so characters you need to know how to write, many near duplicates (X vs x, U vs u). Kanji is far more numerous and also seems to have a more artistic emphasis.

Yeah, the worry's pretty unambiguously justified; even today, native speakers sometimes just forget how to write words they know. It's just a question of how much it matters.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#122

Post by cryptica »

Everything I learned came out of a computer so these statistics certaintly don't apply to me.

I found human teachers terrible at explaining things. Their explanations are often full of holes and they expect you to move at their pace - They don't give you the time to absorb the content. I felt that math class was just for show. I never learned anything from it.

I failed math in my final year of school, then I went to university and I got distinction in math. The difference was that at university, I was watching videos online and using free online interactive graphing software and programming matrix transformations.

The problem is not technology in general. It's using the wrong technologies.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#123

Post by edflsafoiewq »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #83

I only ever write on a computer. I own a single pen which I have not needed to replace since I moved into my apartment in 2016. I'm pretty sure I last used it in November, when I had to fill out a form for jury duty. The article cite studies that handwriting is linked to brain development, and reading on paper improves memory, and so on... I'm certainly not in a position to refute those studies, but I have to wonder…

You need to write to do math, which is a major focus of K-12 education.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#124

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

pier25 wrote: post #110

It totally is. I worked in EdTech for the past 4 years and was in contact with the education world. Digital devices are harmful to younger kids. The brain develops much better when using fine motor skills such as writing with pen and paper. France banned all digital devices in primary schools for a reason and all countries should do it. The most important factor in getting quality education are not digital devices or…

>The most important factor in getting quality education are not digital devices or educational material but the quality of the teacher.

I agree with you in general, but I think the most important factor in getting quality education is parents that value education.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#125

Post by ses1984 »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #106
jacobolus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spellcheck is not like a handheld electronic calculator. It doesn’t write for you. It’s more like a system that would let you practice doing arithmetic with pen and paper but then immediately show errors. Look at how people practice board games nowadays: they try making their own moves but get a precise computer analysis to reveal when they have made a blunder on the spot, for real-time feedback. This is not the same…

You're thinking of it as a pedagological tool. I'm thinking of it as a crutch. The truth is in-between and will vary from person to person, but I'd bet money most people lean on it more than they learn from it.

But does developing your spelling actually matter?

Maybe being able to spell perfectly is about as useful a skill as putting shoes on a horse or chipping a piece of stone into an arrowhead.

What if 100% of the time that s devoted to spelling was devoted to something else, like just reading?

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#126

Post by shard »

jacobolus wrote: post #100
grawprog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. I'm not sure I agree with this. This doesn't teach the fundamentals and rules of how words are put together. Learning to spell isn't memorizing lists of words, it's learning the rules of English and how words are actually put t…

People don’t learn the “rules of English” through explicit instruction. They learn them through years (decades) of exposure. Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done.

In related news, the younger generation of kids in Asian countries are getting worse and worse at writing Chinese characters because they can just type the Romanized versions without learning how to write it. Personally I am able to read Chinese at a moderately high level (can read newspapers) but I cannot write most characters off the top of my head. This is what happens when you emphasize reading over physical writing with pen and paper.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#127

Post by mrr54 »

MandieD wrote: post #82
plughs wrote: post #8

Our elementary school uses chromebooks from 1st grade on, and I do see a lot of downsides. The most outrageous problem, IMO, is that there are 'modules' that must be completed, and kids with computer access at home can work on them at home. Kids from low income families are screwed over - again. Other problems - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? - The de-emphasis on…

“Plus the last thing my kid needs is more screentime. I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work.” That was my German mother-in-law's rationale for not having a TV in the house while my husband and sister-in-law were kids. “I didn’t have enough time to watch and make sure everything they saw was appropriate.” To her, just because the program claimed to be…

I can't even comprehend how anyone could tune out constantly-running TV. Just turn it off!

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#128

Post by DataWorker »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #124
pier25 wrote: post #110

It totally is. I worked in EdTech for the past 4 years and was in contact with the education world. Digital devices are harmful to younger kids. The brain develops much better when using fine motor skills such as writing with pen and paper. France banned all digital devices in primary schools for a reason and all countries should do it. The most important factor in getting quality education are not digital devices or…

>The most important factor in getting quality education are not digital devices or educational material but the quality of the teacher. I agree with you in general, but I think the most important factor in getting quality education is parents that value education.

Or maybe there’s not a single monolithic factor to optimize. Assuming you can even define education in the first place, it will always be very contextual. Of course a single factor is very appealing, but maybe it’s an assumption that people impose upon reality and the reality is more complex.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#129

Post by mrr54 »

gowld wrote: post #51
plughs wrote: post #8

Our elementary school uses chromebooks from 1st grade on, and I do see a lot of downsides. The most outrageous problem, IMO, is that there are 'modules' that must be completed, and kids with computer access at home can work on them at home. Kids from low income families are screwed over - again. Other problems - spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? - The de-emphasis on…

> spellcheck is always on, why learn real spelling when the computer fixes it for you? The computer immediately shows spelling errors and corrections, TEACHING correct spelling. > The videos are more about funny jokes than the different phases of matter. ( youtube is a funny one. Non-there are many great youtube channels packed with scientific content, like Smarter Every Day, Veritasium, Mark Rober, CGP Grey, VSauce,…

Most of those channels you mention aren't really teaching anything beyond general knowledge and trivia.

You could watch every video on every one of those channels and you might know a lot of random facts but it won't make you a physicist or a mathematician or a biologist.

>That's a parenting issue not a computer issue. Teach your kids what's allowed and what's not, and check their browser history until they learn how to manipulate it, then check your router logs

Ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. There are things I saw on the internet as a child that I still cannot unsee. My parents having seen that I saw them afterwards would not have changed that.

Re: The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

#130

Post by ggm »

dekhn wrote: post #18
jimbob45 wrote: post #3

I was considered a gifted child from a young age. In third grade, because of my "giftedness", I was told I could just read instead of participating in the class skit of the planets of the solar system. I used that time to complete the entire Chronicles of Narnia (good books btw - skip The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle though). I've wondered what would happen if we scrapped the most useless 30% of my state's s…

Skip the Magician's Nephew? That's crazy. It's now considered the first book in the series, and I think some of what it covers is the most fascinating aspects of Narnia.

...But he was right about the last battle. Susan dropped out because she discovered sex and rational humanism. I'm with susan!
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