Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

americanaffairsjournal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 295 posts

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

#161

Post by mrr54 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138
shard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 writ…

Is that a bad thing? You can still write in Chinese with an IME, and most uses are on some sort of phone or computer anyways. 27 year old me learned how to text in Chinese but skipped learning the muscle memory to write characters, first I'm left handed so stroke order was bizarrely awkward anyways, but also...it just didn't feel important anymore.

Of course it's a bad thing! Imagine not being able to write your own language.

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

#162

Post by grawprog »

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.

I did. They taught us this in school. My spelling is good. I rarely rely on a spell checker and have autocorrect turned off on my keyboard because I find it annoying rather than helpful. Knowing how to spell and sound out words helped me be a better reader and kept reading interesting for me.

Anecdotally, I've met many people that dislike reading because they find large words complicated to comprehend, their spelling is usually atrocious also. I also know a few heavy readers with terrible spelling because they never learned properly. Their pronunciation of large words is usually atrocious.

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

#163

Post by mrr54 »

dnqthao wrote: post #133
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…

Like English spelling has any rules. There are a lot of irregularities with English spelling that students need to learn by heart how the word is spelled compared to how it is pronounced.

English spelling absolutely has rules. The famous 'ghoti' example (where supposedly it should be able to be pronounced 'fish' because of 'gh' in rough, 'ti' in 'nation', etc.) is nonsense because there's only one way that word can be pronounced in English and that's 'goatee'.

Irregularities don't mean it doesn't have rules. The most common 1-2k words are much less regular than the rest of the language, but learning how they're spelt is not remotely difficult for children (no adult that doesn't have a learning disability struggles to remember how to spell 'much' or 'about'). The rest of the language is pretty much regular.

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

#164

Post by mrr54 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #156
is0tope wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids whose parents delay kindergarten a year to make them better at sports Unrelated, but could you explain this?

Some people are focused on sports and want their kid to be bigger than their classmates. So you either opt out of school if the birthdays work, delay kindergarten if it isn’t mandatory, or send the kid to a private kindergarten and have them repeat. It’s a big advantage, especially around 11 or 12, and get kids on more competitive teams earlier. I coach little league, and we see it all of the time. It’s a compliance…

Are teams not based on age in the United States? In New Zealand they're all categorised as 'under 9s', 'under 8s', 'under 7s' etc. They've also introduced weight classes to a lot of teen sports too to prevent them from being dominated by gigantic Samoan kids.

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

#165

Post by mrr54 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #137
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? Why is this a problem? Augmented spelling isn't bad, and you still have to know the differences between similar correctly spelt words. Learning Chinese, I de-empahsized writing them by hand and being able to write them on computer instead, you still need to know about them, what they look like and how they sound, but the muscle m…

I don't see how your hand occludes what you're writing. It occludes what you've already written. But you've already written that bit, and you can move your hand if you really need to see it.

Maybe we should go back to what the Ancient Egyptians did and allow people to write in whatever direction they like!

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

#166

Post by mrr54 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #155
NeoBasilisk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it would be embarrassing to be standing at a whiteboard at work and be unable to spell basic words?

So we should study things so we don't get embarrassed? Moving on are you embarrassed because you don't know how to swordfight or any other outdated skills?

That's begging the question. It's not an outdated skill if there are situations you need it! If I couldn't spell the things I were writing on the board in tutorials, it would quite reasonably look like I have no idea what I'm doing. Not a great look.

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

#167

Post by mrr54 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #135
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is true. I don't think schools should completely drop handwriting, at least not within my lifetime. It's necessary for filling out forms at the doctor's office, and signing contracts. But a little basic ability is all you need—you don't need to write neatly or quickly. So if schools want to focus on it less, that makes sense to me. Nobody should have to write whole passages by hand.

I fundamentally disagree. There's conclusive evidence that writing notes in lectures by hand leads to better recall.

And kids should not be dependent on these disgusting privacy-invading ad platforms we call computers to write things down.

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

#169

Post by daxfohl »

mrr54 wrote: post #160
daxfohl wrote: post #152

I half think that the entirety of Common Core Math is designed by lobbyists promoting the type of technology presented in the article. "Carry the one" is the simplest thing to explain with a pencil and a blank piece of paper. All the new Common Core techniques seem to require some kind of visual representation, either via the games sold to the schools and onward to the parents, or via the overpriced blocks sold to te…

What are these 'common core math' techniques? I went to primary school in New Zealand. In around 2005 they introduced a new way of teaching mathematics that we referred to as the 'numeracy programme'. It wasn't very popular with students and parents obviously all thought it was crap because parents are naturally scared of change in education negatively affecting their kids. But when we actually did it, it was basical…

> if I'm adding 47 to 54, I can simplify that by instead adding 50 (47 + 3) to 57 (54 + 3), which is 107

47+53=107???

Haha, okay I get it, it was a slip. But it's kind of the point from my perspective. All these different techniques of moving stuff around seems fraught with ways to misunderstand it or muck it up. At best they should be supplementary skills, and shouldn't be taught as the primary techniques. Per Common Core guidelines, or at least per the stuff my first grader is bringing home, it seems like all these tricks are taught as the foundation, which seems backwards.

Maybe my opinion will change as my kids progress. I'm by no means married to my stance on the approach, and would be happy if it does indeed lead to better understanding. But now I'm not seeing it as a great approach to math, and the cynical side of me can imagine that there's more money and politics there than people think.

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

#170

Post by MisterBastahrd »

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…

My little girl had a recent projects. She had to choose from one of six entrepreneurs and answer some questions about one of them in complete sentences. How was she to acquire the information about this person? A URL to a biography.com bio.

Fine. I have a computer and she was able to read the article. She then answered the questions. To my surprise, she hadn't capitalized a single word. I told her that she needed to capitalize her sentences and proper pronouns, and she was annoyed because "my teacher doesn't make us do that."

WTF?

First I was annoyed because they sent a link, which means that kids without internet access might not be able to complete the assignment. THEN I was upset because her 3rd grade English teacher didn't care that students were paying attention to basic capitalization. And this is in a REALLY good school district.

Post reply on HN