41–50 of 491 posts
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Have you met a 16-year old?
They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.
Hopefully not at the same time.
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School shootings do happen in Finland, although they're rarer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertola_school_shooting
And thats no reason to let kids do empty highly addictive activity unhinged instead of getting prepared for later life. Emotional reactions != smart ones.
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Is that the aim of schools? It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered. All around school was a giant waste of time.
I know several teachers. So these sorts of comments are always funny. I know math teachers who lack support but continuously attempt to present topics from different POV because some students don’t get it. So some self proclaimed smart person “learned nothing”, and therefore school is a waste of time. At the same time, ignoring that maybe a school or system is indeed not prepared to handle some individuals (which is…
I am sure you want to blame me for this, but somehow I went to university and got a degree in (applied) mathematics. So I doubt it was some fundamental problem with me.
Everybody is upset when someone tells them they fail at their jobs and teachers are an entire industry of total failure. In a single semester of university I learned so much more than in 12 years of school. If teachers aren't at fault, who is? By any metric I was a successful student.
Kids should not have access to anything more complex than a Nokia with a flashlight.
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
I think you're right in a way because if school wants to prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with tech. But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not like they're going back to quills and ink. Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a s…
1. Educational is not vocational training. Schools should give kids skills and a foundation, not teach them how to use particular technology.
2. Not all jobs require much knowledge of how to use technology.
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
I do not think kids and everybody else are standing a chance against all the money that is thrown at making and keeping them addicted. So I fear if we do not want them to be addicted we have to prohibit things (it does not need to be smartphones, it could be mechanisms on these devices).
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Apparently the author's grade school was on the moon? At grade school, the rest of us learned: to read and write, a little arithmetic, some biology, some physics, some history, maybe a second language, and much more. What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses. The point of school is to grow up not to be an ignoramus.
School is very inefficient in terms of the student time spent to learn. It optimises for minimising teacher time and other costs.
> What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses.
You have paid access. Do you value it enough to pay?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you met a 16-year old?
They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.
Trust is a privilege that must be earned not given. Prove to me you're trustworthy and I'll give you trust.
One untrustworthy 16 year old can cause hell chaos in a group of trustworthy teenagers. I've seen it when I was a youth worker.
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And thats no reason to let kids do empty highly addictive activity unhinged instead of getting prepared for later life. Emotional reactions != smart ones.
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"There is substantial evidence to suggest that education influences intelligence.[3]" (From Wikipedia)
[3] Baltes, P., & Reinert, G. (1969). Cohort effects in cognitive development in children as revealed by cross sectional sequences. Developmental Psychology, 1, 169-177.
If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.
That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are classes with calculators, classes without, and classes that teach how to work with them, their strengths and shortcomings.
I don't know how to do it in practice though. Airplane mode and offline educative apps may be a start.