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$30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

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Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#101

Post by throwaway439080 »

glitchc wrote: post #83
telman17 wrote: post #11

This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class, whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class, and teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down…

> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trust…

> Guess who sits on the school boards?

People who get elected to sit on the school boards? I think you're actually just complaining about democracy.

My local school district has banned phones during school time (enforced by an auto-locking pouch gadget that releases the phone when school ends), and parents overwhelmingly support it.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#102

Post by mschuster91 »

MichaelRo wrote: post #89
mschuster91 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on top of that, in many countries (not just the US) teachers, school and the students themselves don't have anywhere near the financial resources that they need. Schools are (literally) falling apart, here in Germany it became apparent during Covid that a ton of schools had windows that rotted so far they couldn't be opened, in the US there are states that introduced 4 day school weeks due to budget constraints […

I dunno, maybe it differs by country/location but my perception is that school was never capable to educate beyond some basic mediocrity level. Mostly it's an institution imposed by the state to process the children while parents are working. And the way to actually teach your kids something never really changed since the times of the elite few versus the mass of peasants: private tutoring. Now it's true that with ba…

> But the reality never changed and never will: the vast majority of people are not very bright

Nature vs nurture, the old argument...

Of course, you got what one might flippantly call "the inbreds from Alabama", or those whose parents suffered from substance abuse or other issues (obviously, for the mother the risk is much higher, but also the father's health has a notable impact on sperm quality). These kids, particularly those suffering from FAS (fetal alcohol abuse)? As hard as it sounds, they often enough are headed for a life behind institutional bars. FAS is no joke, and so are many genetic defects. That's nature, no doubt - but still, we as a society should do our best to help these kids to grow to the best they reasonably can (and maybe, with gene therapy, we can even "fix" them).

But IMHO, these kids where "nature" dominates are a tiny minority - and nurture is the real problem we have to tackle as societies. We are not just failing the kids themselves by letting them grow up in poverty, we are failing our society. And instead of pseudo elite tech bro children and nepo babies collecting millions of dollars for the x-th dating app, NFT or whatever scam - I'd rather prefer to see people who actually lived a life beyond getting spoiled rotten to have a chance.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#103

Post by BadCookie »

eucyclos wrote: post #56
colbyn wrote: post #36

For context there are many theories for why younger generations are less “cognitively capable” than older generations. Nowadays we call it the reverse Flynn effect. IMO this article is nitpicking, probably confirmation bias at play.

I am fascinated by the reverse Flynn effect - do you have a favorite theory to explain it?

You didn’t ask me, but (aside from the effects of tech and social media) my #1 hypothesis is the rise in single parenthood. Parenting is so hard that I doubt pretty much everyone’s ability to do it well on their own.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#104

Post by DaveCharlieLen »

telman17 wrote: post #11

This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class, whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class, and teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down…

And what CC item can you point to for that. Teachers often have to write the actual thing they are teaching as a CC item on the board. Want people to teach tech, go to meetings and make them.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#107

Post by npunt »

nradov wrote: post #73
hedora wrote: post #15

I’m not convinced laptops were as big an issue as intentionally sabotaging the US educational system with things like No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Are Gen-Z folks overseas as screwed as Americans, and is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?

What specifically is wrong with Common Core math? I've seen a lot of vague complaints about it but the materials my children brought home seem fine. It's different from the way I learned but I haven't seen any compelling evidence that it's worse.

Yep. From what I recall from my time in education about a decade ago, Common Core standards were generally considered excellent. The rollout of Common Core tests wasn't that great, but that should have been a one-time adaptation period, but everything got mired in politics and bit by bit got torn apart as states all went their own way.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#108

Post by TimorousBestie »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #90
telman17 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, thus why I said it could be boiled down to. However as I say in another comment, most of my family are educators so these experiences represent what they've been dealing with for the past 20+ years. > before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" I think both could be true and I'm not excluding either. The issu…

20+ years feels like a very long time for this to be the norm. Smartphone hegemony in general isn't that old.

Close to twenty years. First iPhone was 2007, I got my first one in 2012 or so.

Before smartphones, texting during class was very common when I was in high school. That’s more or less how I learned that 9/11 happened.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#109

Post by bandrami »

throwaway439080 wrote: post #101
glitchc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trust…

> Guess who sits on the school boards? People who get elected to sit on the school boards? I think you're actually just complaining about democracy. My local school district has banned phones during school time (enforced by an auto-locking pouch gadget that releases the phone when school ends), and parents overwhelmingly support it.

> I think you're actually just complaining about democracy

Local participatory democracy is in fact pretty terrible: HOAs, school boards, neighborhood impact hearings where people complain that building apartments would let the poors move in and we can't have that.

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