Kids Can't Use Computers... And This Is Why It Should Worry You

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

You'd be surprised at how many toddlers think they know what PPP is.

[Guest Atom Dowry Firth]

I don't know what the essay is about but i think there should be a kid-internet for people under 17 to learn how to behave in the internet (sort of how school is good for kids to learn social skills,etc).

 

This kid-internet should also be slower, this will help them appreciate the Internet much more.

 

lol

[triachus]

 

I don't know what the essay is about but i think there should be a kid-internet for people under 17 to learn how to behave in the internet (sort of how school is good for kids to learn social skills,etc).

 

This kid-internet should also be slower, this will help them appreciate the Internet much more.

 

lol

 

 

And they should use harddrives with only 8 gig on it, so that they will understand the value of a megabyte.

[luke viia]

Essay reminds me of this: Brain Rot, (or, Will Using Mathematica Rot My Students' Brains?)

 

Good questions to be asking imo, though I agree with Jerry Glynn's perspective in Brain Rot...

[chenGOD]

I bet the guy that wrote the article spends a lot of time on slashdot.

[delet...]

It seems likely.

 

 

I don't know what the essay is about but i think there should be a kid-internet for people under 17 to learn how to behave in the internet (sort of how school is good for kids to learn social skills,etc).

 

This kid-internet should also be slower, this will help them appreciate the Internet much more.

 

lol

 

 

And they should use harddrives with only 8 gig on it, so that they will understand the value of a megabyte.

 

 

lol.

[chenGOD]

8 gig!!! Fuck me sideways. My first home computer had a total of 512K memory.

I know others on here had even less. I certainly remember using trash 80's and loading cassettes at school until we upgraded to apple II Es.

 

That fellow had some terrible writing for a teacher.

[Guest Wall Bird]

 

If this essay is too long for you to read, you're either too busy doing important shit - doubtful, cause you're on WATMM - or you should go ahead and evaluate your ability to concentrate. Take more than 15 seconds when you do this.

 

This black-or-white, "if you don't agree with me you're stupid" way of thinking is what made me stop reading the essay

 

 

Hmm. I was a bit coarse. Sorry for that.

 

What were you implying, That Spanish Guy, when you remarked on only being halfway through the essay? I interpreted it as you stating it was too long.

 

What primarily bothers me is Chartnok's "2long2read2care" reply to the article, which is explicit in it's disinterest towards an article which is not far shorter. This article does not take more than ten minutes to read (disregarding the tangent video and hyperlinks) so it bothers me that someone would disregard it because of it's length; which is reasonable. If I were talking with someone I would be willing to listen to them explain for ten minutes if they felt it was important. I think it's important to hear someone's argument through to the end, lest I cut them off early and risk drawing false conclusions because I thought I knew everything they were going to say.

 

After reading the article I haven't gotten any impression of "if you don't agree with me your stupid" from the writer. What passages did you have in mind? Such a tone is pretty unclassy (again, apologies) but let's also keep in mind that this is a persuasive essay, so even in all but the most extreme instances of condescension surely we can take these things with a grain of salt and consider their valid points when they occur(?).

[Terpentintollwut]

Well, I frequently shake my head about people who happen to own a lot of expensive high-end technology yet don't have a clue about how to use it. Makes me wonder why they spent money on it in the first place. Because a salesperson told them to, or because it makes them feel good about themselves owning something that is "high-end" and expensive, but not knowing what it's actually capable of doing...

 

I also dislike how a lot of people have a tendency of throwing something in the trash and buying a newer version of the same thing, even when it's still perfectly fixable.

 

However,

 

I think he has a skewed vision on what he thinks people should know and is underestimating how much effort and interest it requires. I think he's also overestimating the value of knowing a lot about computers. That computer illiterate might know a lot of important things about the human body or he might be able to fix up a house.

 

^ absolutely this. While I happen to know what the author is talking about most of the time, it's understandable most people don't. I could mock him for hours for not being able to tell a stick insect from a beetle, or to cook or fuck properly, or whatever. The whole article sounds like the wet dream of a socially awkward person who's writing down the cool things he wishes he would have said. Very annoying read for me!

[luke viia]

 

I think he has a skewed vision on what he thinks people should know and is underestimating how much effort and interest it requires. I think he's also overestimating the value of knowing a lot about computers. That computer illiterate might know a lot of important things about the human body or he might be able to fix up a house.

 

^ absolutely this. While I happen to know what the author is talking about most of the time, it's understandable most people don't. I could mock him for hours for not being able to tell a stick insect from a beetle, or to cook or fuck properly, or whatever. The whole article sounds like the wet dream of a socially awkward person who's writing down the cool things he wishes he would have said. Very annoying read for me!

 

Really well-said, both of you. This is a large part of the essay/link I posted earlier (Brain Rot). I know this may be tl;dr for some random article, but bear with me (sorry for the formatting... I know how to use forums, but I apparently don't know how to get them to do what I want -- a relevant problem indeed, lol)

 

 

 

Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica?

Jerry: I have young students who reach for their calculators to get the answer to 5×6.

My response, when I see that, is to explain that such behavior is socially unacceptable, sort of like picking your nose. Many people will see this and think the student must be brain damaged. It's a social problem, not a mathematical one.

Theo: I agree that the problem lies with the other people more than with the students. The most profound engine of civilization is the inability of a larger and larger fraction of the population to do the basic things needed to survive. Many people fail to realize this.

Jerry: I don't understand that statement at all. It must be very significant.

Theo: In a society where everyone knows how to hunt, grow food, and make shelter, and knows these things well enough to survive, no one has time for much of anything else--even for perfecting one or the other of these basic skills. In early tribal societies, some people were undoubtedly better at one thing than another, to the point where they would probably have had a hard time outside the group. The best arrow makers probably weren't very good at weaving shoes, and would have had a lot of blisters without some help from the shoe weavers.

Few people would argue that people who are bad at weaving shoes are somehow inadequate, but it's surprising how strongly people feel this way about "modern" skills such as the ability to add well.

Technology's greatest contribution is to permit people to be incompetent at a larger and larger range of things. Only by embracing such incompetence is the human race able to progress.

Irate bystander: So, you're saying civilization progresses by having technology relieve everyone of the need to learn skills, so we can choose to be incompetent idiots barely able to feed ourselves. Is this really progress? Isn't the result of too much technology an aimless, pathetic populace just moving from one senseless pastime to another? What else could explain professional wrestling and the $180 sneaker!

 

Theo: I didn't say incompetence is a sufficient condition for progress. I do say it is a necessary one. If you want to move beyond endless drudgery, you have to have technology (or slaves, servants, or a spouse) to free you from the otherwise all-consuming task of survival. Technology is the least-objectionable way of generating free time, in my opinion. Of course, some people will use their free time more responsibly than others.

Jerry: People are very attached to the value of their skills. They believe that the skills of their generation should be preserved, with new skills added on.

Theo: Such an attitude represents a tremendous degree of disrespect of our forepersons. It was really, really hard to be a cave person. The skills needed to live comfortably in, say, northern Europe in 20,000 BCE were extremely complex. They required then and would require now the full range of human intelligence.

To think that a modern human should be able to do everything that previous generations have been able to do (hunt, speak Latin, do square roots by hand, etc.), and also have any time left over to learn anything new (microbiology, email, calculus), is basically insulting to all those previous generations, since it implies that they under-employed their intelligence. It is also quite false.

Jerry: I think it matters that students spend their time thinking and learning. People seem happiest if they are good at something. But I agree it doesn't matter whether they learn all the same things their parents learned. Not learning Latin is a problem only if you need to speak to Latin people on a regular basis, or if people will make fun of you on the playground. Not learning to add is a problem only if you have to add regularly, or if people will make fun of you for using a calculator to do

Theo: Well, you probably do think people should learn to add. Adding is not that hard, and it's a fairly practical skill in the day-to-day world.

Jerry: In the old days (before television), being able to add up a long column of numbers without making any mistakes was a valuable skill. People would pay you a living wage to do nothing but add numbers well. Not today.

Theo: Today, it's nice to be able to add small numbers, and larger numbers in a pinch, but the specific mental tricks and habits needed to get the right answer consistently when adding lots of numbers are just not helpful. Not being able to do this does not represent a failure of the intellect, any more than not knowing which fields in your neighborhood have the best rabbit hunting: both were, at one time, failings that would get you laughed at.

Jerry: But, you'd agree that being able to estimate the sum of a column of numbers is valuable. I would spend more time learning to do that well than working to reduce my error rate in doing exact sums.

Theo: And yet, in schools you find worksheets with 100 addition problems that are supposed to be done correctly, with points taken off for errors. What a waste of time.

Irate bystander: Oh, now I get it. You're one of those romantic educational know-nothings who think it's not necessary to learn anything in particular, as long as you learn "critical thinking skills" and have good self esteem. Yuck.

Theo: No, and let me make this very clear. No one can learn to think without having something to think about. If you try to teach someone how to think in the abstract, you are not going to get anywhere. If you try to make education "easy", by removing the content, you are cheating your students out of the most important thing you have to offer: the chance to do something hard. Only by mastering a difficult body of knowledge can a child develop into a confident, thinking adult. The point is, it doesn't necessarily have to be the same difficult body of knowledge that the child's parents learned.

And while we're on the topic of romantic educational know-nothings, let me just say that if you think you can improve your students' self esteem by letting them "succeed" at various insipid educational games, you are kidding yourself. Kids are much smarter than that. There is nothing more demoralizing to most children than being put through an educational program they know they can't fail at. Instead of teaching them self esteem, it teaches them that you expect so little of them that you have contrived special extra-stupid lessons for their benefit. Don't think for a minute they don't know what's going on.

If you start a lesson off by telling the students "This is going to be easy", you are simultaneously telling them "We had to make this easy because we don't think you're capable of doing anything hard". And when the lesson is over, the only sense of accomplishment they can feel is that they did something easy. So what?

Learning is hard work. If you are not working hard, you are not learning. Period. Kids love hard work, as long as they see where it's going and why. Instead of killing that energy by giving them something easy, we should foster it by giving them something really hard. We should tell them it's hard. We should give them the chance to do something meaningful.

Jerry: Readers should be aware that Theo is the father of one three year old and a couple-odd babies, while I am the father of four adults. It is well known that people at the beginning of the child rearing process have much stronger opinions than those who have completed at least two children. However, in this case I have to agree with Theo.

 

His viewpoint is nicely supported by Joseph Mitchell's story in his wonderful book Up in the Old Hotel about a bridge-building disaster which killed a number of young members of the Mohawk nation. People believed this disaster would drive the Mohawks away, but instead it had the opposite effect. The tragedy confirmed that working on high steel is serious, dangerous work, worthy of the efforts of young Mohawk men. Mohawks have gone on to erect the steel of a high proportion of all the high-rise buildings and bridges on the North American continent since 1910.

We seem to agree in general principles but how do we put them into action.

 

 

[MadameChaos]

At the end of the day kids learn what you teach them, the national curriculum does not have the correct content to give kids a good start in the world.

 

Ideally the gap here should be filled by parents, but as we live in a busy modern world this doesn't always happen.

 

Why are there no classes on managing finances and understanding legal jargon?

 

Why are kids leaving school without basic computer skills?

 

Why are kids not taught their rights at school?

 

It does not serve the government to do so.

[Braintree]

What he's really griping about is the lack of critical thinking skills, not how to/not to use a computer.

 

Just stop and think a bit, eh?

[Sprillian]

At the end of the day kids learn what you teach them, the national curriculum does not have the correct content to give kids a good start in the world.

 

Ideally the gap here should be filled by parents, but as we live in a busy modern world this doesn't always happen.

 

Why are there no classes on managing finances and understanding legal jargon?

 

Why are kids leaving school without basic computer skills?

 

Why are kids not taught their rights at school?

 

It does not serve the government to do so.

Yerp.

[Guest A/D]

At the end of the day kids learn what you teach them, the national curriculum does not have the correct content to give kids a good start in the world.

 

Ideally the gap here should be filled by parents, but as we live in a busy modern world this doesn't always happen.

 

Why are there no classes on managing finances and understanding legal jargon?

 

Why are kids leaving school without basic computer skills?

 

Why are kids not taught their rights at school?

 

It does not serve the government to do so.

Excellent post. I think of my education as mostly useless things packaged to look like I should care. Only a few classes taught anything useful or thoughtful. School should absolutely include courses that would be helpful or thought-provoking to a high-functioning adult. It's hard not to feel like our governments want us to be easily duped consumers and sacrifice our education for it.

 

However, I do agree with the concept put forth in Luke's post (thanks for that, it was a good read) that sometimes you simply need to be challenged, and not necessarily in a way that will turn out to be practical for you. Just in a way that teaches you to be resourceful and have the stamina to be proficient in an area where you started from zero. I had to learn that in a work environment because I refused to in school, pretty much, and it's a great skill.

 

Then again, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it on your own, in an area that you care about/earns you money, because those are tangibly rewarding.

[Sprillian]

 

At the end of the day kids learn what you teach them, the national curriculum does not have the correct content to give kids a good start in the world.

 

Ideally the gap here should be filled by parents, but as we live in a busy modern world this doesn't always happen.

 

Why are there no classes on managing finances and understanding legal jargon?

 

Why are kids leaving school without basic computer skills?

 

Why are kids not taught their rights at school?

 

It does not serve the government to do so.

I do agree with the concept put forth in Luke's post (thanks for that, it was a good read) that sometimes you simply need to be challenged, and not necessarily in a way that will turn out to be practical for you. Just in a way that teaches you to be resourceful and have the stamina to be proficient in an area where you started from zero.

Yerp again.

[Silent Member]

*prints thread* *unable to build a printer*