- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The middle schooler had been begging to opt out, citing headaches from the Chromebook screen and a dislike of the AI chatbot recently integrated into it.
Parents across the country are taking steps to stop their children from using school-issued Chromebooks and iPads, citing concerns about distractions and access to inappropriate content that they fear hampers their kids’ education.
Every one of these parents uses technology in their work, I’m betting. They’re seeing their kids up to be under prepared for the future. These are probably the same parents who complain that they don’t teach cursive in schools anymore.
Brother, I became a software engineer and I didn’t use a laptop for classes until college. Shoving Microsoft and Google products down school kids’* throats does nothing to “prepare them for the future”.
And for those people who don’t become engineers? What about those kids who don’t have access to a computer outside of the phone in their pocket? If we want to increase computer literacy, it has to be in schools because it’s definitely not going to be at home in the vast majority of cases.
We don’t need kids going analog unless they choose a career path in a computer-related field. We need schools to be teaching proper computer and media literacy to prepare them not only for a work future, but a media future filled with AI slop and grifters. Not teaching them these valuable skills is how we get kids in their 20s right now getting their news from a fish on tiktok.
Kids are already coming out of school computer illiterate. They know how to use specific applications, but don’t know things like directory hierarchy. Onboarding young people into working with general office productivity like SharePoint, or giving them a real grown up laptop instead of an ipad is like teaching boomers to open PDFs all over again. All the same old training and helpdesk calls.
the solution is the same as it was 30 years ago: computer class where they deep dive into how the things work, not just how Microsoft and Apple decide the things are used.
I don’t disagree. We need better computer literacy programs in school. But removing technology from learning 100% isn’t the alternative. Those parents are still probably going to stick an unregulated, fully accessible iPhone in their kids hands where they’re going on Instagram and tiktok with no media literacy skills. How is that any better?
Ah, you don’t understand nuance, I see.
Go back and reread my comment, then reply to me when you’re ready to engage with what I actually said, and not a bunch of scary strawmen you’ve built.
How did I miss the point? You said you didn’t use a computer in school until college, and then you talked about shoving mainstream bloatware into kids eyes. I don’t see how I missed those points. I’m also assuming when you went to college was a different point on time than it is right now. As you know, a lot has changed in the computer and online scene in the last 6 years, and exponentially moreso in the last 3.
Alright I’ll spell it out for you. For some context, the article in the post (which you probably didn’t read) describes how schools are sending tablets and laptops home with elementary and middle school children. I specifically stated that I didn’t use a laptop for school until I was in college, and implied that my technology literacy did not suffer despite such “late exposure”.
I did not say that I didn’t use a computer until college. You made that up. I’m not advocating to remove all technology from school. That’s a strawman you’ve built to argue against. I used computers all throughout my time in school, starting in like 2nd grade. We had these things called computer labs, where a teacher that specialized in technology would teach us the ins and outs of using a computer, how to be safe on the internet, and provide adult supervision and guidance. In middle school, we had designated computer lab time to work on book reports, lab reports, research projects, etc. I carried a usb stick around with me to save things onto, which I would then take home, where I could continue working on my assignments on our family computer. My parents established rules and boundaries for using the home computer, and were another resource I could go to for help and guidance.
But we also wrote stuff down. Like with pencils, on paper. And had teachers up at the front of the room giving lectures, helping us through example problems, teaching. That was the primary way we learned. We weren’t sent home with an iPad and some edutainment games and told “good luck!” like the kids described in the posted article.
I’ll say it again, but I’ll reword it in more plain language so there’s less chance of misunderstanding: sending school children home with corpoware-riddled tablets and laptops with little to no guidance and expecting them to use that for the bulk of their schoolwork (the thing described in the article) is not a good way to foster technology literacy.
You know what apparently you didn’t work on during school? Basic discussion techniques and the ability to be civil.
Please point out where I wasn’t civil or demonstrated a lack of conversational ability
Know what’s better than learning something? Learning a second way to do it. Learning cursive has more benefits than simply being able to read/write it.
Kid’s brains are sponges and multiple studies over the years all show a direct correlation with learning more/varied things at an early age drastically increases the ability to keep learning later in life.
Again, I don’t disagree. That’s yet another reason why cutting technology out of the learning experience will only hinder development.
You have a point; however, it is important to balance out the skills which are technology enabled and those that are physical. In an educational system IT would be a subject dedicated for this kind of thing.
Children, teenagers and others should absolutely be prepared for the digital world. But that means having a balanced curriculum that enables the usage of devices if so desired. Of course, that also means they should be prepared for analog life as handwriting for example, is a translational skill that is essential.
I don’t disagree at all. However, no kid can go tech free in school and be prepared for any sort of productive existence afterwards. Yes, that sucks. Yes, it also sucks that the majority of our experience is measured in productivity. But that’s capitalism. I wish it weren’t that way.
These parents certainly aren’t going to prepare to prepare their kids for a digital future. Heck, they’re probably falling for the same AI garbage their kids are going to fall victim to. Just like everything else, literacy needs to be part of the school curriculum.
I really don’t know why a bunch of people savvy enough to be on a federated social platform are so against this. It’s bonkers to me.