Children Learn Best When Their Bodies Are Engaged in the Living World. We Must Resist the Ideology of Screen-Based Learning (aeon.co) 289
Nicholas Tampio, associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, writing for Aeon magazine: As a parent, it is obvious that children learn more when they engage their entire body in a meaningful experience than when they sit at a computer. If you doubt this, just observe children watching an activity on a screen and then doing the same activity for themselves. They are much more engaged riding a horse than watching a video about it, playing a sport with their whole bodies rather than a simulated version of it in an online game.
Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less. Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have contributed millions of dollars to 'personal learning', a term that describes children working by themselves on computers, and Laurene Powell Jobs has bankrolled the XQ Super School project to use technology to 'transcend the confines of traditional teaching methodologies'. Policymakers such as the US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos call personalised learning 'one of the most promising developments in K-12 education', and Rhode Island has announced a statewide personalised learning push for all public school students. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution recommend that Latin-American countries build 'massive e-learning hubs that reach millions'. School administrators tout the advantages of giving all students, including those at kindergarten, personal computers.
Many adults appreciate the power of computers and the internet, and think that children should have access to them as soon as possible. Yet screen learning displaces other, more tactile ways to discover the world. Human beings learn with their eyes, yes, but also their ears, nose, mouth, skin, heart, hands, feet. The more time kids spend on computers, the less time they have to go on field trips, build model airplanes, have recess, hold a book in their hands, or talk with teachers and friends. In the 21st century, schools should not get with the times, as it were, and place children on computers for even more of their days. Instead, schools should provide children with rich experiences that engage their entire bodies.
Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less. Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have contributed millions of dollars to 'personal learning', a term that describes children working by themselves on computers, and Laurene Powell Jobs has bankrolled the XQ Super School project to use technology to 'transcend the confines of traditional teaching methodologies'. Policymakers such as the US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos call personalised learning 'one of the most promising developments in K-12 education', and Rhode Island has announced a statewide personalised learning push for all public school students. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution recommend that Latin-American countries build 'massive e-learning hubs that reach millions'. School administrators tout the advantages of giving all students, including those at kindergarten, personal computers.
Many adults appreciate the power of computers and the internet, and think that children should have access to them as soon as possible. Yet screen learning displaces other, more tactile ways to discover the world. Human beings learn with their eyes, yes, but also their ears, nose, mouth, skin, heart, hands, feet. The more time kids spend on computers, the less time they have to go on field trips, build model airplanes, have recess, hold a book in their hands, or talk with teachers and friends. In the 21st century, schools should not get with the times, as it were, and place children on computers for even more of their days. Instead, schools should provide children with rich experiences that engage their entire bodies.
More playtime, less school (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's start there. Healthy physical and mental development isn't achieved by sitting in school. 4 hours school until puberty, then no more than 6 hours, no homework. The times when the economy had use for obedient worker drones are coming to an end, let's raise healthy children instead.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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We've dumbed-down the last few generations enough. Let's turn that around and get back to actually teaching them the three Rs.
Education isn't rocket surgery. We know how to do it because we've done it before. Discipline, less political correctness, real grading, and no Common Core would be a nice start.
This was just in the news: "Of the more than 1,000 people surveyed in May and June of this year, only one person was able to name all five First Amendment rights. A whopping 40 percent, however, couldn't name any." THAT'S the result of doing it wrong. Fix it before trying something new and unproven.
Why was that modded down? We do need better teaching. We could probably start with better teachers. We're seeing elementary school teachers failing in elementary math.
https://www.charlotteobserver.... [charlotteobserver.com]
The complaints were that elementary school teachers were failing math testing with questions being at the difficulty of 11th grade math. Why should we expect elementary school teachers to know 11th grade math? The same reason we'd expect any other employee to know 11th grade math, because they are adults.
Re:More playtime, less school (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Netherlands we had this discussion in the 1990s. We had teachers not only failing simple math tests but also not being able to spell. We then introduced a math test for wannabe teachers. Passing that was a prerequisite for entering teacher school. Many people were devastated because they didn't want to pass math tests, they wanted to work with children. The math test, together with some other new rules made sure those people are not in front of classes anymore. Things have improved since then.
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Why was that modded down? We do need better teaching. We could probably start with better teachers. We're seeing elementary school teachers failing in elementary math
Ok. Pay more.
Just like every other thing on the planet, you get what you pay for. We (in the US) pay teachers shitty wages. We get shitty teachers, because the only people taking the job are people who don't get a better job elsewhere. And the vast majority of that "better job" is the pay.
So, open your pocketbook or stop whining that you are getting what you pay for.
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The problem is far more expansive then just what schools are doing. It is the entire culture and "Stranger Danger".
Sure we want our kids to go out and play.
But...
The need to be supervised by a trusted adult (so the kids play time is around adults schedules)
Cannot play with kids who are a bad influence
Cannot walk past particular areas
Need to setup a formal time to play with other kids
Anyone new you that you don't know (adult or child) must be dealt with cautiously
Also...
Adults cannot discipline other childr
Re:More playtime, less school (Score:5, Insightful)
You know how we got there? The first few words of the summary:
"As a parent, it is obvious..." ...which leads to "Think of the children!!!" laws which have overly bubble-wrapped our society... ...leading to children who are unprepared to deal with the harsh realities of "life"... ...who turn into adults that need safe spaces and trigger warnings and an ever growing cocktail of psychotropics to get by...
Enough ellipses for one post:
Children need to fall down so they can learn to get up.
Children need to get hurt (hopefully in non-permanent ways) so their bodies and minds know how to heal.
Children need to be exposed to dirt and germs so their immune systems can learn to protect them.
Children need to explore their ever growing universe on their own terms so they can experience and learn about it both in the physical and today in the digital.
I grew up in the "Tell me where you're going, be home by dinner and then be home before dark" world.. it was a wonderful place.. Can we get back there or is it too late?
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Failure is an important part of the living process. (not just for children but for adults too)
Our culture is teaching us to be afraid of failure, we need to fail, and be allowed to fix it. That being said, if we need help it should be provided.
Failing in itself isn't a bad thing, but what you do afterwards is. Learning for failure helps improve ourselves. Learning to avoid what we failed at degrades ourselves.
Re:More playtime, less school (Score:4, Insightful)
an archaic assembly-line mindset.
what you call "assembly-line" mindset is not "archaic", ancient, medieval, or even victorian, it is "modern". and wrong headed.
But then who is going to warehouse these kids while their parents are at work for 8-10 hours a day.
most human societies worked out how to raise their kids, within an extended family, with gender based division of labor, over the millennia. but advocating that sort of thing, or merely pointing it out, would result in accusations of sexism, and go against the deification and incentivization of nuclear or single parent families.
Re:More playtime, less school (Score:5, Insightful)
most human societies worked out how to raise their kids, within an extended family, with gender based division of labor, over the millennia. but advocating that sort of thing, or merely pointing it out, would result in accusations of sexism, and go against the deification and incentivization of nuclear or single parent families.
Did you ever think why human societies had gender based division of labor? It seems you may have but so many others have not. It's because men tend to be bigger and stronger than women. I grew up on a dairy farm and I'd be packing hay bales in the barn while my sisters would be digging up potatoes in the garden. Why would that be? Maybe it's because a hay bale weighs 40 pounds and a potato doesn't. Even though there was a time I was smaller and weaker than my older sisters I was expected to go with Dad to the barn to move bales around while Mom took my sisters to work in the garden. This is because my parents knew that in time I'd be bigger than my sisters and I needed to know how to stack hay bales. It might also be because I couldn't stomp all over the vegetables in the barn.
Today we see women that want to make as much money as men. I don't blame them, it's with money that we get resources like housing, food, clothing, and so forth. Here's the problem though, men still are on the average bigger and stronger than women. I thought I could make good money driving a truck after I injured my knees. I thought I could sit in a truck and drive it about with bad knees like anyone else. It turns out that truck driving was a bad idea. Truck drivers don't just drive a truck, their job is to load the truck, unload the truck, and maintain the truck. There aren't many women truck drivers because after a while women find out that driving a truck is hard work. They might find a job driving a bus with a CDL but that does not pay as well as moving cargo. Often men would rather pack boxes on a truck, and get paid more for it, than deal with screaming schoolkids on a bus.
It's not sexism or the "patriarchy" creating this division of labor. It's people finding out that little Jimmy can shovel more shit than little Jenny, and Jimmy doesn't much mind getting covered in shit if it means he doesn't have to wash dishes and scrub floors. Men and women are built differently, and this shows in the jobs they are good at and enjoy. Societies that recognize this tend to be more successful. Forcing men and women into being "equal" with the same jobs will bring a less successful society.
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Using a truck driving example is cherry picking. There are a lot of desk jobs without a manual labor component where, in the same position with the same skill set, women still don't make as much as men. You could probably come up with specific counter-examples, but statistically women are still not earning as much as men and they are underrepresented in leadership positions.
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In many professions, agreeableness is a liability in leadership positions.
You are begging the question.
Women are agreeable. Agreeable is a liability. Therefore, women have a liability. This argument is both circular and makes two assertions that need to be backed up. The first is probably the easiest - that women are more "agreeable". The second - that this is a liability - is supported only by evidence that disagreeable people tend to be in leadership positions. And who is disagreeable? Men. So is the correlation men or is the correlation agreeableness? Is there bias against agr
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And again, you are using narrative and specific examples which support your view, rather than looking at numbers and statistics. You can weave a nice story, but without supporting evidence, it's easily written off as confirmation bias.
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The flaw in your reasoning is that although your statements are correct for the average man or woman, they might be quite wrong for individual men or women. I grew up in a farm community also, and did a lot of manual labor. Some of the ladies were more than capable of moving hay bales and some of the men were not. Everyone is different.
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I've known women who have driven logging trucks (off road and on) as well as dump trucks, no hard lifting there.
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Well division of labor over gender is Sexism.
However, I think get your actual point. The move to Equal Rights did have a trade-off that seem to negatively affect family structure. Communities are vacant from 9-5. And we rely on institutions to care for our children while families are out working.
I think one of the biggest issues was while the culture changed for Equal Rights, business culture didn't change.
Many jobs (where the work conditions are safe) could allow you to have your kids with you all day, an
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most human societies worked out how to raise their kids, within an extended family, with gender based division of labor, over the millennia.
Yes...and how does that work out when you nearest family member (outside of your household) is hundreds of miles away?
Or are you advocating we all just live in whatever shit town our parents live in, with all of its associated lack of opportunity and jobs, and constrain ourselves to only breeding with people who are similarly trapped?
Re:More playtime, less school (Score:5, Interesting)
Or are you advocating we all just live in whatever shit town our parents live in, with all of its associated lack of opportunity and jobs, and constrain ourselves to only breeding with people who are similarly trapped?
No, I'd advocate finding or creating family where you happen to go.
I remember someone pointing out where the American stereotypes of the Chinese laundry, Indian cab driver, and Mexican field worker got started. Or at least speculating how it started. It was someone long ago coming to the USA, finding a profession at random, then hiring immigrants from where they were from to help out "family". These people may have been brothers, or cousins, or "cousins" so far removed that only their shared native language and culture connected them any more as "cousins" than anyone else in the USA. These people moved out of their "shit town" and then sought out others like them and "adopted" them as family.
Some companies are realizing this need for family and take efforts to help new employees find a family. This is not just important in attracting and keeping productive employees but in creating a healthy society. I realized this need for family. I had a job hundreds of miles away from anyone I could recognize as family and I hated it, even though the pay was good. My decision to move back near home was largely made up for me when there was a mass layoff. My brother and his wife had a similar realization, they found jobs near "grandma and grandpa" so their kids would grow up knowing family. My sisters found work hundreds of miles away but they work near where their husbands grew up. They created a family.
Not news to me. (Score:2)
Albeit it has been brought to my attention in the context of how boys differ in how they learn best compared to girls, this is nonetheless not news.
And I think it makes a lot of sense, too. The concept of being told how to do something to achieve a not really desired, made-up goal is comparably new.
Don't get me wrong, this kind of learning has enabled us to broaden our minds beyond the immediate, has made us much more versatile, but I think it's easy to guess that this is hard on our still very animalistic
*Citation needed - Plural of anecdote is not data (Score:5, Insightful)
I might not even necessarily disagree, but "it's obvious" DOESN'T CUT IT, when you're debating a controversial topic, and neither does being a professor of political science who seems to think that having national education standards is evil and will destroy democracy as we know it.
No politics or science (Score:5, Insightful)
"it's obvious" DOESN'T CUT IT, when you're debating a controversial topic
This is exactly correct because it's not just a controversial topic it is also a highly complex topic. For example, it is extremely "obvious" to me that my son is far more engaged in front of a screen learning to program than he was going around several European cities on holiday this summer. So, going on this idiot's logic this clearly means that I must conclude that all students, everywhere are better off learning in front of a screen. If you also like the utterly wrong appeal to authority I'm a full professor of a real science.
However, as a real scientist, I know that without data on many different students my observation of one student is irrelevant for determining education policy for everyone. Not only that but, unlike say electrons people do not always respond in the same way towards any one stimulus. My son loves computers and learning from a screen works well for him. My daughter does not and she definitely benefits more from non-screen learning.
I would have expected that a vaulted associate professor of "political science" would both be politically and scientifically aware enough to know you need data to back up any argument and that people are complex and a variety of approaches is needed to get the best from everyone.
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I am sick and tired of this claim being made endlessly without any evidence. As a parent and a person who grew up on a computer, I fail to see how its worse than books. In many cases, it's better than books because it allows two-way engagement that books. Sounds like a bunch of Luddites.
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You mean, several hundred thousand years of hominid evolution in the natural world, wasn't a key indicator?
We've only had 'screen-learning', what, a few decades at most? Sure. That's clearly the better environment.... /s
Hominids have also relied solely on their legs for transportation for several hundreds of thousands of years. We've only had horses and camels for a few millennia, steam-powered trains for a couple of centuries, cars for just over a century and jet airplanes for a few decades... so surely using only legs to get around is better.
Everything has pros and cons, and the only way to figure out what is better is to actually try it and observe the results. Arguing that X is better just because it's what humans ha
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From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
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From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
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From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
How would walking turn you to poverty? I choose to not use the car, I have a healthier lifestyle as a result. Please explain.
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On the other hand, it is still a good idea to spend some time walking. We've evolved to walk, not sit and generally people who spend some time walking are healthier and live longer.
One nice thing now is that we can drive to interesting places to walk.
Gee, you don't say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing something yourself teaches you more about it than reading about it? Who would have thought...
So let's put little Johnny behind the wheel of that SUV, I'm pretty sure driving is more sensible for him than watching a destruction derby on the screen.
But seriously now. That's not even close to being the problem. The problem is that children want to learn. They come into the world as little information sponges. They want to know everything. You have one simple job: Not killing that willingness to learn.
We usually fail. No later than when we stuff them into schools. Quite frankly, so far school has managed to kill that willingness to learn in everyone.
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I support your take, but I'll add that computer learning programs are already very good at basic skill building.
My kids do a couple of math programs - Reflex math is used to build specific skills in basic math operations. It measures how quickly and well they do and keeps feeding them practice until they master each "math fact". It moves them along at their own pace. So one kid might be working on 2 digit multiplication while the next kid is still trying to master subtraction.
They do the same for reading
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The problem is rich vs poor and the rich corruptly gaming the system against the poor. Before saying anything what so fucking ever about education, lets break it down first, how the majority poor learn vs how the minority rich learn.
Let's just stop fucking with the bullshit, what better learning outcomes for the children of the poor, teach exactly the way children of the rich are taught right fucking now. They know exactly how to teach children properly, the poor, well fuck them, they get shit education to
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Congratulations! You win the internet award for the gratuitous use of the Universal Adjective in a post. Your educated and thoughtful analysis is very informative of you.
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The problem is rich vs poor and the rich corruptly gaming the system against the poor.
Good luck fixing this. The rich aren't stupid and they know the key to their children's future is a good education. Today we have insured this by linking school spending to property taxes, creating a very strong correlation between expensive housing and good schooling. If you "fix" this, you will end up with mediocre public education everywhere and the rich will simply pull their kids out and send them to private schools. This will create political pressure to reduce public school spending, making private s
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It can be a lot worse... (Score:2)
So let's put little Johnny behind the wheel of that SUV, I'm pretty sure driving is more sensible for him than watching a destruction derby on the screen.
You think that's bad? I'm a physics prof and with this idiot's policies teaching nuclear criticality is one lecture that sure to go off with a bang!
Re:Gee, you don't say... (Score:5, Insightful)
School needs to learn that students are not "raw material" but humans. Until they realize this, the whole effort is in vain.
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"You shouldn't swear, makes you look less intelligent"
Avoiding swearing doesn't seem to do that much in the way of avoidance.
"FUCK YOU!"
Which you apparently can't accomplish yourself anyway.
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All of these points are very valid, but aside of them I want to stress a fundamental problem of our school system. Our schools are set up to create mediocrity.
Instead of having students concentrate on what they excel in, we force them to do what they're simply not good at. Li'l Johnny is great with math but struggles with Spanish. What would the sensible thing be? Or, if you want to be more right-leaning, what would be sensible from an economic point of view? Well, of course to push Johnny in the math depar
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Look at the bright side. The more of those idiots are around, the fewer people will compete for your job.
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Which will benefit you when you get paid more because there are fewer people available that can do your job.
The system works.
Re:Gee, you don't say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, ignorance was good enough for pappy and grandpappy, it's good enough for junior too!
And your next statement is a prime example of it.
Seriously, how many kids are going to get an education with home schooling? Other than learning that God created the world in 7 days and only likes white people?
I have three major things to say about that:
1) It is the stupidest, most ignorant perspective on home schooling to ever exist.
2) I used to think the same as you, being an atheist who thought the only reason homeschooling existed was so that Christians had an excuse to not teach their children about Evolution. But then I did some actual research on the subject, and found the anti-evolution angle to be an infinitesimally small part of home schooling.
3) My atheist wife convinced me to home school our kids, and it was the best educational decision we could have possibly made. The thought of watching my kids' intellects whither under the excruciating doldrum of public school is just too unbearable for serious consideration now.
Not only are my kids excelling at learning, they are thoroughly ENJOYING learning. This is something that gets extracted and crushed by the public school system early on.
My wife and I have also found a great balance between screen learning and hands-on learning for each of our kids, a balance which is usually impossible to find in public school.
As is usual for articles of this nature, it promotes a global mindset for a localized issue.
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All four factors rate quite highly in the educational success of children.
So the real question is: How well fare the homeschooled children compared with children at public schools if
We must resist the ideology of book-based learning (Score:2)
Yeah right.
My math teacher said... (Score:2)
Immersive learning is cool, but it ain't school (Score:2)
As it patently obvious, schools do not do much by way of immersive learning, because it's not an efficient method of learning, say, history. Or maths. These fears of technology are as overblown as the promises that others make. Obviously, what makes most sense is to use a range of pedagogical styles, tailored to the needs of the student, the nature of the subject etc.
And incidentally, screens can actually be used to engage in the real world for learning, and can make for much *more* immersive experiences th
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Yeah, that was basically what I was about to write. Try "hands on" calculus. That really makes sense. And everyone should make a pilgrimage to Philadelphia when studying the constitution in history class. And Greece to learn about the history of western civilization. It is more engaging of the entire body to actually visit Sparta.
This opinion piece seems like it was written by someone who has no idea of how computers are being used in schools.
He's a poli-sci professor. I wonder how he engages the who
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Perhaps he should have spent more time immersing himself in actually grinding axes, as opposed to the metaphorical screen-based version.
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Yes, physics, that subject so notorious for its physical demands on participants. I mean, that's why Stephen Hawking was the finest athlete of his generation: how else could he have succeeded? And of course theoretical physics is the most immersive of all the branches of physics. Feel free to demonstrate your commitment to the cause by creating your own Schwarzschild wormhole and then jumping inside.
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You plot the function to be integrated in a piece of paper, then cut out the range of integration with scissors, and weigh the paper under the function.
Even when dealing with infinity, such physical techniques are very enlightening.
real world choices (Score:2)
In the real world, the choice is often between a bored and angry public school teacher barely out of the rubber room droning on for hours in a classroom full of other dysfunctional kids high on amphetamines vs "screen-based learning". Neither of those is "best", but one may well be a lot better than the other. Guess which one?
Now testing (Score:5, Funny)
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And? How did it go? Hello? ...
Re:Now testing (Score:5, Funny)
Lifeform previously known as Buchenskjoll here:
point to the article writer, however on a second note, accelerated reincarnation is totally a thing.
depends (Score:2)
computers/tablets can be a great learning tool, it just depends on how you use them.
they can replace lecture books and greatly enhance on them because they can be made interactive and have various types of media etc.
even for more practical lessons watching a video, for example, is a great introduction if it is combined with actually doing it afterwards.
when i need to do something i haven't done before, i look up several video's on yt to get a general idea and know what to expect before i go on and do it mys
Remember that Apple ad about "dissecting" a frog? (Score:2)
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When was this? Because they were held to be really valuable during WWII, and Project Whirlwind [wikipedia.org], which started during the war and created among many things core memory and the idea of the minicomputer, began as a project to build a particularly flexible flight simulator for the Navy (the flexibility is what led to them to using a digital computer, and to develop a new class
A more basic problem (Score:2)
A perfect example is how a 2D screen falls short for a task it was obviously designed for: The simple task of reading. Billions of people read off of billions of sc
Not News (Score:2)
Seriously, why are we reading this? You have a random professor who's written nothing more than an editorial which, while it may sound like common sense, provides no evidence to back up his comments. This is not news.
VR will give the same results (Score:3)
Like it or not, the future of education is Virtual Reality. The better it gets, the more real the brain feels it is, and putting every kid in a headset will always be cheaper and more effective than constant field trips. Plus, the number of immersive environments and subjects that can be taught this way are endless.
My field is psychology, and the research being done backs up the statement that students learn as well, or better, in a virtual reality system compared to a typical classroom.
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While it may not be your goal, what your saying strikes me as just another way to provide a mass-processed learning environment.
The biggest argument against VR learning in my opinion is it would be even harder than today to determine exactly *what* your child is being taught. Take for
A political scientist. (Score:2)
The ancient greeks got it right! (Score:2)
Everything a child needs to learn and practise in the first 3-4 years of elementary school is:
- sports
- music
- maths
- literacy
"Why sir, you can talk and you can write! You can connect to any person from any background" -- I hear that often from all who know me (confirmed by a whole battery of assessments at work). Well, some of those predispositions/talents seem to be genetics (the IQ for example), but then how did I spend my childhood and teenage years?
Easy --> every single minute of free time (of which
It's drivel, here's why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither the author nor anyone he cites has a background in child psychology, development psychology, neuroscience, or education. He also fails to cite any research supporting his claims. He does cite a few tangential pieces of philosophy, but that doesn't demonstrate any facts in support of his argument.
While he seems to have some credentials relevant to political philosophy, he sadly lacks any discernible expertise relevant to the topic of the article.
This is just another scarcely-informed opinion piece. We've got quite enough of those already. This is almost pointless: weak signal, mostly noise.
An educated guess... (Score:2)
that's the best informed manifesto beaconing humanity back to common sense that's grounded in the real physical environment.
Technology does change wetware, how it processes and enforces binary judgement at the expense of thinking outside the box. Its the best manifesto at the right moment.
What a stupid summary (Score:2)
I hope there's more to the thinking that the drivel put forward in the summary. Equating the learning of physical techniques, teach of muscle memory and movement is not the same thing getting an education.
You may not be able to learn to ride a horse on a computer, but you'll likely do just fine learning to solve differential equations and when to use who vs whom. Last I checked Mr Gates and the Zuck were not teaching people to play tennis via their tablets.
Clifford Stoll wrote about this ... (Score:2)
... roughly 20 years ago. "Silicon Snake Oil" is the book iirc. Good opinionated read. I mostly agree with a solid amount of scepticism concerning media technology in the class room. The raspberry pi is the most of computing that I would let into a classroom. And only with CLI centric/coding lessons. And if we're honest, the raspberry pi is quite a lot.
The wrong people are talking (Score:2)
Nicholas Tampio, associate professor of political science
Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg
You know the big thing missing from debates on how to best educate children?
People who actually know anything about educating children.
Instead of turning to an associate professor of political science, how about we turn to someone with a PHD in early childhood development? Or young childhood education?
You know, turning to someone who actually knows what they are talking about instead of someone spouting off their personal opinion with a fancy-sounding but irrelevant title.
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Are you saying that those august people haven't been guiding public education for many decades?
Not for many years. Instead, politicians and grifters have.
"Hmm...this school's not doing well.....the teachers are paid abysmally....the building is falling down....they don't have enough textbooks for all the students.....we won't spend any money to fix any of these problems.....I know how to fix it!! Competition from charter schools!!"
There is actual data on Learning Styles... (Score:3)
.. and it's not very impressive. This article [nih.gov] says: ...the current status of the literature is that there is no evidence to support the use of Learning Styles in this way [matching instruction style to student learning style improves learning]. There are lots of links in the article to the underlying studies.
This is not exactly the same thing as screen-based vs. living-world-based learning, but it does support the idea that statements like "Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world" without supporting studies are not helpful.
VR (Score:3)
VR for every student!
Bring the Garden back to KinderGarden! (Score:3)
and yes for the snarkist it is technically misspelled
with water resistant/wireless tech there is no reason that children could not be taught OUTSIDE in a garden setting (of course have a normal classroom for when it is too wet, cold, or hot to be safe).
as long as its "just dirt" its not a tragic thing for a kid to get muddy
yeesh (Score:3)
The CHILDREN! Won't SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN???
Re:"If you doubt this, just observe children" (Score:5, Insightful)
By observing children, you can also learn that gummy bears are the perfect lunch. And dinner. And of course breakfast.
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And if there was a way to make them as nutrition and healthy as real food, I would be all for them.
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That's the problem, we consider pretty much anything tasty that consists mostly of raw energy. Sugar, fat, anything that fuels our body. Evolutionary that makes sense, so trying to explain to your kid that that broccoli is better than the ice cream is pretty hard, considering you have millions of years of evolution working against you.
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Hey, we combined cross-country skiing and shooting and called it a sport, so...
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And don't forget the brainwashing because with the animosity that you show it clearly worked.
Animosity? Where's the animosity? I believe you are projecting.
You were not trained to think, you were trained to let others think for you.
Right, the military doesn't train people to think, only a college education can do that. Except that's not true. In the military I was rewarded for showing my ability to interpret the data in front of me, think up solutions, and explain how I got those conclusions to my superiors. In college I had to come to the same conclusion as my professor, interpret the data the same as my professor, and I was rewarded with good grades not for thinking
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You must be kidding. Your definition of "smart" is quite different from what normal people mean by "smart".
That's quite possible I define "smart" differently than "normal people".
You aren't smart if you know how to read a map and march from point A to B.
And yet I get surprised all the time on how many "smart" people can't read a map and march (or walk, drive, bike, or whatever) from point A to point B.
If you think that all it takes to be successful in a modern military is to be able to read a map and march then you have no idea.
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Isn't that the point of a modern college education? Combine the arts and the sciences?
I was looking into going back to college and found a school near me with a software engineering program. I suspect it's like a lot of schools where such a discipline is coordinated between the engineering and CS/mathematics departments. I could take the same degree under the engineering department or the liberal arts department. In either case I'd be required to take math, statistics, lots of programming, and engineeri
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Reading to children is vital. Because it creates interest in those things that contain the stories children want to have. I could read when I was 4, simply because I wanted to have the stories that my grandmother was reading to me by myself, whenever I wanted them, not only when granny was around and had time to read them to me.
Kids learn best when they have a reason to learn. Give them a reason to want to know how to read and your kids, too, can read before they get to school. Plus, they want to read becau
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Re:Yes, experience is important (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA is not realistic. Sure, a kid will learn more riding a horse than watching a video of a horse? So what? How many parents have a horse available?
A more realistic question is a comparison of actual realistic alternatives. Is a kid likely to learn better from a computer or a book? In many cases, the more immersive experience of the computer will win.
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How about will a kid benefit from playing Farmville, or from actually getting their hands dirty? Will a kid benefit from clicking on "make some pottery" or from actually throwing a pot on the wheel? Those are the real comparisons.
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How about will a kid benefit from playing Farmville, or from actually getting their hands dirty?
Nobody considers Farmville to be educational, and nobody is advocating it as an alternative to gardening. So that is a silly example.
Computers are used as an alternative to books and classroom lectures. That is what they should be compared to.
Sure, kids often learn better by doing, rather than watching/reading, but that is an argument against books as much as an argument against computers. Saying "computers are bad" is as meaningless as saying "books are bad".
If "doing" was always superior to reading and
Re:Yes, experience is important (Score:5, Informative)
It's less expensive than you might think.
My sister sends her kids to Chicago public schools. They have screens everywhere; they teach maths with an app because have 35 kids per class and they don't want to pay the salary for a teacher's assistant. It's horrifying and I can tell that although my nieces can manipulate the numbers OK, they have trouble applying basic arithmetic to the real world.
I send my kids to a Waldorf school. I am aware that there is a lot of bullshit in Waldorf schools, but my kids learn about biology by taking care of the schools's sheep and planting out the school's garden. I can tell that they have a much easier time of connecting what they learn with the world around them, and it seems to stick longer and better.
The approach is better for your kids is a hard call; all schooling philosophies have strengths and weaknesses. But the simple fact is that you can access alternative education for a fairly small financial burden if you look around. The Waldorf school is 150 EUR per child per month, of which I have two. We moved houses to be closer to it. And I am pretty solidly middle class with an income of €40k a year.
So don't claim that putting your kids in contact with the real world is for elites; it simply is not so.
Re:Yes, experience is important (Score:4, Interesting)
The big story here is the continuing reluctance of the public to support effective, quality public schools for all. The push for technology has more to do with its low cost, not with effectiveness.
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I was one of the care people for an Alzheimer's person. I worked for just a few months. Others worked for years.
One of things I did was take this person for long drives...in the living world. This 80+ year old otherwise frail person would lean forward the whole trip (holding on to the grab bar in my truck).
After I left, for months, this Alzheimer's person would ask the other staff about me. They never asked about anyone else.
This Alzheimer's person clearly learned the best out in nature. They even mana
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TFA is utterly stupid for multiple reasons. Doing something physical that relies on learning physical techniques is not the same as doing something mental that relies on learning mental processes.
You may not be able to use a computer to learn to ride a horse, that doesn't mean you are unable to do it to learn to solve differential equations.
Kids these days (Score:2)
Combining both IS best (Score:2)
Regardless of the ACs very poor communication skills, he or she is right that both are good, especially combined well. In a proper blend they compliment each other.
My four year old daughter is really into planetary astronomy right now. Saturn is her favorite planet, and she's really into the dwarf planets - Pluto, Makemake, etc.
We can go outside and see Saturn as a point of light in the sky. She enjoys that and learns something. Through our $400 telescope, she can just see the rings, which look like one big
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The check from Mexico hasn't cleared yet
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You being amongst them. Now what?
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Yes, Mark Twain was definitely suggesting that children pick up cats by the tail. Not maliciously, but in the simple process of play: learning, exploration, and growth. Play with cats. If you are nice to them, they purr. If you are not nice to them, they make you bleed.
Likewise, if you really want to understand how to harness the energy in the wind, hoist a sail on a boat, go fly a kite. Simultaneously, if you can. Toss in a skateboard, or in Twain's generation, a wagon or scooter, while flying a kite
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If you really want to understand what it was like for Vasco da Gama to voyage across the sea, you need a wooden ship, a cloth sail, and a couple years.
Of course you can't spend a couple of years at sea. But you could do like my kids did and spend a day on a schooner.
My aging eyes appreciate that I can zoom to enlarge the text and set the screen farther from my eyes, but in almost every other way, I prefer reading a paper book.
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Learn the alphabet song, play with letter-shaped objects, match words to pictures and objects, and use paper books.
Get out pencil and paper and practice.
Count objects, merge and separate sets of physical objects, and, again, get out pencil and paper and practice.
Hands-on exploration of the world and basic science experiment