Posted on 06/22/2010 2:11:40 PM PDT by snarkpup
'Digital divide' efforts counter-productive, say profs
Hundreds of efforts to reduce the so-called "digital divide" could be in trouble today, as new research has revealed that giving children universal home computers and internet access actually widens achievement gaps in maths and reading between rich and poor - and causes an overall skills decline across society to boot.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Give them a choice between virtually all of the knowledge accumulated by mankind and porn...let’s see...
Exactly. Why memorize multiplication tables, when you have a calculator?
If I had my way, I would ban computers before high school. Those years should be about using your brain to solve problems, so that later on, you can understand just what the tools are doing.
Not only stupider, but eventually they’ll need glasses.
“’Digital divide’ efforts counter-productive, say profs. Hundreds of efforts to reduce the so-called “digital divide” could be in trouble today, as new research has revealed that giving children universal home computers and internet access actually widens achievement gaps in maths and reading between rich and poor - and causes an overall skills decline across society to boot.”
Hilarious. I love it.
The unintended (or intended) consequences of social-engineering, meddling, leftist do-gooders.
The ignorance of leftists is on display again. And when you confront them with their abject failures, they respond that they need more intervention in people’s lives and more power.
Liberalism is a mental disease.
If I had my way, I would ban computers before high school. Those years should be about using your brain to solve problems, so that later on, you can understand just what the tools are doing.
BUMP!!
The correct grammar would be MORE stupid, not stupider. Either this author is trying to make a play on words, which he does NOT explain in the article, or somebody took away his crayons way before it was time.
Geesh, hoodda thunk.
A liberal (but turning) teacher I work with, tutoring, told me that her sister is involved in an inner city high school, tutoring kids after school. The girl she was assigned to didn’t have a laptop, so this sister BOUGHT her one. The mom took it and sold it for drugs.
I used to travel quite a bit for work-several months here, several months there. In the mid-90s, when I first started going on line, I used the computers at the nearest public library. Depending on where I am and what I have available, I still do on occasion.
A long time ago, I’ve observed school age kids at the library computers. Just at a glance, I can tell you that 90-95% of the time, they’re either on Facebook, or playing computer games-I’m talking 7-8 year old through high school.
Hardly ever do I see a kid actually working on anything resembling learning.
The biggest eye opener I had was maybe 10 years ago at a branch library in Milwaukee. A young (12-13)year old girl had left the station I sat down to use. She didn’t shut down or log off correctly, and when I started to use it, I realized she still had her email open and an unfinished message to some friend (I’m guessing) on the screen. A very sexually explicit one. Very. I don’t shock easily, but that did the trick.
And any Freeper could have told these government lib do-gooders the same.
I taught in a public middle school that had a grant to provide laptops for each student (provided parents agreed). The big deal was that student performance would improve. The program ran 4 years. At no point in those 4 years did “student performance” improve. (In Texas, that means that the campus never achieved a status higher than “acceptable.”) Now, 6 years later, people in the district will talk about improved student scores as a result of the program. However, never have they ever produced any documentation of their claims of “improved performance.” Apple made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the deal between selling us the computers and sending trainers from Atlanta.
Is there any real proof of that?
The story has a happy ending! The girl wasn’t made more stupid and the mother was happy (for a while)!
The teacher should be proud ;-)
≤}B^)
Back in the late nineties my friend in VA had a son in elementary school. He had a laptop provided by the school. I couldn’t figure out why a first grader needed a laptop computer to learn the beginning concepts of addition and spelling.
Even if the teacher recommends that my children use online sources for learning, it is only as an addition to other learning that they have done in class or for my older child, he uses it for research projects. This is always done on the home computer. And, that’s just to skip the drive to the library. I would say that all of this extra study could be done at the library just as easily, especially the research.
Giving all of us poor adults computahs has made us stupider, if you axe me!
For most kids, I agree with you. But my daughter decided she wanted to learn HTML at age 9, third grade.
After teaching her all I knew (pretty basic stuff), she kept asking questions I couldn't answer, so I took her to a bookstore and let her pick out what she needed to move forward. Long story short is that she absorbed the book like a sponge, gave it back to me and moved on.
Today, she's a pro and I still refer to that old book. She taught herself more with a computer and internet connection than she ever learned in a classroom.
That all depends on how the little dears use them, doesn’t it?
Giving them access to information is not the same as teaching them to think, I’m thinkin’.
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