Posted on 11/18/2012 4:50:47 PM PST by mdittmar
A new study released on Thursday finds teachers are concerned that the amount and types of electronic media that children interact with at home may be harming their performance in the classroom.
Common Sense Media, a think tank focused on children’s media use, polled 685 public and private elementary and high school classroom teachers on how children’s increasing use of television, video games, texting, social networking, music and other forms of media is affecting their performance in school.
The study found that 71% of teachers polled said students’ media use hurts their attention spans in school, while 59% said students’ use of entertainment media has also harmed their ability to communicate face to face. A slightly smaller amount, 58%, said they believe it’s had a negative impact on their writing skills, according to the study conducted by Knowledge Networks May 5-17.
Nearly half of the teachers surveyed also said their students’ use of media at home is hurting the quality of their homework. “Many teachers think students spend so much time with media that they neglect their homework and aren’t prepared in class,” according to the report, which noted that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more than seven-and-a-half hours a day using media for fun.
Elementary school teachers pointed to video games, television, and computer games as causing the most problems for their students, while teachers said middle and high school students are more negatively impacted by texting and social networking. Two-thirds of teachers also said they believe that entertainment media has a “very” or “somewhat” negative impact on students’ sexualization.
Still, teachers did point to some benefits from students’ increased use of entertainment media at home with 63% saying it has helped students find information more quickly and efficiently, while a minority, 34%, said they believe it has improved students’ ability to multitask.
“We know that our children learn from the media they consume. This survey is yet another reminder of how critical it is to consistently guide our kids to make good media choices and balance the amount of time they spend with any media and all of their other activities,” Common Sense Media founder and CEO James Steyer said in a statement.
They’d better be adept in electronic communication, or they’ll be left behind.
I’ve been saying it for a long time. All the advances in communication technology are destroying peoples ability to communicate.
And the most anti social, unpolished and lonely group of people I've ever seen. (for all their social media stuff too).
Their attention span went away when Sesame Street came on the scene in the 60’s.
Logical, subject-related homework, lots of it, and performance-based grading leaves them no time. For those who don’t care or who are addicted, Oh Boy.
Also, incentivize group parent meetings.
Primary - classic curriculum has many advantages 1- keeps kids interested- characters in classical lit and their behaviors and interactions are interesting, logical and instructive. 2 - kids know we care about them when we teach them relevant subjects. etc.
Many of the skills that were important in the past will not be or are not important now or in the future.
Writing in cursive? Archaic. Forget that I got graded on it in grade school.... It's not required today.
I've seen teens of today communicate. Looks like they communicate among themselves just fine. I may not understand it, but I'm also archaic.
New times, new ways. The rate of change will only increase.
/johnny
But can they communicate well with anyone outside their peer group?
Yeah, the kids can’t be indoctrinated properly when they might have access to the truth and what’s really going on in America.
“I’ve been saying it for a long time. All the advances in communication technology are destroying peoples ability to communicate.”
And you would be wrong...
It’s actually improving it.
Sesame Street has a lot to do with the deterioration of education, according to a former eng prof. She said students raised with it expect to be entertained in the class. Said she never heard things like “I don’t want to do that it’s boring”, prior.
Kids are hungry for the truth and also are willing to learn to communicate. They enjoy gaining knowledge and knowing. they just need a good environment.
Teachers need to quit whining and teach. Treat kids with respect, discipline them, be willing to be a bossy adult, and concede to never being their friend until they are adults, treat the boys like gents and they will be opening doors by the end of the year, and homework every night no questions asked (except holidays respect their need for a break).
^^^But can they communicate well with anyone outside their peer group^^^
Why would that be important these days? It isn’t like 80% of the world’s wealth is controlled by folks over the age of 60. Wait....what?
I'm as uncomfortable as anyone with the changes, but they are going to happen, whether I like it or not.
I saw a group of children of my many cousins a while back and I was wearing the Phil Zimmerman PGP T-shirt, from back when PGP was outlawed and Clinton was trying to outlaw all encryption.
The kids looked at the front, saw it was radical perl code, looked at the back and read "This Shirt Is a Munition" and freaked out that I was wearing something that belonged in a museum (according to them).
It hasn't been THAT long ago. But for them it is ancient history.
/johnny
It makes people be in too much of a hurry and have no respect for patience.
It makes people be in too much of a hurry and have no respect for patience.
Oh well. The majority of them are meant for menial jobs anyway. I suppose those capable of rising above this trend will do so.
He couldn't imagine today's world. I try to remember that, and temper my judgements of the next generation.
/johnny
He was right. A glance at the last election shows me what happens 60 years after you stop teaching Greek. Does the phrase “doomed to repeat it” ring a bell?
When I was a small child, I overheard my paternal grandfather telling my mother that while I had hebrew, french, and latin education... that I didn’t have any grounding in greek would mean I was uneducated and remain ignorant.
Grandpa was right. Students who have taken even a single year of Latin and/or Greek score much higher on SATs and most other measures than do students who have not studied Latin and Greek. Educators stopped requiring Latin and Greek because they require a fair amount of rote memory in the first year of study and rote memory might bore poor Johnny, whose teachers have been taught by the “progressive” teacher training schools that Johnny’s studies should not tax his little brain and should be fun, fun, fun all the time. These “untaxed” students are getting taxed mightily now as a result of their inability to understand how bad Obama is for them and the country.
Needs to be on balance as mentioned at the end of the article.
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