Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨throws_lemy@reddthat.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/parents-opt-kids-school-laptops-ask-pen-paper-rcna257158

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.

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andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My first year teaching I was encouraged to do everything on the chromebooks, because the district wanted to save on printing costs.

If you have 100+ students, and are limited to 500 pages/month (I could print 500 more, but had to purchase my own paper…), you have to use the laptops.

Also, when parents and students increasingly treat attendance as a suggestion, keeping up with paper assignments is hellish. There were days I showed up with 1/3 or more of my class missing - with online class work, I at least could say “the work is available online.”

The technology is a problem, but it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control and admin has zero idea what is going on in the classroom. It’s a bandage that’s been left on so long the skin is starting to get infected around it.

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- LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What the fuck is it with schools being stingy with printed paper. At scale its less than a cent a sheet
  
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  - andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They also have to be paying for the software that tracks how many prints you use. It’s fucking stupid, and it’s just one of a million little ways that they make sure to punish anyone stupid enough to teach.
    
    I ended up buying my own printer. Printing alone got me to the maximum $300 of classroom expenses I was allowed to write off on taxes.
    
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  - SinningStromgald@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Teachers where I live are constantly asking for donations of basic school supplies, snacks, tissues, and cleaning supplies for classrooms. It is incredibly disheartening.
    
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  - Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So many donations and funds for schools are earmarked, you can only spend them in specific ways. If you spend them in ways that don’t align with the earmark, it’s incredibly easy for the donors or the state to claw them back. So that $40mil your local suburban school district spent on a new football stadium? That was likely earmarked SPECIFICALLY for football, they can’t really just swish the money to better textbooks, or whatever. Same with tech funding - you get $250k to upgrade your school district with Chromebooks or whatever, you MUST buy within what the funding packet tells you you can buy, and you can’t really do anything else with it.
    
    That doesn’t even get into the cartelization of textbooks and school software. There’s so few real options that it’s incredibly easy for these companies to collude without really looking like it’s collusion.
    
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- homura1650@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It still amazes me that laptops are still the cutting edge tech for schools.
  
  General purpose computers have always had major problems with students getting distracted and going off topic, and are a never ending source of tech issues; particular when locked down in a way that still fails to address the previous issues, but makes them fail more often.
  
  Admin is concerned about paper costs? Get every student an Eink reader. Schools are a big enough market to justify specoalized Eink readers that support classroom management style features (e.g. pushing a reading to student in the room).
  
  Don’t want to deal with hand written essays. I was using a digital typewriter as a middle school student 20 years ago.
  
  It’s like requing laptops for every math class because we don’t want to force students to do all their calculations by hand. But that’s not the choice: we have calculators! Even when we let them use calculators, we have a choice of what calculator to give them. We have 4 function calculators, scientific calculators, graphing calculators, symbolic calculators. And we can pick what tool we give students based on the needs of the particular lesson.
  
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  - Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    All of those are MORE expensive, at scale. If you can just hand 1500 kids a $200 Chromebook that fulfills ALL those functions, that’s $300k, vs 1500 e-ink readers at $40 a pop, 1500 digital typewriters @ $100 apiece, etc. Hell, that scientific calculator ALONE might be $200+ in some markets because Texas Instruments practically has the market cornered (to the point that I had to go to the administration of my school district to show them that the Casio I had was functionally identical).
    
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- UltraBlack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I really don’t understand why teachers need to pay for all of this…
  
  Here in Germany (admittedly not at the forefront of digitalization) we just got to borrow school-supplied books. There were some exercise books we had to buy ourselves and at the end of the year we had to pay some 15€ for printing.
  
  In the last three years we were allowed to bring our own laptops and tablets, which would save us the printing costs.
  
  Other teaching material costs were always paid for by the school.
  
  What about this does not work in the US of A?
  
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  - niisyth@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not enough profit for the shareholders if the school is free. Also, how can they pay for the biggest military in the wolrd if they keep funding needless items like school lunches and resources.
    
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  - TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    because in the USA we hate teachers.
    
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- foodandart@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  … it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control …
  
  If I may ask, just how large are the classes today?
  
  For reference, in 1980, my 10th grade English class (Mrs. Chase, she was awesome) had 36 students.
  
  That was average for my school at the time.
  
  The BIG classes like general US History (taught by Mr. Conway, who was wildly popular) had 40+ kids.
  
  Mr Conway also kept a real honest to goodness stocks in his class room, so anyone that misbehaved had two options… into the stocks for the class or off to the assistant Vice Prinicpal’s office and spend a day in ISS. (in school suspension)
  
  There would ALWAYS be one jackass Junior in each class that would opt for the stocks, at the start of every year and then NO one EVER caused a beef in Mr. Conway’s classes - or really ANY of the government studies (US History, Civics, Social Studies) deparement classes… Hearing about who chose the stocks and the rumors usually scared the underclassmen shitless, so they rarely ever piped up… except for the really stupid smartasses that always tried to test how far they could go…
  
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  - andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The most I dealt with was around 36. I had around 28 chairs.
    
    However, the feeder middle school had class sizes of 60+. There were literal riots, with multiple teachers injured, that the district covered up.
    
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- Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Unbelievable…
  
  The more I see about education nowadays, the more I realize I would not survive it anymore. So many tests and assignments and whatever, students have barely any time left to think or be bored. Everything gets constantly evaluated.
  
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- ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Trying to keep old stuff alive in a digital world is stupid. I do think that kids need to learn to think and research on their own, so AI and grammar and spelling corrections should be disallowed from the laptops and Chromebooks. Having an algorithm fix everything for you and write your papers is developmentally bad.
  
  -old person
  
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  - andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I disagree.
    
    I tutored a college student who had dysgraphia. They originally had a calculator accommodation, but this was removed at the request of the instructor.
    
    The student was in no way incapable of learning the material in the class - a remedial math course mostly on basic statistics and presenting data. But they were incapable of remembering most of the multiplication table.
    
    There’s no reason to force a person to do long division by hand. The student was perfectly capable of understanding the process of calculating an average, but actually doing the problem meant that they were counting out by threes on their hand to do 3x7.
    
    I’ve worked with dyslexic students on writing assignments - they are just as capable of intelligently responding to a writing prompt if you ask them verbally. Why should they be punished because they can’t spell (especially when we had like a decade of NOT TEACHING PHONICS)?
    
    I draw a hard line at generative AI, but as long as the thoughts are theirs, I’ve never been concerned too much with students using tools to help them.
    
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- partofthevoice@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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  - andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There are multiple such platforms - Canvas, ClassDojo, InfiniteCampus. Heck, you can even go with the free and open source Moodle. Most of these also integrate with useful online tools, like Desmos (graphing calculator) and PHeT (science simulations.)
    
    This can help with workload, because you can often set up things like multiple choice quizzes that grade themselves.
    
    The problem is that some skills simply need to be learned with pen and paper. I have taught and tutored chemistry for years - balancing equations and stoichiometry are skills that you can’t really learn on a computer.
    
    There’s also evidence that computer based notetaking is less effective - that students remember less.
    
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grue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve opted out of the school Chromebooks for my kids because they have computers running real GNU at home. We should all be outraged that schools are pushing a locked-down surveillance/content consumption-only platform, as opposed to something like a Raspberry Pi that actually empowers kids to have real computer literacy.

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- Prox@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This - like most problems we’ve created in the US - comes down to money. Google will often donate/grant Chromebooks to schools in order to create future ~~addicts~~ customers. It would cost schools a lot more to do what’s right (or at least better) for their students, so they don’t do that thing.
  
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  - sorghum@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    yup, it’s the same playbook Apple had in the 80’s and 90’s. Get them into schools and get everyone used to their ecosystem so they would buy their products after graduating. Bill Gates did the same thing in the 90’s to outfit computer labs in schools with a bunch of Dell computers.
    
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- modus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m curious to know if anyone here has ever approached the school IT department to ask what steps they take to mitigate or eliminate surveillance and tracking in these devices. I know it’s inherent in Google products to begin with, but do they even try? Or pretend to try? Or admit they don’t care?
  
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  - Newsteinleo@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The IT Department knows about all the problems it’s the administration that does not care and won’t let the IT people do anything. Also, you don’t want to know how bad the procurement process is with most school systems.
    
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  - Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I did! The IT department literally laughed at me. I also tried to get them to let teachers install uBlock Origin, because they apparently will watch educational YouTube videos in class sometimes, and then get random ads for everyone to suffer under. But uBlock Origin doesn’t have their support… Ironically, they only support Windows computers and iPhones on the school network. Android, MacOS, and Linux are all officially unsupported.
    
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  - Kupi@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve asked about this a few times and I was told by our administration that every company we work with signs a data privacy agreement stating that they will not sell or compromise any sensitive student data. But I was also told that our administration team doesn’t usually follow up with these companies to make sure they’re following the rules. Therefore it’s an unfortunate situation of, “above my pay grade.” Also, when opting out of a Chromebook, you’re only making sure your kid doesn’t go home with one. Most, if not all, teachers don’t shy away from Google Classroom…
    
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  - bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The school IT department is often the math teacher’s side hustle or a badly paid gamer dude with Microsoft certifications.
    
    Surveillance and tracking is the least of their concerns.
    
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- bonenode@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  real GNU at home
  
  GNU/Hurd… or GNU/Linux?
  
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  - grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Who cares, as long as it’s copyleft?
    
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  - ebolapie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve recently taken to calling it GNU+Linux.
    
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- kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Sounds great but I can guarantee no IT team wants to deal with this
  
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sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Get Google out of our schools

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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They’re putting AI in children’s school laptops? Not only teaching them to think less, but letting a corporation directly influence them?

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- Rooster326@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  They are Chromebooks. A gigantic corporation is already influencing them?
  
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  - JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There’s a big difference between “hey kids, use this machine, it has Internet access and Brand products” and “hey kids, ask me anything you’d like, and I’ll give you the Brand approved answer.”
    
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- spicehoarder@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Kids have two options. Out dated propaganda, or propaganda that might hallucinate a few key details.
  
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  - JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Well obviously the propaganda I grew up with is better and clearly didn’t affect me at all…
    
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- maturelemontree@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Its working exactly as intended.
  
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FireWire400@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That’s the one good side effect of AI

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- acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  also counterproductive, handwriting is better for retention.
  
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  - atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Handwriting is better for retention if you are good at writing notes. Not everybody can write fast and legibly and still listen to and comprehend the lecture.
    
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Technoworcester@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
said she was only allowed under state law to opt the children out of standardized testing and sexual health lessons,

WTF? Why the fuck can someone opt kids out of EITHER of these things?

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- Sharkticon@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Well the latter is pretty easy, it’s easier to sexually molest children that haven’t gone through sex education.
  
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  - Hobo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I think this heavily depends. Sex education for a lot of places, especially in rural areas, tends to be fucked up backwards and downright harmful. Last I checked several states have abstinence only sex ed and do things like show kids a bunch of pictures of STDs and leverage scare tatics to deter them from having sex. I think opting out of that shit show and having a candid conversation with your kid about sex is probably the ethical thing to do in those places.
    
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- SayJess@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Christians.
  
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- Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There’s an argument to be made against standardized testing. Very neurodivergent individuals, for example, can suffer a lot under bad standardized tests. Idk, though, it would be better to just make a better system, rather than letting people opt out. As long as that’s not happening, there is, however, an argument against standardized tests.
  
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NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
From the article:

She also started a parent group with 75 members that’s asking the district to allow students to keep Chromebooks at school rather than take them home.

Seems like such a good idea to leave that at the school. I had a relative who was a teacher, she rarely ever assigned homework. She always said it was her job to teach them in those 6 hours, and the rest of the day was theirs. She did have a weekend workshop for kids that needed tutoring, and after class hours, but in general, leave school at school and be a kid.

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- lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I wish my teachers had that attitude. I got sent home with hours of homework almost every day. I particularly remember my raging bitch of an 8th grade math teacher who would assign 100s of problems a night and give you zero points if you didn’t do all of them. My mom even backed me up on arguing about that shit. If I couldn’t get it done during my study period and lunch hour I didn’t do it. I had better things to do with my time after school.
  
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  - spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    “it’s only an hour of homework!”
    
    -Each of your 6 teachers
    
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- WindyRebel@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  She’s (the relative) lucky she can do that. Some districts or schools have homework policies. As I am finishing up my master’s for elementary education, if I can get away with NOT assigning homework then that’s what I will do. They are kids and need their mental breaks as well. There’s research that shows homework doesn’t correlate to better learning or growth. It’s just busy work and play is really good for kids’ minds.
  
  If anything, I will encourage them to read and tell me what cool thing(s) they are reading about the next morning!
  
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  - NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I wish you luck I really do. If the parents insist the kids rest of day is structured I hope they get sports, or the scouts, or maker spaces, or library, or something worthwhile.
    
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lumbertar@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We have a county near me that has just committed to doing away with Chromebook’s and going back to pen and paper. The reason being that literacy scores in that area have dropped rather significantly. I worry that whether it is literacy or technological competency students are doomed to fall in one direction or another.

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- KiloGex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Computers have nothing to do with it. It’s everything to do with curriculum requirements and the lack of explorative reading thanks to standardized testing. Other countries like China, Taiwan, and Finland have been able to adopt technology with no loss in reading literacy. It’s because they have focused, thought out integration and not just slapdash by whatever corporation gives them the best deal.
  
  I totally agree though. It seems like right now either kids are stuck in front of a computer with no prep or any other supplemental education, or they’re completely unplugged and unprepared for interacting with technology outside of an iPhone.
  
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  - lumbertar@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I have a few family members that are teachers or work in education at some capacity and would absolutely agree the curriculum requirements and standardized testing have become a barrier. Though I am not an expert in education I was a student and can attest to the fact that these things stand in the way of educators being able to reach all students. These education programs are not designed to reach students that learn differently from the vast majority of students. When it comes to reducing exposure to technology in schools it would be foolhardy to double down on either direction. Technology and literacy should coincide and neither should replace the other. A little bit of moderation and balance goes a long way. Today’s society and politics focus on a nose to the grindstone, devil may care rate of progress which though fast and traditionally the American way is unfortunately full of holes and mistakes that are only noticed in hindsight.
    
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  - UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    It’s everything to do with curriculum requirements and the lack of explorative reading thanks to standardized testing.
    
    The Pineapple And The Hare: Can You Answer Two Bizarre State Exam Questions?
    
    spoiler
    In the olden times, animals could speak English, just like you and me. There was a lovely enchanted forest that flourished with a bunch of these magical animals. One day, a hare was relaxing by a tree. All of a sudden, he noticed a pineapple sitting near him. The hare, being magical and all, told the pineapple, “Um, hi.” The pineapple could speak English too. “I challenge you to a race! Whoever makes it across the forest and back first wins a ninja! And a lifetime’s supply of toothpaste!” The hare looked at the pineapple strangely, but agreed to the race. The next day, the competition was coming into play. All the animals in the forest (but not the pineapples, for pineapples are immobile) arranged a finish/start line in between two trees. The coyote placed the pineapple in front of the starting line, and the hare was on his way. Everyone on the sidelines was bustling about and chatting about the obvious prediction that the hare was going to claim the victory (and the ninja and the toothpaste). Suddenly, the crow had a revolutionary realization. “AAAAIEEH! Friends! I have an idea to share! The pineapple has not challenged our good companion, the hare, to just a simple race! Surely the pineapple must know that he CANNOT MOVE! He obviously has a trick up his sleeve!” exclaimed the crow. The moose spoke up. “Pineapples don’t have sleeves.” “You fool! You know what I mean! I think that the pineapple knows we’re cheering for the hare, so he is planning to pull a trick on us, so we look foolish when he wins! Let’s sink the pineapple’s intentions, and let’s cheer for the stupid fruit!” the crow passionately proclaimed. The other animals cheered, and started chanting, “FOIL THE PLAN! FOIL THE PLAN! FOIL THE PLAN!” A few minutes later, the hare arrived. He got into place next to the pineapple, who sat there contently. The monkey blew the tree-bark whistle, and the race began! The hare took off, sprinting through the forest, and the pineapple … It sat there. The animals glanced at each other blankly, and then started to realize how dumb they were. The pineapple did not have a trick up its sleeve. It wanted an honest race — but it knew it couldn’t walk (let alone run)! About a few hours later, the hare came into sight again. It flew right across the finish line, still as fast as it was when it first took off. The hare had won, but the pineapple still sat at his starting point, and had not even budged. The animals ate the pineapple.
    
    1. Why did the animals eat the pineapple? a. they were annoyed b. they were amused c. they were hungry d. they wanted to 2. Who was the wisest? a. the hare b. moose c. crow d. owl
    
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- OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think at least one class a day for some sort of technology literacy is important. Maybe some typing courses or web development or coding courses or graphic design or even how to create chat bots…
  
  But as much as I’m into tech I agree that kids shouldn’t be staring at screens all day.
  
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  - TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    or maybe kids should learn to do that on their own free time.
    
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- rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Interesting thought.
  
  I don’t know that technical comp is going to be a problem, they’re going to likely have access to a phone or tablet from a very young age. There’s nothing they need for the most part that exceeds google docs and a website that they can likely pick up quickly.
  
  I wonder if the technical needs will slowly change over time. Companies are still full of pc’s when a keyboarded tablet would probably be fine for 9/10 of the job needs in white collar land.
  
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- Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It does feel like there are already countries doing this effectively and thoughtfully, its just the vast majority of them are not.
  
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  - TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    the problem with American education is cultural. other countries have stronger cultures around education.
    
    and certain groups in america have very strong cultures around education, mostly asians and wealthier people.
    
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cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Public education either needs to be reclaimed and rebuilt from all the corrupting influences that have torn it apart. I’m not worried about the children of intelligent people, who can fall back on enrichment provided by their families, but so many kids are, at best, getting left behind or worse, being indoctrinated with all sorts of corpo-fascism now inherent in the system. Most kids seem to be coping pretty alright, so far, but I worry about the trends, and the future.

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- SirSamuel@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  First off, congratulations on posting the comment you were working on instead of deciding you didn’t care enough to hit send. Second, I’ve done exactly what you’ve done, so if I’m a pedant I’m also a hypocrite. Third, I’m really really curious; what was the “or” half of the either/or statement you started at the beginning of your post? Or did autocorrect change really to either? Inquiring minds want to know
  
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  - cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I empathize with your curiosity. I frequently have symptoms of ADHD and my mind goes places and comes back without ever telling me where it’s been. It’s a chaotic place and I don’t always know either. Reading the context, I suspect what I was probably considering saying was suggesting the alternative is focusing on promoting homeschooling and auto-didactic learning as much as possible, until I realized that’s not really a scalable or suitable solution to the concern I was starting with. So the thought got axed.
    
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Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s also a BIG privacy issue.

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Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This may be the millennial in me talking but I’ve generally found schools to be fucking dire when it comes to implementing technology in the classroom.

During Year 10 (equivalent to 9th Grade for any Yanks here), our school enrolled in a government programme to start using PDAs in the classroom. So they offered every kid in our year a Pocket LOOX 720 at a heavily subsidized price.

They were never used in lessons.

Pupils instead used them as music/video playback devices and to play games, since it was 2007, smartphones weren’t yet a thing and YouTube was just in its infancy.

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- Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Current trend is to buy whatever services microsoft or google has. In fact wasn’t there a school where they replaced teachers with AI models?
  
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- eah@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Something like an introduction to unix and programming should be mandatory. They seem to think that kids need to “learn to use a computer and the internet.” It’s a fucking point-and-click interface. What is there to learn? The software industry is very skilled at making it all so easy that a chimpanzee can use it. You don’t even need to read a manual. I wonder if this is all a holdover from the 70s when the computer interface was likely to be a paper teletype which is naturally difficult to use without instruction. We’re living in the future. Teach the difficult stuff. The teachers need a wetware update.
  
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  - Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Kids back in the eighties were coding in BASIC, running command line prompts and using home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC 464 and Commodore 64. The most I did in terms of coursework for my IT classes during my secondary school days was make a personal webpage about my hobbies & interests using Microsoft Frontpage. Sixth form (where I did A Level Computing, basically 11th & 12th Grade equivalents) was even worse, It was 2010 and they were still fucking teaching us Visual Basic 6 and the Waterfall Model of system development!
    
    Something like an introduction to unix and programming should be mandatory. They seem to think that kids need to “learn to use a computer and the internet.” It’s a fucking point-and-click interface. What is there to learn? The software industry is very skilled at making it all so easy that a chimpanzee can use it.
    
    This may be infuriating or sad for you to read, but very young kids who have been brought up on smartphones, TikTok and YouTube Kids these days can’t even do basic shit like this. Like, I’ve genuinely heard about kids starting kindergarten and reception who cannot even turn pages on a book and try to swipe left/right on them like they’re a touchscreen. Some even struggle to work with a physical keyboard or a gamepad that actually has tactile inputs.
    
    The only other group where I’ve personally seen such ineptitude with technology is in old people. I used to work in customer support for a major right-wing British newspaper, and it was mainly things like website account access issues, basic tablet/smartphone tech support, and promotion enquiries I dealt with. I genuinely hated that job for a lot of reasons, but a big part of it is that trying to guide a senile 75+ year old pensioner through a basic password reset or explain how to redeem an e-voucher.
    
    My dad is 80 years old and as the younger autistic one in the family who got economically screwed and is still living with my parents, I’m left with having to continually explain how to do basic email or phone tasks to him.
    
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- UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I mean, as a 90s-kid, we used to install video games and other entertainment gimmicks on our graphing calculators. That’s when kids weren’t coming to school with gameboys and walkmens, already.
  
  I gave my high school teachers fits because I’d sit in the back of the class and read my dad’s old fantasy paperbacks - Game of Thrones, LotR, Dragonriders of Pern. They’d be annoyed to see I wasn’t grinding my way through “Crime and Punishment” or “Great Expectations”, but reluctant to object given that I was technically reading books above my grade level.
  
  Similarly, kids in math class fucking around with Sudoku puzzles or Rubix Cubes or other math-adjacent gimmicks tend to turn teachers sideways. Especially when they’re getting middling grades on the actual material, but obviously smart enough to practice and improve.
  
  Maybe things have improved since I left secondary school.
  
  From my perspective, the three things that have fucked schools most over time have been
  
  Larger class sizes
  
  Teachers with less education / professional experience
  
  Shorter school days / school years and bigger gaps in continuous education caused by the need to start work sooner
  
  Going back to the 1970s, professional academics have known that these are the hallmarks of a bad education system.
  
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  - TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    they are happy to spend money on technology and shiny new buildings.
    
    they aren’t spending money on teaching staff. teaching staff who are now more credentialed than ever, but know less than ever.
    
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  - Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    We didn’t have graphing calculators in school. The most we used were scientific ones which had sine, cosine, factorials, that kind of stuff.
    
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DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We all need to do this. I’d be raising hell if my kid were in school these days. He graduated in 2016, just before things got REALLY bad.

I read /r/teachers, and I’m shocked that kids are being passed up through the grades who can barely read, and can’t focus on anything at all for more than one minute. They’re allowed to eat in class? Look at their phones? They get up and wander around, and even leave the classroom? WTF?

“Sit down! Shut up! Put the damn phone away and pay attention!”, is what I’d say right before I was fired from being a teacher, I suppose.

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- KokoSabreScruffy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Because at some point you feel alone vs the system and you either burn out or decide to move with the flow and pass the problem to the next person in line which is… the system.
  
  In my school it feels like half of the parents are overprotective and if you mention anything negative towards their kid, they take it personally so you have to ask the question… is it worth the trouble for the money you are given.
  
  Personal experience: teaching in most elite school in my area and everything looks bleak. So I just focus on the few willing to learn and rest can go kick rocks for all I care as long as they know how to behave… and even that is a tall order in some cases. Every time I kick a student from class for being disruptive in class I expect a call from angry parent how wrong I am and how much of an angel their kid is.
  
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bold_atlas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Unfortunately even this will have to be another battle to wage as there in monied interest in shoving these shitty ipads and chromebooks down schools throats.

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- UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It feels like fiddling with the aesthetics of schooling rather than addressing the fundamentals. The idea that a computer terminal is bad for literacy doesn’t seem to match out with empirical evidence.
  
  To Wit
  
  Image
  
  Exploring the relationship between children’s knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes
  
  If something is clearly doing harm but no one is stopping it, then it’s because someone is making money off of it.
  
  People make money coming and they make money going. I don’t think it is reasonable to say “profit exists, therefore problems”, as a lot of these prescriptions and changes are non-scientific and populist-driven at the outset. Whether they work or not isn’t really the goal. Political outsiders simply need to establish a scapegoat to pin on their incumbent opponents in order to sell their own ascendancy to office.
  
  If you can campaign on undoing harm, cool. You’ll do it. But if you just need to throw darts and hope you hit something, blaming “the kids today and their computers” is as good a vector for attack as anything.
  
  Not as though selling kids school supplies, hard cover textbooks, and other more traditional school trappings wasn’t profitable enough forty years ago.
  
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  - bold_atlas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I don’t think it is reasonable to say “profit exists, therefore problems”
    
    Good thing nobody said that then.
    
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aeronmelon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Other benefits of writing on paper:

doesn’t get “accidentally” deleted

doesn’t get “accidentally” copied

doesn’t get uploaded to a cloud

isn’t used to train AI

can’t be edited or redacted by another party after the fact

It also feels good. Especially if you go out and buy a nice pen. And it gives your work a degree of object permanence.
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- frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Dogs eat it though. I’ve never heard “the dog ate my Chromebook”.
  
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Broadfern@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Good on those parents for advocating for their kids’ wishes!

When even the students are stressed and overwhelmed by the enshittification, that should be a glaring sign that something has to change. Humans need a break from the always-on, endless stream of digital information, especially that young.

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SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s happening.

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arcine@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think there was a Japanese study that shown that pen and paper is superior in terms of memorisation even to handwriting on a tablet (in addition to the well publicised fact that handwriting is far better than typing for that too)

I wish we had more info on the subject. Definitely got me to switch back to pen and paper from my iPad, and anecdotally I think it’s worked out well for me.

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PetteriPano@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
In sixth grade we got to go use the computer in the teacher’s lounge to print out a topic from encarta. At secondary school we had to sign a set of rules for using the computer lab. At uni we had a proper user agreement with the IT department. Mostly because we had multiuser systems, e-mail and webhosting at our disposal.

My kid is still a few years from starting school. I’m hesitant to sign any Google EULA on her behalf.

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Muffi@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As a teacher, I already have to teach half the kids how to even use a computer because they only ever used phones and tablets. And I am not going to be able to teach them programming without laptops.

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THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If I was given a laptop in middle school or elementary school, I’d have gotten absolutely nothing done. We dicked around with the computers when we could use them once a week or so, let alone daily.

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TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Parents make some good points. AI chatbot integration is too much. Its something that can actively stall learning. You need to learn the skills at school yourself to better use tools like AI. We also should avoid over exposure from screens too. Useful skill for our world، but some pen and paper can help eye strain or over stimulation.

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mark100@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Stopping the childern from using tech is not wise. As well stopping the children from using pen and paper is not a good idea. We live in this century, both is needed. By using paper and pen kids learn much more than just writing itself. Also the style of letters they write matters a lot. Most of the poeple can write just characters that look like from a printed book. You can check the studies to read what that does to your brain.

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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There will be parents that give a shit about how their kids learn to learn, and there will be others that dgaf, or at least bot enough of one, to keep their kids from just mashing the easy button and using “cheats” like AI. Unfortunately plenty of the latter will get management positions.

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prenatal_confusion@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Right tool for the job. Teach the kids how to use technology to their advantage and when not to go for a laptop.

That said pen and paper is a relatively recent invention too.

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KiloGex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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blady_blah@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
" Luddite unite!" These parents.

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Gammelfisch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Does the pen and paper include a cursive handwriting course?

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Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That plasma giving everyone headaches now

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Formfiller@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This would have made our lives so much better.

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