- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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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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?
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.
Well the latter is pretty easy, it’s easier to sexually molest children that haven’t gone through sex education.
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.
Christians. They deserve special treatment, because they are all special.
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.
While I agree with you, I’m not sure Chromebooks should count as “using tech” for the sake of learning. If you really want to give a younger generation experience with technology there are far better systems for them to learn on.
Get Google out of our schools
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.
It’s happening.
Can’t wait until it happens at work.
Oh wait, it’s not, and this is dumb?
Borges alleges that a little-known federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, copied the government’s master Social Security database into a cloud system that lacked normal oversight.
I don’t know if I’d call them a little-known team (they’re infamous for basically fraud), but point taken.
I think you replied to the wrong post.
Oops yes
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.
Maybe things have improved since I left secondary school.
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. But fixing all of them costs money. And if there’s one thing a school district hates to do, its spending money to improve education.
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.
the issue is the metricization of education. everything must be measured… and this creates a perverse system where everything is now about increasing the metrics, regardless of improving education.
not to mention the changing in parenting where ever parent things their child is a genius and it’s the ‘school system’ that’s failing their kid, instead of their kid being a dumbass jerk who refuses to learn or participate in their own education.
teaching staff who are now more credentialed than ever, but know less than ever.
They’re not more credentialed than ever. The days of a teacher needing a master’s degree, much less a PhD, are well behind us. Modern teachers - across both public and private sectors - can start working with as little as a GED and a state-issued teaching certificate. They don’t need a bachelor’s in their subject of expertise or in education as a degree. They don’t need to undergo an apprenticeship under a more experienced professional. They don’t need good references to land a job. All they need is a willingness to undercut existing (unionized) teaching staff and a clean criminal record.
Schools in low-budget districts onboard these green recruits in droves. Then they use the added manpower as an excuse to fire anyone on track for a pension or old enough to receive full benefits. Education has become the default job for drop-outs and victims of industry layoffs. It’s the employer of last-resort, with enormous churn, as rebounds in the job market vacuum people out as fast as downturns dump them in.
the issue is the metricization of education
Metricization is used as an excuse to conduct these wholesale purges. HISD is ground zero for this experiment in privatization, as the state takes over local school boards, fires teachers by the dozen, and consolidates students into larger and large class sizes with fewer resources.
Standardized testing is used to justify the initial purges. Then rebounds in testing (as students are purged and private testing companies manipulate exam scores) are used to validate the decisions of newly installed administrators. Don’t look at college placement or applied skills tests, just focus on Pearson’s latest “Number go down / Number go up” announcements, as the state leaders funnel more and more money to the testing companies.
By the metrics these districts are degrading and collapsing. But through propaganda, school residents are brow-beaten into doubting their own eyeballs.
not to mention the changing in parenting
You can blame “parenting” for a single kid’s mistakes.
Once you start blaming “parenting” in the aggregate, you’re inevitably full of shit.
The common denominator in these school districts isn’t “parents” and its absurd to pretend otherwise.
We didn’t have graphing calculators in school. The most we used were scientific ones which had sine, cosine, factorials, that kind of stuff.
Not better at all, current trend is to buy whatever services microsoft or google offers.
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.
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.
I think the trouble young people have with using desktop computers is overstated. It’s a bit of a satanic panic situation. You can learn it pretty quickly. A common complaint is that “they don’t know hierarchical file systems” because the mobile devices have only flat file systems presented to the user or something. A tree structure is not a challenging concept and the basic things you can do in a file system you can count on 2 hands. Open a file, save a file, rename a file, delete a file, move a file, copy a file, create a directory, enter a directory, move up a directory. The physical interface is the mouse with 2 buttons, a primary and a secondary for opening context menus; and the keyboard which has the characters printed on them. There’s a bit more to it, but it can be explained in, like, a page of text. And the rest you can learn through experimentation. Touch typing is another thing entirely, though. That takes dedicated time to learn.
I wonder if ineptitude with tech shared between the young and old are different kinds. Maybe the old are just completely inept, but, for the young, it’s just temporary. It’s a shock when we find out they don’t know something, but, after explaining it, they’re productive within minutes. A 20-year-old still has plenty of mental plasticity. Having to teach somebody the desktop metaphors isn’t a huge bottleneck.
I’ll end by contending that I don’t think schools should not be teaching computers. Rather, they should be teaching computers in more depth. Teach students basic programming and they will have to learn the desktop metaphors along that journey anyway. Computers are way too important to leave the future stewards of the Earth in the dark about how they work. I had to learn how the energy of a photon relates to its wavelength and I had to read and analyze the Canterbury Tales. Not entirely useful. But it’s at least a little interesting. Kids are very capable. They won’t all be programmers. They should learn it all anyway. Don’t let Silicon Valley have it all to themselves.
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.
I think it’s fair to expect students to use computers in a programming class. I don’t know if there’s a need for students to be using computers for the entire school day
I say: If they can earn a good grade with a phone, then fine. If that’s not supposed to be able to happen, then there’s probably something wrong with the course.
Nah, just a TI-84 and teach them programming in BASIC
Start the little devils running boxes of punch cards, then make them sneak into the lab at night to write their own punch card software for games and secret messages. How else are we going to get them ready for the real world?
" Luddite unite!" - These parents while shaking a fist at clouds.
Daily reminder that Luddites were not against the machines/technology, they were against unregulated industry.
Ludd was right. But the issue here is google putting out shitty products, not workers being replaced by machines the owner class has unrestricted access to… actually, if the purpose of those chatbots was to replace the critical thinking of students, maybe this is an issue the General would smash up.
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.
Does the pen and paper include a cursive handwriting course?
it fucking better.
if it wasn’t for cursive, my penmanship would be illegible.
Every one of these parents uses technology in their work, I’m betting. They’re seeing their kids up to be under prepared for the future. These are probably the same parents who complain that they don’t teach cursive in schools anymore.
Brother, I became a software engineer and I didn’t use a laptop for classes until college. Shoving Microsoft and Google products down highschool kids throats does nothing to “prepare them for the future”.
And for those people who don’t become engineers? What about those kids who don’t have access to a computer outside of the phone in their pocket? If we want to increase computer literacy, it has to be in schools because it’s definitely not going to be at home in the vast majority of cases.
We don’t need kids going analog unless they choose a career path in a computer-related field. We need schools to be teaching proper computer and media literacy to prepare them not only for a work future, but a media future filled with AI slop and grifters. Not teaching them these valuable skills is how we get kids in their 20s right now getting their news from a fish on tiktok.
Kids are already coming out of school computer illiterate. They know how to use specific applications, but don’t know things like directory hierarchy. Onboarding young people into working with general office productivity like SharePoint, or giving them a real grown up laptop instead of an ipad is like teaching boomers to open PDFs all over again. All the same old training and helpdesk calls.
the solution is the same as it was 30 years ago: computer class where they deep dive into how the things work, not just how Microsoft and Apple decide the things are used.
I don’t disagree. We need better computer literacy programs in school. But removing technology from learning 100% isn’t the alternative. Those parents are still probably going to stick an unregulated, fully accessible iPhone in their kids hands where they’re going on Instagram and tiktok with no media literacy skills. How is that any better?
Ah, you don’t understand nuance, I see.
Go back and reread my comment, then reply to me when you’re ready to engage with what I actually said, and not a bunch of scary strawmen you’ve built.
How did I miss the point? You said you didn’t use a computer in school until college, and then you talked about shoving mainstream bloatware into kids eyes. I don’t see how I missed those points. I’m also assuming when you went to college was a different point on time than it is right now. As you know, a lot has changed in the computer and online scene in the last 6 years, and exponentially moreso in the last 3.
Alright I’ll spell it out for you. For some context, the article in the post (which you probably didn’t read) describes how schools are sending tablets and laptops home with elementary and middle school children. I specifically stated that I didn’t use a laptop for school until I was in college, and implied that my technology literacy did not suffer despite such “late exposure”.
I did not say that I didn’t use a computer until college. You made that up. I’m not advocating to remove all technology from school. That’s a strawman you’ve built to argue against. I used computers all throughout my time in school, starting in like 2nd grade. We had these things called computer labs, where a teacher that specialized in technology would teach us the ins and outs of using a computer, how to be safe on the internet, and provide adult supervision and guidance. In middle school, we had designated computer lab time to work on book reports, lab reports, research projects, etc. I carried a usb stick around with me to save things onto, which I would then take home, where I could continue working on my assignments on our family computer. My parents established rules and boundaries for using the home computer, and were another resource I could go to for help and guidance.
But we also wrote stuff down. Like with pencils, on paper. And had teachers up at the front of the room giving lectures, helping us through example problems, teaching. That was the primary way we learned. We weren’t sent home with an iPad and some edutainment games and told “good luck!” like the kids described in the posted article.
I’ll say it again, but I’ll reword it in more plain language so there’s less chance of misunderstanding: sending school children home with corpoware-riddled tablets and laptops with little to no guidance and expecting them to use that for the bulk of their schoolwork (the thing described in the article) is not a good way to foster technology literacy.
You know what apparently you didn’t work on during school? Basic discussion techniques and the ability to be civil.
Please point out where I wasn’t civil or demonstrated a lack of conversational ability
You have a point; however, it is important to balance out the skills which are technology enabled and those that are physical. In an educational system IT would be a subject dedicated for this kind of thing.
Children, teenagers and others should absolutely be prepared for the digital world. But that means having a balanced curriculum that enables the usage of devices if so desired. Of course, that also means they should be prepared for analog life as handwriting for example, is a translational skill that is essential.
I don’t disagree at all. However, no kid can go tech free in school and be prepared for any sort of productive existence afterwards. Yes, that sucks. Yes, it also sucks that the majority of our experience is measured in productivity. But that’s capitalism. I wish it weren’t that way.
These parents certainly aren’t going to prepare to prepare their kids for a digital future. Heck, they’re probably falling for the same AI garbage their kids are going to fall victim to. Just like everything else, literacy needs to be part of the school curriculum.
I really don’t know why a bunch of people savvy enough to be on a federated social platform are so against this. It’s bonkers to me.
Know what’s better than learning something? Learning a second way to do it. Learning cursive has more benefits than simply being able to read/write it.
Kid’s brains are sponges and multiple studies over the years all show a direct correlation with learning more/varied things at an early age drastically increases the ability to keep learning later in life.
Unfortunately even this will have to be another battle because there is a lot of monied interest in shoving all these shitty devices down schools throats.
If something is clearly doing harm but no one is stopping it, then it’s because someone is making money off of it.
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.
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.
I don’t think it is reasonable to say “profit exists, therefore problems”
Good thing nobody said that then.
Not as though selling kids school supplies, hard cover textbooks, and other more traditional school trappings wasn’t profitable enough forty years ago.
blah blah blah “text book industry gets to extort students then it’s fine for the tech bros to do it now too.”
Nope. It’s not okay.
text book industry gets to extort students then it’s fine for the tech bros to do it now too.
Good thing nobody said that then.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
