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Kids and Computers
Nothing is more mysterious in politics than why some issues capture the imagination of idealistic people like college students -- sweatshops in Latin America, for example -- and some don't, like the enormous gap in computer use and Net access between poor and rich kids.
It's tough to imagine a more urgent moral issue than the fate of children without access to computers or the Net, since their educational, economic, cultural and social lives will be directly affected. Wealthier kids have access to research, free music, challenging games, educational and social opportunities online and the better jobs of the new economy. Poorer kids may be slinging burgers.
But the issue just doesn't seem to catch fire, either on college campuses, in the political community, among the sometimes narcisstic communities of tech workers, or among the intensely policitized communities and corners of cyberspace, where individual civil liberties are a raging concern but the technological fugures of other people often aren't. That's an ugly shame.
This week, a report by the David and Lucile Packard foundation issued this week but not yet online, revealed that computers are being used more than ever by kids who have them. An amazing seventy per cent of American households with children ages 2 to 17 have Net access, says the report, up from only 15 percent five years ago. About 20 percent of kids age 8 to 16 have computers in their bedrooms and ll per cess access the Net there.
It also revealed children's access to computers and the Net varies wildly with family income. A little more than 22 per cent of children in families with annual incomes of less than $20,000 had access to a home computer, compared with 91 percent of those in families with incomes of more than $75,000. Even in those cases where they do have a computer, found the study, kids in lower-income families use it less, in part because their families are less likely to have an ISP. And they almost never have access to broadband, beyond limited time on school and library computers.
This isn't a small disparity. Access to computing -- to RPG and other forms of gaming, search engines, IM, file-sharing systems -- shapes creativity, vocabuliary, political awareness, culture and common language, not to mention economic opportunity.
According to a story by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times this week, almost every school in the nation is now wired, but there are enormous differences in how indvidual schools use computers. The Packard Foundation report, which includes studies by a number of other experts, found that schools serving poorer kids are more likely to emphasize word processing and other simple tasks while those serving more affluent students taught computing as a means of promoting cognitive skills, problem-solving and gathering information on specialized fields of study.
The report also found that computers are turning out to be especially effective in dealing with some learning disabilities, a valuable treatment that poorer kids are also deprived of.
The report had some other interesting findings, some surprising, some not:
- For young boys, games are the dominant form of computer use. And there is little evidence that moderate game playing affect's kids social relationships or friendships.
- There are concerns among educators and psychologists about the 7 to 9 percent of American children who play computer games for more than 30 hours a week.
- Teenagers use IM, e-mail and chat rooms as a primary means of staying in touch with friends.
- Children ages 2 to 5 averaged 27 minutes a day at the computer. Children 6 to 11 spend 49 minutes a day. Kids 12 to 17 averaged 63 minutes a day.
Among the recommendations the study's authors make is this: "Efforts to ensure equal access to computer-related learning opportunities at school must move beyond a concern with the number of computers in different schools toward an emphasis on how well those computers are being used to help children develop intellectual competencies and technical skills," said the Packard Foundation study.
That means equal access issues involve more than software and hardware. It involves getting kids to the next level, using computing and the Net to develop story-telling, creativity, IQ, research and communicative skills, something that's only happening, the report says, in more affluent schools.
And there's no reason to expect this disparity to narrow. Computer companies have shown little intererest in getting equipment into the hands of poorer kids and families, even though it wouldn't be enormously expensive (an AT&T study a couple of years estimated it would cost between $3 and $5 billion) and would yield enormous economic benefits down the road.
The Clinton administration talked about equal access, but never fought for funding for it. Congressional Republicans showed little interest in the issue. Bush says he wants education to be a major priority in his administration, but his proposals, which were outlined this week, focus on literacy testing and accountability -- they don't even mention technology or computing. Few people in the new or old administration -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- seems to get that the most powerful moral issue affecting many kids and the Net isn't that they are online too much, but that so many aren't online at all, or find their Net and Web lives bounded by disparities in family income.
Computers do NOT equal a good education just as pencils do not equal being a good writer. Katz may not be aware but there is an increasing uproar that education is relying far too much on computers and net access instead of teaching important things like reading, writing, and math. An article in one of the IEEE magazines last year (or was the year before?), basically said too much emphasis was being put on computers for learning when the returns from using them was small compared to traditional teaching methods.
The elementary school my kids go to in a well do middle class area area is one of the top elementary schools in San Diego County and it doesn't have Net access and only about 1 computer per classroom. They emphasize learning to read, write, and do math.
I limit my kids TV watching, we don't have any video games, and they have very limited net access at home (its probably less than 20 hours per year). My kids read books, play with legos, and are doing very well. They also have a variety of other activities.
This doesn't mean I hate computers or think they are useless, they are tools, and like any tools they need to be used for the right things at the right times. They are not magic machines that will somehow make kids smarter, you need educated people to make use of powerful tools. As my kids get older, I expect and will allow them to use computers in learning, but as tools, not the magic solution to education problems in this country.
George W. Bush is on the right track, the education problems in this country are alot more serious than access to comptuers and the net.
While governor of Texas, he oversaw legislation to make all text books censored and specially written to the state's specifications. Which is no wonder why they have text books that depict world maps where the equator passes through the southern part of the US.
Given this, I don't think technology in education will be one of Bush's main priorities (nor would I want it to be, given what he might do to it).
In related news... research also finds that rich kids have better access to DVD players, designer clothes, gourmet food, automobiles, etc.
I mean, not to be a troll or anything, DUH!!!! People with money have more and/or better access to expensive, high-technology items? You could've knocked me over with a feather on that one!
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They could easily get them.
Am I talking 1 GHz Athlon systems here? No - we all know that 386's, 486's, and low-end Pentiums abound everywhere for near nothing - sometimes people can't even give them away! So why is it when all of these perfectly useful machines sit and rot, that those with as much money don't take them?
They aren't bright and flashy - that's it - they can't do the lastest stuff, can't load the latest software (never mind the fact that these same people probably couldn't afford the latest software, nor the fact that older software is also floating around out there for the taking). In other words, having an older PC doesn't make you look "rich" - whatever that means.
These people (actually, the majority of people - poor, middleclass, and rich) don't understand that a computer can expand your mind, and allow you to do and learn things, and ways of thinking, that you hadn't dreamed about before. A throwaway C=64 and a couple of magazines can do wonders!
However, if these people did know this, or had an inate feeling for this - they wouldn't be looking for a computer at the first drop of a hat - they would be looking for books (another widely throwaway item) - to read, and expand their minds, and teach them ways and ideas never before explored.
Most homes these days have few books in them. You don't see many homes with large book collections anymore (and those that do have large collections, those are typically in rich people's designer homes, who have the books to look cool - but don't actually read them). It is really apalling.
I actually think, as a whole, American society is becoming more illiterate by the day - there is no reason for this, other than laziness or something - maybe they just don't care. Even the rich are becoming illiterate - they may have the money to buy a book about a subject, but they would rather pay to have someone else tell them about it.
I wonder if we will see a different class structure in the future - literates on one side, and illiterates on the other...?
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Neither did Brian Kernigan or Doug Ritchie, they must be technically illierate also!
And Jon Katz! (wait a minute, this may be a bad examlple;) )
Or me! I didn't have a PC when I was in school, time to quit my programming job and rejoin the Army!
Computers are not neccessary to getting an education.
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Maybe you're talking about people who don't really care that much about computers, but nowadays, I'd argue that computers have never been more accessable to poor people than ever - if they're interested - and that your arguement is completely and uterly WRONG.
When I was growing up, my parents didn't think computers were all that big a deal, and didn't have a lot of money. I managed to cobble, scrimp, save, and work to get a C64. Once I had that, I learned most of the concepts that I have today - how computers work, how to do low level programming, etc etc etc. I didn't even have a disk drive!
Look at what you can do today. You can get a 486 system for almost nothing - nevermind a new PC with internet access for a couple hundred bucks. I would guess with $200 or even $100 you could get a cobbled together 486, and put linux on it. Presto! That's ALL YOU NEED to learn about computer technology. A 486, linux, and time. You could even get a network on the go if you're good at finding parts (you can get 386's free, in a lot of places, if you poke around). From there, finding your first job is probably not far away. Unless we're talking about the destitute poor, who aren't eating. But that's far and away another issue completely.
I don't think this has anything to do with access to computer technology, but a bunch of people whining and looking for a problem that isn't there. Exposure to computers plants the seed; If there's a desire, that seed will grow.
..don't panic
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Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
A society which respects and values education and educated people wouldn't have these problems. Almost needless to say, there are big pockets of the United States which does not have such a society. (<rant> The USA is socially diverse and it makes little sense to try to talk about it as a monolith; this is one area in which "diversity" deserves and needs to be denigrated, attacked and even suppressed, not praised. If people are acting in a way to continue or aggravate the lousy education kids are getting, they ought to be pariahs. There should be a special term for them, just as pejorative and common as "deadbeat dad". </rant>)
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Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Jon,
The issue doesn't get people fired up for a few simple reasons.
It's simply more important to get more books and new copies of books into kids hands than it is to get them new computers. It's also much cheaper to buy a book (or a dozen books or even a hundred books!) than it is to buy one computer!
It's also more important to spend the money on qualified teachers. Getting more teachers with more experience and better qualifications at the head of classrooms with smaller class sizes than it is to put net access infront of kids faces.
It's more important to spend that money on field trips. Do you think kids want to look at web pages about dinosaurs or they want to go to the American Museum of Natural History and see the fossils for themselves!
And honestly, if you sit and 8th grade boy infront of a computer, do you think he's a) going to sit there and look at what the teacher wants him to look at or b) he's going to spend his time trying to find ways to get to the WWF website when the teacher's not looking.
Cire
Abraham Lincoln walked 10 miles to return a book. Assuming it were a 100-page book, I reckon he got about 192 bps.
Somehow, he managed.
Almost all kids today have easy access to a library Abe could only dream about. But how many high school graduates have read a single work of Shakespeare? How many know Euclid's Elements? How many can compose a coherent paragraph? Answer: almost none. That would require real work, and no one wants to do that. Instead, Katz wants to give them an Internet connect so that, I suppose, they can fail faster.
P.S. The study is here
We don't need government funding to make a difference in the inner city. It can be done with donations.
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http://linux.umbc.edu/gits
The list of current hardware is a bit outdated; we have 8 workstations for the kids, all X-terminals from a beefy machine (dual celeron 400). All of the workstations are donated 486s or low-end Pentiums.
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Most of the people that I know are complete idiots.
Additionally, the most useful thing that I saw most kids do with computers in school was play oregon trail, and since they had to load it off the a: drive, and most of the people that I know can't even seem to do that right, they didn't learn much about computers either.
I have seen very few programming courses in school.
Kids need to learn to write reports with notecards and learn to spell before computers do it for them.
I am sick and tired of people saying that we need to throw computers at an educational system that is failing, especially when it's not always the school system... perhaps it's the fact that kids today have minds rotted on teletubies and motivations that are all fucked up by the fact that they have always had whatever they want.
Perhaps we should show kids that if they work hard, and make something of themselves, then they will be self fulfilled. I think that the dream of most kids these days is to marry rich, or make big bucks having someone else invest their money.
When being a "pro at computers" means you're the fastest solitaire in the west, and being a "hacker" translates to what we refer to as a script kiddie and being a computer security professional means you load norton antivirus and buy a hardware firewall that someone else installs and configures... well...
As for the college scene, activism is futile because government doesn't care.
As for the rich, they'll always have everything. The world is full of haves and have nots. There are haves that lose everything and have nots that become rich... cool eh? I came to college with a Mac LC (I'm a senior now, graduating a year ahead). I know people who dropped out who came with PII laptops (they were the shit then). In fact, many more than those that didn't come with a computer. Having a computer doesn't mean that you'll learn anything about it. I'm a computer science major... graduating early. I got most of what I have by working for it, ironically, as a sysadmin (and I had a lot of expertise already when I came into college, ironically, that is the one place that my parent's having a computer DID help me.) Not everyone is really going to go home and learn to program on their parent's computer. Is it sad that the opportunity isn't there? Yes, but what percentage of people would REALLY benefit in a measurable way? Besides, you can learn programming on a 486... probably better than on a P4. I mean, I started on a TI 99 4/A, and I turned out ok. And you can go grab a P 133 for about $10 these days.
I do a lot of community service... I care... I care out the ass. I would love to see tech education... but most schools that have computers just say "look we have computers, wet dream come true eh?" and then leave it at that. I can learn most of what the typical high school student learns on a computer better from a teacher who is well motivated.
Eh...
It's also a matter of image; which is worse on the kid, the stigma of no computer or the stigma of a "worthless" (by modern standards) computer. Keep in mind, kids can be very cruel.
/. or in something like an IRC room, noone can tell when I'm on my old P100, or my PIII 650. Unless the kid is inviting friends over to play games on it or the like, there is little difference between the two as far as just getting online and the kid's image online to others.
True, but on
Hell, the kid can still play his online MMORPG's on a P100, they just have to stick to text-based MUD/MUSH/MUCK/MOOs, which actually are quite a bit MORE intellectual and educational for kids. There are quite a few MOOs that have online schools, teaching the basics of object oriented code and server playing. Even the less educational MOOs still help reinforce mathematical skills, grammar, and spelling. And all of these text-based realities can be accessed through the same comptuers that were accessing them almost a decade ago.
perhaps? maybe? ya THINK?? yes, absurd comparison... a luxury item such as a BMW is not at all comparable to the essential learning tool the computer has become... and access, not necessarily ownership, should be a right and not a privilege... we are talking EDU here, folks, and said access need not be in the home but should be a right of all kids in all schools at all times, at least here in the wealthiest country in the world (USA)
I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of computers being pushed as the catch-all way to "fix" education. How about better pay for teachers? How about fixing some of these crumbling schools? How about textbooks that are up to date (and don't give me the line about computers replacing textbooks, because they don't currently replace regular books in enough of a way to do that effectively either)? How about emphasizing basic literacy and critical thinking?
None of these things come naturally with using a PC. You can use the PC as a way to learn these things -- and if you ask me it's not even the best way -- but to expect kids to pick this stuff up automatically by sticking them in front of a computer is stupid and naive. Also, contrary to popular belief, posting to BBSes and chat rooms does not automatically give you better command of the language. I know too many kids out there who are whizzes with their computers, but can't put together a real-world argument to save their hides.
The emphasis on computers as educational fix-it-alls is misleading and dangerous. They're like antibiotics: powerful and useful, but over-prescribed, and often for the wrong maladies.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
This illustrates the chasm in thinking between the haves and the have-nots. Sorry, I was a talented have-not thirty years ago who would not have been able to bootstrap himself without a government hand-out. Now that I make a decent living (instead of selling drugs, a viable option to some of my peers), I hate getting taxed, too, but I can think of No Better Use for my taxes than enabling children to have access to the Internet. They can't get it at home, but they can at school. This might be their only chance at obtaining a good, honest future.
In fact, given that affluent children generally Do have access at home, I would disproportionately fund the schools in the poorer districts and preferentially wire them. Believe me, spending tax dollars to give access to kids who otherwise would have none is a lot better than spending it on the ordinary oppression that our govts traditionally 'fund' inner cities.
If you feel like you are being taxed too much, you might want to consider actual wasteful tax practices, like subsidies to corporations or even bloated defense projects.
To specifically address your statements:
1) A kid doesn't have a couple hundred bucks to plunk down on a comp, no matter what, and his parents may not, either, or they may be deadbeats or not value the 'net, whatever...
2) I damn sure appreciated the Federal Grants I got for college, and I think children might also appreciate their only link to the wired world. Just because it's granted to them doesn't make it unappreciated.
3) To call this a waste of money seems ignorant. Sorry, but investing in education is probably the best investment one can make in one's community.
4) I agree that Welfare was once out of hand and it subsidized a lazy disenfranchised class. But I think that it is under control to a much greater degree now. I'm pretty sure the days of perpetual Welfare are over; there is a time limit.
Now the question of whether we need the computer in this day and age is a good one. I think the answer is an unqualified "Yes", although I am reminded of that Sci Fi short story (Asimov?) where all calculators on a planet stopped working for whatever reason and the guy who could add, subtract, etc.. in his head became Ruler of All.
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Many inner city schools are failing to even provide a basic level of literacy, let alone properly prepare students for advanced education.
While in four black men are going to prison, drug laws jail crack users longer than powdered cocaine users. (The only real difference between rocks and poweder: powder is the popular choice of white addicts, while the rocks are mostly used by blacks.)
Roughly one in five prgnancies in America are terminated, most of which are abortions of convenience, many of the women having these abortions are having more than one. Pro-choice or not, this should offend your sensibilies from a moral perspective.
Women in many Arabic and eastern nations are still treated like property.
That was just the first few things I could think of off the top of my head that are more "urgent moral issues" than kids that can't access Slashdot. Try to keep things in perspective, Jon.
The solution to this problem is easy.
Cost of a 3-year-old computer: damn near zero.
Cost of using one of several ad-driven ISP's: absolutely zero.
Poor kids can't afford to play Everquest on a P4 with a 20" monitor and a broadband connection, but any kid that has power and a phone line can scrape together the cash to get on the net with a cheap Linux box and an old modem.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
This is more important that you might imagine at first glance. You would expect that everyone would agree on the purpose, etc.
But this is no true than the varied reasons to build a motor vehicle. You look around, and you see many models of motor vehicle, depending on the purpose. And sometimes are using the wrong vehicle for the the job. [Imagine using a jaguar to tow your yatch to the beach for example.]
It is really tied into the vision that you have for the society. What kind of society do you want to build?
- a society of contented workers
- a society of active citizens
- a society of drug users
- a society of happy consumers
- a society of people competent in what they have studied
- etc. etc. etc. you add to the list
as a side note: the level of expertize need to really understand something and be competent in a subject is different than merely being sortof familiar with it. (I heard about that once in school)For example, I have seen education software that runs real world experiments such as physics and chemistry, etc in simulation. While this would be okay for a quick intro, can you really imagine someone becoming an expert guitar player merely by running a simulation on a computer?
and we also have the idea of subjects that are not meaningless to the students studying them
Education took place certainly in ancient times. [For example, check out this article on the information workers of 2500 B.C.E.] There are fundamentals of education that have been there regardless of culture and level of civilation. Failure to take advantadge of these fundamentals will doom an education enterprise, regardless of the bells and whistles and technology you employ. The ultimate failure is to not even know what these fundamentals are. From the results we see around us, despite what the education professionals tell us, these fundamentals are certainly missing in action
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Ever notice how Katz always posts statistics and studies that "aren't published yet". Hmmm, he wouldn't make this stuff up would he?