No-Tech Schools In Tech Land

manyoso writes: "This article in the Oregonian tells how some hi-tech parents at Intel are opting for a school without computers for their children. From the article: 'Conventional wisdom holds that children can only benefit from exposure to technology', but children, 'shouldn't spend first-grade skipping coloring and learning to keyboard... Emphasizing computers doesn't seem to enhance students' creativity and could even stifle it... We want them to eventually see what a computer can do for them, but only after they know what they can do for themselves.'" Clifford Stoll has argued and written along similar lines.

Comments

Re:*stifles* creativity??

[npietraniec]

a game by the creators of Myst that let you explore worlds)!

There's a real world out there that's more fantastic than any imaginary world that some computer nerd dreamed up. Children need to be socialized - yes, sitting in front of a computer stifles creativity.

Re:From a similar experiment I've read about

[statusbar]

I think you are misunderstanding the issue here. I also have been using computers since an early age.

There is a difference between what you and I did and what the kids in elementary school do now.

You and I hacked video games, learned 6502/6510 on our own, and learned how the computer worked intimately.

In the typical school setting nowadays, none of this happens. The schools usually present the computers as a fixed system in a class running a specific program. Not as an interesting tool to examine, understand, or learn to build or hack.

The difference is that you and I were pulled by the computers to learn them. I believe that kids being 'pushed' to learn specific apps would get nothing out of them. Imagine if in 1983 all the schools had computers - Probably all they would have done with them is teach the students the control codes for WordStar. Hardly useful later on in life. Any student who learned how to run the CP/M assembler to create command files would be told 'Stop that! It is not on the final exam!'

It really comes down to how the computers are presented to the students.

As an aside, one of my very good friends is an accomplished musician with a geophysics degree.

--Jeff