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Computers Not Working In Education
salimfadhley writes "BBC Radio 4's current affairs program 'Analysis' is reporting [realaudio] [txt transcript] on emerging evidence that computers have harmed, rather than helped educational progress. There is still much debate among even the most enthusiastic supporters of schools technology about how computers should best be used.
Despite record investment in computers in the USA and UK, recent studies (not the ones funded by educational software companies) have shown a significant drop in core subjects (Math, English) in schools that place strong emphasis on Information Technology.
Evidence also suggests that whilst information technology has great potential in the classroom, teachers have not yet found better use for computers than as a big library. Very few schools have been able to use the new technology for cultural exchange, or to build practical educational networks with other schools.
Teachers do not know whether computers should be seen as an exciting but peripheral educational 'accessory', or if computers can actually be used to solve the most pressing problems of literacy and numeracy - the sorts of things that get kids through exams." The Economist had a similar article a month or two back, about Israeli schools that had similar results, along with an interesting comparison between how people see computers now, and how people in the early 20th century saw film strips in the classroom.
Just look at the post...
Don't let the teachers & principals see this, I might be out of a job! (Work for educational software company)
Wish I could comment more on this, but not sure where company intellectual property on stratedgies start.
I'm not surpised. Schools tend to take away hours from maths and physics for teaching computer "science", so that would explain enough. Pity that MS Word is considered more important than algebra.
I was encouraged in high school to use calculators since my H.S. was trying to go "high tech". In fact, we were REQUIRED to use them on tests .... if you didn't, you were going to fail due to a lack of time to complete the exam.
...
... English was another issue ... and why I didn't get into a good school), so this is a good example in my opinion.
... and I finished WAY before the other students in the course. HOWEVER, when I got my exam back, I got a 54%!!! Every answer was correct, but in big, red letters at the top of the paper, the prof wrote "This is what you get for looking at your calculator so much!" ... then he wrote "I need to see a few more steps and where you got some of these answers".
:)
... kids today need to learn to think for themselves BEFORE they begin to use technology as a crutch ....
.... but at the same time, we live in a technology laced society ... so which is more evil ... to force kids to learn, but not teach them technology, or to teach then technology, but make them helpless without it ....
....
... can't live with it, can't live without it ...
...
Then I got to college
Now keep in mind, I was a pretty good math student (scored perfect on the SATs in Math
I took my first college Calc II exam, and of course, used my calculator for it. In all fairness, it was a difficult exam, but a fair exam. I thought I would be "joe slick" and finish quickly by using the latest and greatest graphing calc. available
Needless to say, that was the last time I used that calculator for anything but to check answers (or to get answers and reverse engineer them)
My prof was right though
It is an evil world we live in
It looks like technology is like women
Just my 2 cents
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
That's the thing: Teachers do not know ... if computers can actually be used to solve the most pressing problems of literacy and numeracy - the sorts of things that get kids through exams." Computers cannot, on their own, solve any problems - they can perform complex calculations, sure, but you have to feed them the exact steps to follow. If kids do not understand the principles behind something as simple as multiplication or division, say, how do you expect a glorified calculator to help them? Sure they could use it to divide 22 by 7, but do they understand why they are doing that? Sure they can use spell check on grammar check, but is that any substitute for actually understanding sentence structure or knowing how words are properly spelled? That is how you solve literacy and mathematic deficiencies. You have to work at it - technology isn't the magical panacea everyone appears to think it is.
You don't see architectecture schools talking about how power actuated fasteners are changing how they teach, do you? Of course not, they are just tools that save on labor. Computers are the exact same thing, and the quicker people realize that a computer is just another form of tool, the quicker everyone will realize that there is nothing mystical about them and their operators. Realizing this will help to devalue the artificially high prices of computer "engineers", cut down on overhead drastically, and provide just the shot in the arm our stock market needs to rebound.
I don't mean to bash on our dedicated teachers - they are doing the best they can, given their abilities and environment, but hyping up computers as a replacement to study isn't a good idea. There's a reason we weren't allowed to use calculators until Calculus class when we were in school, and that is why we hand to hand write exams without a dictionary available. It is nice to have technology available, but it should always be as an assistant to aid the individual in his work- it should not direct his work
Computers should primarily be used as an information reservoir.
You have to tread carefully when students start using them as active information _processors_ . Then you start to wonder what the net effect on education is.
Unless the poster is outside of the US/UK...
Despite record investment in computers in the USA and UK, recent studies (not the ones funded by educational software companies) have shown a significant drop in core subjects (Math, English) in schools that plase strong emphasis on Information Technology
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
See "Silicon Snake Oil" by Clifford Stoll in which he arrives at a similar conclusion. This came out about 4 or 5 years ago, don't know why anybody is surprised by this.
Computers *used* to work in education. I recall in primary school, the old BBC Microcomputers with software specifically designed to aid numeracy, literacy and logic skills. That actually worked, as it supplemented the classroom teachings rather than replacing them.
These days, computers waste time more than anything. It is too tempting for them to be used for 'messing around' with Windows and the Internet than for teaching kids basic skills. The latest crop of PCs have no software that supplements classroom teaching. What's the use of learning to use a word processor if you can't read or write?
Part of the problem is that many schools are staffed with teachers fresh out of school themselves and put into situations that equate to nothing more than glorified babysitting.
The real issue here, and this applies to whether or not we put computers in classrooms or force them to use old-school slide-rules, we've got to get back to teaching kids how to think, analyze and take some mental initiative.
Unfortunately, this usually starts at home
--- have you healed your church website?
From the article, David Reynolds says it better than I could:
I think we have dropped the material onto schools, we haven't provided adequate training for teachers in how to use it, we've assumed it's a good thing that doesn't need justification. And like many other innovations, the danger is that all innovation and change requires a coalition of people in schools to support them.
"Here you are, a nice shiny new computer. What do you do with it? Why, plug it in, of course". About the best learning software I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked recently) was MathBlaster. Better tools and better training for the teachers is what is really necessary to make computers work in schools.
http://www.familyhaven.com/parenting/hightechheret ic.html
If you haven't read his book "High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian" you really should. It's got some great reading and some things we should think about as we design software.
What can we do as software developers to actually make computers useful in the classroom instead of so distracting? Any thoughts from educators out there?
According to an article on TechTv. A quote:
Because they are both high tech professionals, Paul's parents say they know firsthand the addictive nature of computers and the Internet.
"They are somewhat addicting, and for young children that don't have all of the faculties that we have as adults, I don't think they can determine how much of something is not good for them," Baldridge said.
Of course, many of the teachers (just like many of the engineers in the corporate world,) said "What? I don't think thats going to work." but the school boards wanted their schools to be considered hi-tech, and it was an easy way to get more money for education.
Now that this stuff has actually been tested in the field, we're seeing it all backfire.
And all jokes aside, while technology teachers tend to know what they're doing, many other teachers were given a manual and direct orders to "teach using these computers!". Obviously, thats going to have a negative effect.
From what I've seen, computers are mostly used in the classroom as electronic babysitters. Small wonder they aren't improving education.
Our society seems to be beset with a mentality that calls for computerizing things because we can, rather than because there's a need.
ps - Get more replies when there's a reply button, eh Taco?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Which wasnt all that long ago... well grade 3 (1987) up until grade 9 (you do the math, i dont have a calculator handy ;), calculators werent allowed in the classroom. You had to work out maths problems on paper.
If my family was being held hostage by some mad mathematician who demanded that I solve some equation or my family dies, i'd skip right to the funeral arrangments. Thankfully there arent many homicidal mathematicians.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Ballpoint pens have been found to have no advantage over pencils regarding spelling.
Calculators found to not aid basic understanding and proficiency in mathematics. (Yesterday I saw someone enter 150000 * 1 into a calulator, then write down the answer so they wouldn't forget it)
It's a tool, just because you have it it doesn't mean you know how to use it. Too much emphasis is placed on the hardware in schools, too much money is spent on a fast connection, teach kids (and teachers) how to actually use them for academic purposes and you may see an improvement in some topics.
For subjects such as history and geography, the internet really can help a lot. To teach spelling or mathematical skills, maybe some software can be of assistance, but only if people know how to use it. The computer is not a replacement for a teacher.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
I used to work in a School District IT department. Computers were thrown at everything as if they were a cure-all, when the real problem was that the teachers were awful. It seemed that the ones who were yelling the loudest about needing computers in the classroom were the same ones who put up signs saying "Welcome Student's" and the same ones--English teachers, mind you!--who were saying, without a trace of irony, "Yeah, me and her are going across the street for lunch."
We need to turn out smarter teachers and give them incentives to perform, like better pay, long before we think about having a computer for every student.
that I grew up in a world not dominated by computers, I learned to read, write, research, spell (well most of the time anyway), & do basic math in my head.
Now I find myself relying on spell checker to fix my spelling errors, a search engine to find information, and a calculator to do math. These are all great tools, but without the basic knowledge behind them, they become a crutch.
and looking at school test scores, they aren't being used as tools.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Computers are changing EVERYTHING. Just because we do not know how to use them does not mean that they are not effective. In fact, the main problem is that computers are close to at odds with mainstream academic thought.
What happens when within 5 minutes I can gain most any knowledge I desire? Well..it kinda breaks down the walls, that is what it does.
The problem with such limitless resources, is not a problem with the resource itself, it's a cultural problem. Our modern education system sucks. Absolutly, positivly sucks. All it does is turn a majority of students completly off of knowledge. It does not encourage the kind of curiosity and logical thought that make for an intelligent person.
Our education system should consist of the basic fundimentals..Math general scientific method, language and grammer, and logical thought are the most important things we can teach. Everything else stems from these base things, and should be taught as such.
Love of knowledge is the most important thing that can be gained at such a young age. We should not throw this away just so we can have good little Christian worker bees.
Mentioned Economist.com article "Pass the chalk", found here: http://ron.unique.cc/economist/economist1.htm, names three possible reasons for negative relationship between computer use and test scores.
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"The authors offer three possible explanations of why this might be. First, the introduction of computers into classrooms might have gobbled up cash that would otherwise have paid for other aspects of education. But that is unlikely in this case since the money for the programme came from the national lottery, and the study found no significant change in teaching resources, methods or training in schools that acquired computers through the scheme.
A second possibility is that the transition to using computers in instruction takes time to have an effect. Maybe, say the authors, but the schools surveyed had been using the scheme's computers for a full school year. That was enough for the new computers to have had a large (and apparently malign) influence on fourth-grade maths scores. The third explanation is the simplest: that the use of computers in teaching is no better (and perhaps worse) than other teaching methods."
One might add a possible fourth reason which may explain negative math score: EASE. I think if the pupils use computers to learn and solve mathematical problems they might start relyiong too much on computers and in effect "unlearn" maths.
Another skeptic voice when it comes to possible role of IT in development and education is found here:
http://www.himalmag.com/2002/august/essay.
Yet another voice Prashant Sharma from School of Oriental and African Studies University of London
http://www.dgroups.org/groups/OKN/docs/di
And skepticism about IT in production is best represented by "'Solow paradox'-- widespread evidence of computer use, little evidence of (widespread) productivity growth --continues, at least in modified form." found here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMo
Yes, I remember being in school in the late 70's and 80's watching those woefully outdated propaganda films from the 1950's. They are the same movies that the Simpson's make fun of. My favorites were the movies that showed the use of the Civil Defense barrels stockpiled in the basement.
Computers are meaningless if you cannot read well, or are at least proficient in Algebra (I had to seriously brush up on my own because the public schools I went to did not emphasize math). For all those that say Math is useless (I used to be one), or I'll never use this stuff - they are dead wrong. Higher paying jobs do involve a solid understanding of numbers. If you lose 50% you need a 100% gain to break even.
I wonder how many schools that rely on computers even have programming classes. Plus, the computers may be sucking money away from budgets to get more updated text books.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
This, being a very human process, can only be donne by humans.
Not machines.
No shit, Sherlock?
Seriously, as far as I can tell the problem is that IT and most teachers are completely immiscible. IT is treated as a separate subject and this is confused with computation - which in turn encourages the technically illiterate to imagine that there is no more to computer science than their experience with Word and Excel. It is pointless to teach someone to program who can't solve simple algebraic problems; to word process when they don't grasp the essence of prose - or to use mathematical tools when they can't do sums by hand.
As long as the focus is simply on getting "computers in the classroom" these kinds of results do not surprise me. For all the talk of quantity, I rarely, if ever, hear discussion on how computers will be used once they are in the classroom. Computers no doubt can, and should, play a roll in a child's education, but people need to remember that they are a means, not a solution.
If you really want a better education for our children we should return focus on the basics... Math - Science - Language/Writing/Reading. Computers can be used when applicable to help teach these lessons, but otherwise are not particularly necessary.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Computers are, and always have been... Tools. The ideas that a tool can/could teach children to think is great, but I think that the primary responsibility of teaching children to THINK, to reason, to make decisions is still primarily up to the parents, and in dual income familys alot of times it falls back on public education. The public education system is not up to the task for alot of reasons that I wont go into, so they try for computers, expecting the tools to do their jobs for them. No matter how great the tool is, if the child cant make the right decision to sit and learn from it, the tool is useless... Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction. "and on the 8th day, god said "let there be script kiddies" and the immature sprang forth from the earth".
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
I've tutored K-12 and college-level students for several years and have been in a lot of classrooms. One thing I've noticed, especially in education challenged South Florida, is that the school system is trying to use computers to make up for the lack of real teachers. The second problem is that most educational software isn't.
For example, many of the reading comprehension titles are no better than the workbooks from before -- read a few paragraphs, answer a few questions. In fact, they're often worse because the workbooks allowed the student to respond with a sentence describing the paragraph rather than clicking a multiple choice option.
I do think that computers are useful in post-lecture studies since it allows students to work at their own pace until they understand a topic. THis is especially useful for mathematics.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the math curriculum. I used saxon through high school, and went on to get my BS in Mechanical Engineering. I would say I learned all the math in high school that I needed for college.
I would encourage you to continue with the practice at home, though. When I was in second grade, I had a real hard time doing subtraction and wasn't very fast at addition. My parents got me a book with about 25 addition/subtraction problems on a page, and had me do one page a night.
It took me a little longer to learn the multiplication tables as well, but by sixth grade, math was my favorite subject.
It may sound strange for someone who made it through differential equations to say they had problems subtracting, but it's true.
My kid's school (a 5th/6th grade intermediate school) has a beautiful, fully equipped computer classroom - and a teacher who teaches computing only. ...and that's the problem. The teacher knows *nothing* about computers. Practically all the kids know far more than she does.
Because she knows nothing, she dumps 'edutainment' programs onto the machines and has the kids play them continually while she merely maintains classroom discipline.
She spent three weeks (that's 40 minutes per lesson for 10 lessons) having the kids run some kind of 'typing tutor' program. Since all the kids learned to type in 3rd grade (at least as well as a typing tutor program *can* teach), they were all bored to tears with the repetitive exercises.
Fortunately, my son discovered that this stoopid program doesn't disable cut and paste - so he was able to complete all the exercises insanely quickly. Since the teacher allows them to surf the web once they have finished the assignments, he was able to go off and have fun by himself the entire time.
The crowning glory came at the end of the year when the teachers were handing out class prizes - my son was awarded the prize for best EVER score on the typing tutor by the dump computer science teacher - she proudly announced that he'd scored something like 3,000 words per minute with a 0% error rate. Some of the other teachers looked a bit strangely at her - clearly realising that something had gone amok, but perhaps assuming she'd just mis-spoken the results.
This is just one of many gaffes this teacher made. She had the kids "List 10 parts of the Computer". My kid duly wrote stuff like 'CPU', 'ROM', 'Ethernet Ataptor', 'Motherboard' - and the teacher gave him zero on the "test" saying that the correct answer was 'Mouse', 'Keyboard', 'Television' (!), 'Mouse pad', etc. When my kid complained that his computer at home didn't have a mouse pad she told him that this was nonsense and that ALL computers have mouse pads - this dissuaded him from telling her that the monitor is not, in fact, a TV set.
Similarly, she had the kids write down the 10 good things and 10 bad things about computers. My son complained that he couldn't think of 10 bad things. His teacher gave as an example: "They crash a lot" - well, since we only run Linux at home, my son knows that this isn't necessarily true and that it's not the COMPUTER that crashes - it's the SOFTWARE. Inevitably, when he complained he got in trouble.
I've written several letters to the teacher in question (she doesn't appear to read her email - even though it's provided by the school) - with poor results. I wrote and even visited with the Principal to try to get something done - but of course she just says that qualified staff are hard to get - and the State doesn't require that teachers are trained in the subject they are teaching.
So, can we conclude that teaching with computers is "A Bad Thing" ?
No!
Not unless we've carefully checked that the teachers and curriculum are sensibly chosen. Clearly, if my son's school had spent the money that went
into that computer lab in some other way, they'd have gotten more value for money and the kid's grades would have been better...but that doesn't prove that teaching computers are bad - just that they are ineptly managed.
www.sjbaker.org
The reason computers arent working in education is because the money is being wasted on Microsoft Windows and other licenses instead of open source software, and due to the fact that buying computers designed for business work and not designed for education is a waste of time.
An ordinary computer should not be used for education, computers specifically designed for education should be used for education. Smartboards, which are far more advanced than ordinary chalk boards are proven to be more efficient tools for teaching. E-Learning which seems to work well in college only works due to the fact that specific software on the college level is created to teach specific subjects.
Honestly, when I learned from the software it was far more efficient than learning from a book. Usually teachers use books, but why not use software to teach kids? Software can be interactive and this allows students to learn Math and English better than from books. The reason its not working right now is because any new technology needs time to adapt to its enviornment. When computers were first invented we did not have the software to use the internet in the way we use it now, we didnt have the search engine, we didnt have peer to peer file sharing, half of the stuff we do now with the computer was not possible in the 80s, did they say in the 80s computers were useless? Hell no.
With Websites like Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
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The link is wrong... if you click on it, you are taken to a cybersquatter's page with a butt-ugly picture of Alan Greenspan.
The real link to The Economist is here.
I think a distinction needs to be made here between learning and teaching. A student can learn things from a computer just as they can learn things from a TV/VCR or a book (remember those?). However, for the most part, a computer can not teach students. Computers should only be used as a learning tool by teachers. When we try to replace the teaching mechanisms with the learning mechanisms, neither the teachers nor the students will benefit.
Who came to the conclusion that "Computers Not Working In Education"?
As far as I read, there is no conclusion:
CAIRNCROSS So, having put it in place have there been any real attempts to try to measure how well it's working? Any success in doing that?WATSON Oh yes. There's a substantial ongoing programme to try and measure the results. So far, the results are not tremendously clear or, at least not tremendously impressive.
and
CAIRNCROSS Now of course, it is notoriously difficult to prove conclusively that any teaching method has a good or bad impact. And lots of studies of computer-based learning have reached different conclusions from Professor Angrist'sJ'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
In Norway there has been a study that shows that children learn to read and write faster using personal computers. Pupils who learnt writing on computers exclusively until the 3rd grade developed both better writing skills and quality of content of their writings. Oddly enough the children who put off writing with pen and paper had better hand-writing as well. The hypothesis given to explain the results were that small children had not fully developed motor skills, and learning to write by hand for that reason could be both frustrating and more time-consuming.
Check out this article from Aftenposten (in Norwegian) for more:
l ?articleID=395751
http://www.aftenposten.no/utdannelse/article.jhtm
Some of the most important qualities that children need to learn from the social structure in school - respect for other people, respect for authority, the idea that consequences arise for one's actions, and obedience of the law - cannot be taught through the use of computers. These are also some of the qualities that are most seriously lacking in today's (at least, American) education.
Besides, many kids will always find learning boring, at least until they grow up. The ones who enjoy learning don't need computers to help them learn, and the ones who don't enjoy learning are obviously not learning anything if they're having fun. Teach the value of computers as a research tool, but never center education around the computer (certain business-centric or computer science high school courses excepted, of course).
The main problem with Computers and school is they they are delt with on a near Panic level. The School Board goes "OH WE NEED TO HAVE COMPUTERS TO BE ON TOP OF TECHNOLOGY" So they spend an exorbenate amount of money to get all of the top notch computers and have them setup. Now that they are their the teacher dont know what to do with them. Other then looking up information. The classes that tech kids how to use computers even the CS 101 Intro to computers class is a compleat joke, They dont show how to use computers to solve problems and lookup information and explain in high level how they work, they just show them how to use the word processor and brows the internet.
In my day in 5th grade I took computer classes, and we learned how to program in basic and use basic to solve problems. Useing the varables to help us understand concepts in algbra before we took algbra, using Apple II basic we were taught how to solve problems more logicaly and helped undersand in detail how things work.
When I got into Highschool they started updating the computer to get on the "Information Super Highway" (I already have been using the internet for about 2 years already) They got a bunch of computers with Windows 95 (This was in 1995) and then they began a stong computer training to modernize the school. So all the students used these computers for Word Processing and some simple browsing. They never trused the Computer Programming Class with the new computers although we could use them a lot more efficiently so we were stuck to doing our work on TRS80s.
After spending all this money on the PCs they are not really using them for what they are ment for and they are afraid to use them in more detail in fear of breaking them.
That is why they are not helping they are afraid to use them for what computers are for.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Use computers as a tool or teaching device instead of treating computers as something seperate.
Why should you teach computer science? Computers are so common now this is like having a class on the science of using pen and paper, or having a class teaching how to use a calculator or word processor, sure you may need to take one class in your lifetime on this but currently most schools only do this.
Unless you go to a good school computers arent used properly. In college computers are used in a more proper fashion and it shows, look at how its done in college and do this in highschool.
A student can learn to read and write better with a computer than with any other tool, the dictionary book is not as efficient as spell check, and the best way to learn math is with computers because it allows you to focus on what really matters, the concepts of math instead of just stupid stuff like memorizing your multiplication tables, or other pointless calculations which your calculator or computer will do or which you can do by simply knowing that multiplication is just addition.
Math is currently taught wrong, its not that computers dont aid in teaching, they do, but only when teachers know how to use the computer as a tool to help them teach.
Teachers however are often dumber than their students when it comes to technology, we need to educate teachers so they know how to teach with software. I took a cisco academy class in which the whole class was computer based, I learned just fine from this although I wish we had more labs, this was the cisco academy, learning form computers is actually easier than learning from any book due to the addition of multimedia examples explaining things in greater detail, however some aspects of learning still require a teacher, and for something like networking its the physical aspect that was missing.
As for reading and math, theres no physical aspect to this, why dont some of you open source linux using programmer types make some math software? The reading software? Microsoft word, the internet, etc is just fine to teach people to read, hell buy them some old school RPGs like final fantasy, get them interested in reading for fun, parents have to do this, and a teacher simply has to give them assignments so they learn proper grammar, proper grammar is just knowing how to use Microsoft Word properly.
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Teaching people how to think isn't going to come through a CRT with pretty pictures or entertaining or "engaging" content. I think part of the weakness of filmstrips, computers and other such educational technologies is that they are TOO visual and they spoonfeed information to students. By trying to make learning "easy", we're actually bypassing the exercise needed to develop a mind.
Learning takes a lot of struggle and hard work. There are no shortcuts, no matter how brilliant you are. Symbols and abstraction are the raw material of the human mind. The good news is that the technologies needed to deliver the goods are cheap and effective. If we got rid of all the computers tomorrow (and other non-essential technologies) and focused more attention on these 4 raw materials, we'd see a marked improvement in the educational system.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
If it were cool to be smart, and sufficiently good software were available, computers would be the best teaching tool found to date. Making it cool to be smart is probably harder than writing the software.
A computer is essentially a full-time one-on-one teacher with infinite patience (granted not perfect, but with strengths in addition to weaknesses). The way I would use it would be to find those children that show aptitude and results from their computer exposure, and increase their percentage of computer learning. That lets the human teachers concentrate on those who need the help, and lets those who are more self-motivated to proceed at their own pace. However, in todays politically correct world, I doubt that is happening much.
The final thing I'd like to say on this subject is that its hard to overestimate the impact of better displays and portable systems for education. Those have both improved considerably over the last couop
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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Whether your tools are books or computers, the subject matter itself must still be drilled. Some schools see computers as a replacement for the tedious drilling ("play with the subject material"), others see them as a replacement for teachers (teaching programs), and others still see them as a glorified library or calculator. I would expect the latter category, the schools that use the computers most conservatively, to see the least of a decline in the students' performance. Those that try and use computers for new ways of learning fumble for it mostly, using inadequate software and poorly trained teachers. The very worst performers are those schools that see computers as the long-awaited tool that allows then to let the students "play with the subject material". Let the students play endlessly with (for instance) simulations of an economy, instead of drilling and teaching the fundamentals of economics, and you end up with students who are excellent problem-solvers and socializers, and even have a little grasp of the cause and effect of certain economic measures, but they'll have nu understanding of why measure a causes effect x.
I can't see computer software replacing drilling of the subject material, except perhaps aiding it. It's very cute to be able to plot a graph at the press of a button so the students can visualise it (and what an awful buzzword in education that word has become...), rather than do the tedious analysis of the function and draw it youself, but only by doing it the hard way will you come to a good understanding of functions. Software can help build understanding, but I foresee a very limited effect.
Software can be a replacement for a teacher to some extend. I can imagine a piece of software that does what the teacher will do when he or she sets the students to work a set of problems: look at how the student attacks the problem, and suggest different approaches or give little hints when the student gets stuck. This is like having a private tutor, available 24/7, for each of the students. Unfortunately there isn't software that is very good at this except for the simplest of problems.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Stoll's book about computers in education is High Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian
Apart from the advantages of having every syllabus for every exam board (and often sample exam papers) available to me, there are extremely good online resources for my subjects which I can use as appropriate to the needs of my students. The BBC should know better - it provides a good selection of educational materials (biased towards revision more than learning) at BBC Schools.
Jon.
Pen and Paper is also a cruch, should the professor tell you to do the math in your head? If you did do it in your head he'd say the same thing "I need to see how you got these answers"
You have to prove you know the steps is all, you can still use calculators and know math as long as you know all the formulas and steps to solving the problem it does not matter what tools you use to solve them, you can use pen and paper, you can use a calculator, a super computer, it doesnt matter.
Kids need to learn to use the tools of today, calculators are fine but only if the class is designed for it. If the class was a mathclass where all the math was done on computers, and all of the steps you did were logged, if you use a calculator it doesnt matter how you do the number crunching as long as the steps you used equals the right answer.
In computer programming its not about reinventing the wheel, its about embrace and extend, you can get more done if you share code and reuse code than if you write everything yourself. The only thing which matters is how much you can get done.
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Nowdays it is too easy to goof off on computers rather than use them for educational purposes. In fact, it seems that current 'educational software' is mostly a bunch of cartoon chrud with a little bit of math etc. here and there.
An elementary school math tutor for the kids who were behind asked me to make a math tutor computer program that wasn't cartoony etc. Getting exact details on what she wanted was like pulling teeth, but in the end we wound up with a piece of software that was kid-friendly (meaning easy for them to control, some kids have coordination issues when it comes to moving mice) and actually helped improve their math abilities.
One thing that I am quite proud to have worked with is the AR Program (Accelerated Reader). The concept is to have point values and difficulty values for most of the books in the library. Kids check out whatever books they want (they are strongly encouraged to use books of an appropriate difficulty level) and can take computerized quizzes on them. The kids can trade in points they earn for candy and small, cheap toys. It actually works! I would have imagined that the kids would have gotten tired of it quickly, but the teachers take it seriously and the majority of the books in the school library have AR quizes available.
I have volunteered in several elementary schools, but in the one where they emphasized this AR program I regularly saw kids leaving the library with books and actually eager to read them. That is a very big thing; getting kids modivated to learn/read is one of the biggest problems in educational. This computer software is not advanced; it could be made to work on an AppleIIGS, but the fact that it is actually getting kids to read (and to like it!) is profound.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I feel that schools are drifting too far away from the basics. Computers often lead to a cycle of chasing the latest technology instead of actually doing anything useful with it. Most school boards and schools are strapped for cash and resources; attempting keeping up with the lastest in IT will only leave them in an even worse financial position.
Computers have their place in many areas, including education. However, teachers must resist falling into the trap of just teaching the nebulous subject of computing. Is teaching a student the ins and outs of Windows or Word really a worthy use of valuable teaching time? Even if you do teach them to use say, Word, who's to say that by the time they leave the education system that Word is still going to be the word processor of the day? Even teaching them the basic desktop and window style GUI we are so familiar with may not end up being useful in the "real world" eight years down the road.
Now computers can be useful. A typing program can save on paper. A flash card program may just be able to give a student that extra bit of help, especially with classes often becoming over-crowded. Access to the Internet could, in some cases, supply additional resource materials in the presence of a picked-over library (but here one must be careful in teaching the student to "consider the source"). It's just that using too much classroom time and fiscal resources on finicky and ever-changing computers takes away from teaching the basics. A student leaving the education system with a solid grounding in language, mathematics, science, and critical thinking, will surely be able to react and learn whatever computer systems they come across in the future.
By the late 80s the business press was saying, "We've got all this investment in information technology, yet productivity is stagnant." Then we hit the 90s, where the business press (and the Fed) suddenly believed that IT efficiency was justifying the market valuations bubble ... but that may be another story. The point for now is that it took about 10 years of having word processors and spreadsheets before business people learned to use them more efficiently than the typewriters and calculators they were already proficient with.
Computers in grade school only became a big thing in about 93-94, with the Net hype. It may just take a decade or so for new tools to supplant old. By comparison, under Elizabeth I her ministers declared that the musket would replace the crossbow. Never mind that the crossbow had won many wars for the English, shot more accurately, and reloaded much faster. Embracing what in principle is new, better technology is often in the short term a step back. Then the technology improves and, more importantly, the culture of use adapts to it.
So expect a bubble in apparent educational results in about two years.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Knowledge of math can be learned just like you can learn C, but to actually be able to do it in your head, without pen and paper, or do math without a calculator, this is talent.
This is not something everyone can do, just like not everyone is good enough to write perfect C code in their head without looking into the refrence manual every now and then.
Instead of trying to make your daughter into something shes not, teach her to do math in whatever way she is capable of doing it, if she has to use paper, fine, as long as she learns the concepts and formulas who cares if her problem solving/ number crunching skills suck? The higher level maths like calculus are not about your ability to crunch numbers in your head its about your ability to understand the concepts and your knowledge of the actual formula.
You can memorize multiplication tables and waste your time practicing your number crunching for years, or you can accept that you arent good at this and learn the core concept of multiplication, by learning the underlying formula you learn its just addition and you can use the formula to do multiplication without memorizing all the tables.
This can save you YEARS worth of time which could be wasted practicing multiplication tables and memorizing answers instead of the processes to getting them.
Your teacher didnt teach you math right, you learned to crunch numbers, because you naturally had the ability to be good at crunching numbers you used pure calculation and number crunching to get you through math but dont you know all math is just concepts? Its not about the problem or the solution, its about the process.
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I am very unsurprised by this.
Computers are useful if you are teaching subjects which necessarily require them.
Computer Programming, wordprocessing, keyboarding, Drafting/CAD, video editing and photography are all subjects for which I have seen computers effectively used.
What do these have in common?
You don't teach them in elementary school!
I really think that computers in elementary school classrooms has more to do with principals obsessed with whiz-bang technology rather than anything to do with a "need" to "teach" students something they couldn't learn without them, or couldn't learn as quickly or effectively.
I hear arguments about basic computer literacy... but basic computer literacy is difficult to teach, I don't think it can be taught properly in the current classroom environment. That is, kids need lots of time alone with the computer. You can't develop that literacy a little bit at a time with multiple kids to a system interrupted constantly by a teacher who doesn't understand the technology.
To me, the first step in teaching somebody computer literacy, is getting them to overcome the fear of breaking something. Most teachers I've met are still at the stage of "Just click the icons... and hope it doesn't crash."
I can't wait until people realize that computers in elementary school classrooms are a stupid idea.
The problem with this kind of research is controlling for the other pressures on the school system. Say new teachers are leaving the profession forever at 70% after only three years on the job, if that has adverse effects on the general quality of education, would it be a good hypothesis to suggest it also has adverse effects on the way schools use computer resources?
We want to be careful not to blame the technology: it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools for the quality of his work. If you had learned in High School, for example, how to program your own integral solver, then you might have been able to breeze through the same exam *with* all of the intermediate calculator "leaps" documented in adequate detail to score the grade your answers demanded.
Computers *complicate* life, but trading for the additional burden of complexity gains insight which saves wasted effort in dead-end mistakes! If you feel the computer is simplifying your life, it is because you are not appreciating the insights properly: maybe someone else is? Are you dangerously and irresponsibly giving up control?
There's the real issue. Stop bashing computers in the classroom, and get to the real curriculum and pedagogy issue!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Just because you are good at problem solving does not mean you are good at math.
Just because you memorize the answers does not mean you learn the process.
When you learn the formulas to math, you know that learning the multiplicaiton tables was an absolute complete waste of time, this is like using your brain as a number crunching calculator, when we have calculators which can do this, so why do the math in your head? Why waste years learning the multiplication tables when you can learn the formula for multiplication and then use addition to solve multiplication problems?
Addition is multiplication, Addition is also Subtraction, its all the same thing! You only need to teach ONE formula and it would teach all of these things instantly.
Or you can give people problems and tell them to solve them without giving them the formula, and waste years of their time while they memorize the answers
Why memorize 2+2=4, and 4+4=8 when you can just memorize A+B=C?
If A+B=C is addition, Multiplication is just A+A=B(2+2=2x2=4) repeated Addition.
Why should you bother memorizing the answers to repeated addition problems? Why not just teach them that its repeated addition and let them use what they already know to solve multiplication problems on paper?
If you want to memorize tables you can also memorize square roots, you can memorize the answers to fractions, you can memorize as many answers as you want but none of them will matter in the long run if you dont know the process, the formulas, the rules.
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As far as I can tell, the schools that use computers to actually teach computing are few and far between. To my mind, programming should be regarded as a life skill like arithmetic, reading, writing. I really don't think programming in most languages is harder than arithmetic, let alone basic calculus (which is taught- and if taught early enough, many more people would grasp it.
Current "computer" classes are often "how to use MS Word and MS Excel, maybe even MS IE and MS Outlook Express".
If kids were introduced to proper computing (i.e. CompSci stuff and languages like Logo and Lisp) at an earlier age, they'd realise that computers can be extensions of your mind, and can do arbitrary virtual things (at least until Palladium/TCPA) - they're not just glorified TVs or typewriters, and the absurd effect we have now where companies like Microsoft take mathematical algorithms and sell them as products to the ignorant masses would perhaps be reduced.
Sure, "Computer Programmer" might become less of an elite job description, but at the same time, we'd see much better code.
While we're at it, we should bring back lessons in basic logical reasoning, skeptical thinking, though the marketing departments of corporations and religious organisations mightn't like that...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I've never met a kid with "ADD" who cant pay attention to the television, or the video games, or books when they want to read them.
ADD in school is just a petty excuse teachers make for students who rebel, they dont just want to admit that they suck as teachers, their classes are boring as hell and their students arent learning.
In a class where a kid is not learning a damn thing or a class thats boring as h ell, suddenly the symptoms of ADD appear.
I think if a kid really does have ADD the best way to deal with it is to let them use the computer, and let them learn in their own way.
Also when a kid is on the computer, if they do have ADD even if they are distracted they still learn something, even if they go drift off into other websites as long as the school has things setup so the kid is always learning no matter where they go on the net, it can work.
Dont allow any games, perhaps you shouldnt allow someone with ADD to go into a chatroom, but if they have a problem paying attention and the goal is for them to gather as much knowledge as possible perhaps the best way is to let them direct their own learning. Not everyone learns in a structured way, and the solution is not to blame the ADD, but to teach them in a way which they accept, even people with ADD know alot about certain things.
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The other day, I found myself pulling out a calculator for something ridiculously easy; I think it was adding two 2-digit numbers -- I could have done it in my head, and it certainly would have been quicker than finding the calculator and plugging the numbers in.
That said, I think it's also worked miracles. The Internet, in my opinion, is a tremendous advancement in research: Given a couple minutes, I can find practically anything on Google. I can type up a research paper, and have multiple drafts, simply making minor revisions, instead of re-typing (or writing by hand again) the entire thing. I can even discuss whether or not computers are good with people all over the world on Slashdot. With my calculator, I can check my work, and be confident that my answer is right. Even more exciting is that, in theory, rather than go off to college next year, I could lie around the house and get my education online. I don't plan on it, but there's huge potential.
I think that, for the most part, computers are a good thing for education. They enable us to do much more than was even considered possible before the advent of computers, and they let us do it in a microsecond. The problem comes when people grow overreliant on computers, to the point where they forget how to divide numbers, don't know what an encylopedia is, and go to a library only to use the computer there. But used in 'proper doses,'I think computers are great for education.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
many teachers(remember i am a public school teacher), lets face it, have a very easy job. having them bang away on a computer for a few days, especially if there's a lab tech in there, makes it a piece of cake.
it's not that technolgoy should not be in schools. i am finishing a masters in instructional technology. it's just that beaurocratic problems and inertia make change damn near impossible. for instance, are district had spent lots of money on an netrworking infrastructure, moving towards, as our former, now retired, (and clueless) tech admin said "fewer, more powerful, servers". this at the time that that the indsutry was moving towards more, smaller, servers, disrtributed computing. so did we change. no, inertia. so, get to your school boards, they are elected you know, and demand accountability.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
You cant teach someone something by reptition if they never learn the concepts it becomes gibberish in the end.
You can make someone do something a million times and i they never know why they are doing it they wont remember it.
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A lot of you have said the same thing, but kindof beat all around the subject without getting to the real point, so I'll put it in plain language:
Computers in the classroom do NOT teach the subject matter to the kids. They only teach the kids how to use a *particular set of desktop applications* (not necessarily even anything about the computer itself).
Second, as only one person pointed out, and as has been largely forgotten by the educational system as it stands today -- after presenting the subject matter, it must be drilled, and the drilling must be done such that the learner has to interact with the drill, if only by writing it down with their own hand (NOT by typing/clicking it -- different neural pathway, so doesn't work to embed the information). Why? Because rote learning is how you make the subject matter STICK in kids' brains. And if it's boring at the time, tough -- do you want them to really remember it or not??
Third, as only one other person touched on, the issue of discipline in the classroom has gone by the wayside, and given how easy it is for most kids to get more interested in bypassing what's allowed on their computers than in the subject matter, computers exacerbate this. Now the object is to keep kids "interested" -- and it's clearly not working. The old method of "you will sit still and learn this like it or not, end of discussion" may not have been "enjoyable" but it WORKED. Make up your minds -- do you want to keep kids entertained, or do you want them to grow up into competent adults? Because you can't have both.
Want to fix the problems generated and exacerbated by computers in the classroom? Easy. Restrict computers and in-school computer use to one place: the classes that are specifically *about* computers.
That won't do anything for the more-basic issues of bad teachers and bad school systems, but at least it will stop masking the problem.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Learning is intrinsically an action where the brain is excercised in order to be able to carry out the action on it's own. Very much like sport if you want to think of it that way. Computers do not change this in any way: Learning remains learning. A computer cannot make you learn any better, I would think. The techno-addict mentality of modern schools probably makes learning worse in that too much time is spent playing with technical toys (I don't mean modern job requisites like word processing, using mail etc, just mucking with the devices) instead of getting the children to use their own brains.
Don't know how computers fit into the curricula in the UK, but here in the states an awful lot of third-rate vocational training is foisted off as "learning aout computers". Too many high schools and colleges cobble up "computer science" courses on Office, Photoshop, Linux, Windows and other packages. by hiring part-time instructors who simply paraphrase the paperback third-party book they tell their students to buy.
In any case, we should be talking about 'learning with computers", not "learning about computers".
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So it's been out nearly 7 years now. Time flies when you're having fun I guess.
This book is perhaps Cliffie's greatest social contribution, but it really raised the neck hairs of many "technology advocates." It's absolutely bang on though and a "must read."
*Nobody* can accuse Cliffie of being anti technology. Being a professional technologist doesn't mean you can't recognize where its use appropriate and where it isn't.
Learing isn't simply a matter of filling out the right little box on the anwer sheet of a standardized tests. It's as much a social event as anything else, indeed this is the very argument of those that object to home learning ( a bogus complaint because there's plenty of society outside the classroom. In fact, that's where *most* of society is).
Some people who oppose home learning on this basis then advocate taking these children and placing them in cubes facing a glass titty.
I don't get it.
Hire good teachers, and then, for God's sake, *let them teach.* Although this thought scares some people. After all, little Buffy might just come home after finding that her parents, and government, have been lying to her.
We sure don't want *that,* do we? It's "unamerican."
KFG
There are four main uses that we have identified:
- Collaboration - Our students use PC's for e-mail, sharing files to complete group projects, passing on links to web sites and articles from on-line databases. It's not uncommon to have two or three students working together with one serving as the "record keeper" keeping track of information which is later saved and shared electronically with the other group members. Isn't this the way you work as an adult? For our students, their
/home folder becomes a virtual notebook where they organize their important stuff and the /public share becomes a means of exchange.
- Communication - The most used applications in our classrooms are not the flashy, multimedia based, tutorial programs that you see in the educational sections of software stores. When our students are working they use the same programs the rest of the world uses, word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets and presentation software. There is little room for the computer as tutor concept in today's busy classroom.
- Analysis - Here's an area where computers have changed education (or should...). With spreadsheets and graphing tools now on every PC, students have the power to ask and answer "what if" questions and to make ready comparisons of data. Anyone who has used a spreadsheet to investigate something as simple as the costs of a trip to Disneyland will understand how useful these tools are in the classroom. Examples of good programming exist in things like the chart wizard in Excel and OO Calc. Preview buttons and updated wysiwyg windows make it easy for students to interact with the software and make choices. They may be using a wizard but they are still in control of what's going on.
- Creativity - Some of our most empowered users of technology are art and music students. Our art teachers were quick to see the potential in computers. PC's are seen as creative tools by our students after taking PC art classes where before they were only seen as productivity tools.
-- K12LTSP.orgOur students were quick to incorporate a networked environment into their day to day school life. They use it to get their work done and have found many ingenious social adaptations as well. As tools for collaboration, networked PC's are changing the classroom in the same ways they have changed the workplace.
Presentation software packages like PowerPoint and OO Impress are easily incorporated into networked classrooms. Teachers can use presentation software to add multimedia content to lessons. Students use these software tools as "virtual poster boards" for class reports. Some things just don't change and telling everyone what you know is still a big part of learning. Creating the presentation is still what brings it all together for many students.
Desktop publishing is an important use of PC's in today's schools. From one page flyers to student run newspapers, PC's make it happen. This is an area where computer use has acted as an equalizer in that everyone can now publish their ideas.
Expecting underqualified teachers to teach challenging subjects while requiring them to use unfamiliar hardware, someone else's idea of appropriate software, and an unstable environment (email, messaging) when no-one has really thought out the necessary changes to classroom behavior and trained teachers appropriately...well, I think it's a recipe for disaster and I'm extremely relieved that all my children are past school age. With luck the system will have changed by the time any grandchildren are old enough.
A true story. A few years back I briefly considered going back into teaching. To be exact, I considered doing a course that would have qualified me to teach teachers to use IT in the classroom. There were two problems. First, the college turned out not really to know what the course content should be. The person in charge was a pre-IT trained educator, not a computer scientist or an educational psychologist. Oh, and second, he admitted that there was no guarantee that the Government would actually fund these training posts.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is looking for the way out.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Seriously, I remember being in High School, and they had the computer labs upstairs, and computers in the library. Everybody gets on them, and they usually know WAY more than some halfwit librarian or teacher, and so they just do some multitasking, making it look like they're doing work, and just surf the net, or play Drug Wars. And when they do computer classes, they aim them at people who have no computer experience, which isn't fair. I remember completing most of my Computer Science classes in 10-20 minutes, and then having to sit there for another hour and a half while the girls and stoners stumbled through Borland C++ or QBASIC or whatever God awful piece of out of date trash they fed to us. It costs the government too much money to keep all the computers in the state/province/country up to date, so kids will always have to deal with near obsolete programs, at least until they reach University or College...
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
i design educational materials for publishers. how could anybody expect technology to be useful in education without any planned assessment assessment implies known results, not testing. perhaps looking at the pew study posted earlier, and maybe looking at "the teaching gap", one can begin to find some clues. teachers and professional development is the area where technology will most change education. though my clients don't want to here it, textbook are dead. they have been dead. go read one!
am i the only person here who was actually helped by computers?
programming in high school helped me tremendously. if it werent for computers, id probably still be wondering what things like algebra and calculus were good for.
if used correctly, computers can be quite effective in teaching students to use logic to solve complex problems.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
ify...
In the hands of the intellegent, they amplify that persons ability to learn, teach and all the rest. In the hands of the stupid and ignorant, they make for immense stupidity and ignorance. All the "Spice Racks" not withstanding, a good film is made by a good editor who understands what they are doing and what the desired result will be. Same thing with teaching. The concept that all you have to do is to put machines in the hands of teachers who max out at AOL is an obvious fallacy. If you put them in the hands of teachers who understand their field and can teach their field with nothing more than a hunk of chalk and a blackboard they will increase the understanding and depth of knowledge.
Its the basics. Not the ribbons and bows that matter.
Many similar distractive affects of computers can be seen in the workplace.
Take PC's in the home for example. How many home owners of PC's actually use their computers for anything other than wordprocessing? I would imagine way over 50% of PC owners would be better of with a word processor. Where am I going with this you may ask? Well, a word processor is much more restrictive. With a word processor you can't wander off onto the internet or start downloading music instead of doing your work.
I think computers in the school/college and work place environment all need greater restriction. Most of the computers in the schools and colleges I've attended are just standard windows builds. This provides a ridiculous amount of distraction. All these machines need have installed are the applications that are required. Not solitare, not MP3 players etc.etc.
I am now at University, and finally after going through 15 years of the education system, I am seeing computers used in the way they should be. No longer is there a teacher handing out sheets on how to use powerpoint which they don't understand, then wandering off to the front of the class while the rest of the students go online or play games. Finally motivated students who actually want to learn about computers, sit down and actually use the facilities to their potential.
At the end of the day computers are only a tool. Schools need to recognise this, and not force computers into areas of the curriculum in which they are not effective by praising teachers that do so. Computer equipment should be available to those who want to learn about them and see them as an effective tool, not those who are forced to.
I think we have all gone online or played a game when we are supposed to be working. What chance is there of getting school children to concentrate on work without them being distracted?
Like any other tool, computer use must be aligned with the objectives of the organization. As a systems analyst for small business, I see this all of the time. Many businesses have enough technology, it is just not applied correctly.
Does that mean I think teachers should be computer gurus? Absolutely not! If they increased the number of computers in the schools by a factor of X did they increase the number of techies, analysts and etc by the same factor? I doubt it. In some of the school systems here there is one PC tech for the school system and he hardly has the experience to adequately evaluate system implementation strategies. And none of the authority! These are key components. You can't just dump complex tools on a society, such as a school, and expect them to use the tools to maximum potential from some innate genetic skill.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I think the mistake you've made here is thinking that you can/should only do one of these two things:
- Memorize facts
- Understand relationships
Clearly we are capable of doing both, and if you're going to function effectively in the real world, you'd better be able to do both. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that your approach is "wrong". I'm just saying that it is not a good way to educate people who will have to function in society.I don't think anyone would argue that you can't teach multiplication as repeated additions, but --apart from a useful too to introduce the topic-- why would you want to do that? Here are a few reasons not to "just teach concepts/formulas":
Please keep in mind that I am not advocating just teaching children facts. Teach them facts and how to use them.
It's not that hard to design a test that makes any calulator worthless. Even my wonderful TI-89. Hell, that thing does symbolic integration, and will keep things like pi as pi in the answer instead of replacing it with 3.digitsofprecision. That doesn't help if you don't know how integration works and how to set up the problem.
Given that, I have never been allowed to use a calculator in any college math class I've taken (4 of them). Those classes are about concepts. They don't ask you anything you can't do fairy quickly in your head.
But on the other side of the coin, I have always been allowed to use a calculator in any of my engineering courses. Most of the time, I don't really need it. They intentionally use numbers that will work out simply. Maybe at the end you punch the final answer into your calculator with all the constants, but by that point you've got 90% of the credit for the problem. They let you use them because you've already learned the concepts by then so if you don't remember the integral of arctan(x) you can just use your calulator, just like d would to "in the real world". If you don't have any idea what that integral is supposed to work out to be, you're going to get it wrong anyways.
I can see the situation you had as being one of two things:
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If you went into the test not understanding the math. You probably deserved at 54%.
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If you knew the stuff and just used your calulator to save time that should have been fine (unless it said to show your work and you didn't).
Anyways blame the teacher, not the calculator. I used a calc. in all my math classes in H.S. and I didn't feel helpless without one. Calcutors are good, they save me a lot to time, and they make a lot of math problems easier. Kids need to be taught the concepts and the technology. If you're not teaching them the concepts, you aren't teaching the technology, you're teaching button pushing and you may as well let everyone play "Oregon Trail" and call it a computer science course.Life is too short to proofread.
Most often this technology is just tossed over the wall to teachers. They didn't ask for it, don't know what is possible with it, and don't know how to integrate it usefully in their classroom.
That's not to say they can't be useful -- they can. The shrill voices condemning computers are not materially different than those that condemned ball-point pens a few generations ago (ignorance of quill pens would be the end of education, don't you know).
Professional training is a minimum requirement for computers to be useful in the classroom. In most places it's not available. Where it is available, it's typically unpaid, or comes out of time the teachers are using for lesson planning -- so they have to choose whether to be prepared for class or to get computer training.
A typical teacher works tons of unpaid overtime, gets paid next to nothing, and pays for classroom materials out of their own paycheck. Without a substantial training program computers are just a burden.
Currently teachers cant really teach either, theres too many kids in a class.
Software can let a kid learn at his own pace.
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There is a saying in educational technology (yes, that is my field), that computers will never replace teachers, but teachers who know computers will replace teachers that don't.
Well, a European associate turned that around: If you can be replaced by a computer, you should be.
I started my undergrad in graphic design, and there is a rightly prevailing attitude in that field that the computer is no more than a tool, and knowing a few graphics program does not make you a designer. The same holds true in education.
We have seen too many educational packages put together by business, marketing, and computer peopl,e and not enough with real instructional theory behind them. Most educators are not capableof that.
Computers are just tools, and if they've failed, it is not the computer's fault, but the people who used them incorrectly.
I for one am using computers to teach lesser-taught foreign languages (Arabic, Swahili, Korean, Chinese, etc.) to people I will never meet, and who do not have the time or resources to attend school. Computers have not failed here because: a) we are getting as good results as in-class equivalents, and b) these students would otherwise be left without this education.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Bullys, Jocks, Cliques, etc, sure you learn about the social structure and it only harms you in the long run when you learn how cruel and how ignorant people actually are.
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I am glad you are pysched for college. I taught for 18 years, 8 at the college level, before I quit to start my own computer consulting business. Let me give you a couple of suggestions:
1) Don't be afraid to take longer than 4 years to complete your degree. Why? Because you may have to drop some classes rather than submit to a non-learning situation. It's YOUR money, you are hiring them. If they can't do the job then fire them.
2) If you get a bad vib about a class during your first week of attendance (teacher can't speak English well enough, doesn't appear to know the subject well enough, or can't teach it) then DROP IT! Better you wait for a good teacher than simple 'take' a class to get credit. Student that have already taken the class are good source of information about the teacher. Ask several. Be careful about opinions that are personal, not factual. Lots of poor students badmouth good teachers. If you have to change institutions to find good teachers then do so.
3) If you can avoid having to work at a partime job while in school then do so. Time spent studying will be more valuable to you than the minimum wage you'd earn. As a well-trained college graduate, especially in a tech or professional field, you will probably earn much more than an HS grad or someone who obtains a degree in 'history' or 'psychology' or 'education'. The income difference would be equivalent to paying yourself more than $1,000/day for every day you are in college if you maximize your education while in college instead of wasting your time in a part time job. Most of the time that meager income is just wasted on social events that are mainly parting and blasting yourself with drugs. AVOID DRUGS. If you start down that path you'll end up at the bottom of the garbage heap, broke, on welfare, or stealing for drugs. There are lots of wholesome social events that will enrich your college experience. Alcohol and drugs are not part of that experience.
If you have to borrow more to avoid working then do so. You'll be able to pay it back unless your degree target is the 'humanities' or 'education'. As others have mentioned: a well trained person won't last long in most public schools unless they learn to be political and sell out their ethics. Half of all new teachers quit at the end of their first year. Half of those remaining quit at the end of their second year. Within 5 years fewer than 10% of new teachers remain in the profession. Most leave because they don't have the personality to teach, and teacher training never revealed this fact to them. A large majority leave because they realize they know nothing worth teaching others. They become overly paid babysitters, and if they can't 'maintain discipline' they'll get fired. If you are the right combination of training, personality and politics you may survive. However, it was easier to 'survive' 30 or more years ago than it is today.
4) Learn how to use a computer before you get to college. Specifically, learn how to install/use the Linux OS+KDE and OpenSource software, and how to connect your computer to WinXX networks and boxes (Samba) and/or Novell networks (New-well). Linux/OpenSource will keep your software expenses under control and remove the risk of being labeled and/or prosecuted as a 'pirate'. It will also allow you to spend more of your funds for a good laptop and/or Desktop. OpenOffice will be of great help. MuPAD will be of great help if you are a science/math major/minor. GIMP is great for graphics and animation. So is Blender. QCad is great for CAD. SciCAD is great for mathematical modeling of physical systems. Check the LinuxApps site, and other OpenSource software sites, for apps specific to other disciplines.
5) I repeat. Your education is YOUR responsibility. Don't lockstep yourself into some 'plan' pushed by an organization or institution if it is not what is in your best interest.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
IF someone has ADD in theory the computer should be their solution. If they have ADD they simply cannot handle the structure, so why not let them learn via computers in a less structured way?
Currently the smaller classes bullshit is just special education and resource rooms, where they dont learn anything at all because the classes are dumbed down.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm a little angry, so forgive me if I get haughty. I didn't respond well to "rote learning" as a kid.
Second, as only one person pointed out, and as has been largely forgotten by the educational system as it stands today -- after presenting the subject matter, it must be drilled..
"Rote-drills" only work for the small percentage of kids who are wired for that kind of learning. And many of those kids won't focus their attention enough to learn even then.
As a result, bright, precocious, successful kids become more successful. Some truly brilliant kids who are developmentally delayed, who have ADD, who have different intelligences are relegated to "career tracks" where they will not blossom. So when the pathways develop that allow for higher math learning, for example, the kid's already in some vocational program learning to be an MCSE. What a waste!
The old method of "you will sit still and learn this like it or not, end of discussion" may not have been "enjoyable" but it WORKED.
It really didn't work that well. It worked for lots of kids who were in school, who were suited to it. Remember, lots of kids dropped out during the "glory days" of instructivist rote-drills. Lots of kids finished school at 8th grade, then went to work in factories or farms. These are the kids who were wasted on "rote drills." Sure, some of them were just unintelligent. But many of them weren't suited to the 19th century education you advocate. That worked well in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We had lots of laborer jobs. Now we have an information economy. We just don't have that many of those types of jobs anymore.
We shouldn't just throw away kids who don't respond well to rote learning. It's a very narrow view of learning and very elitist.
Want to fix the problems generated and exacerbated by computers in the classroom? Easy. Restrict computers and in-school computer use to one place: the classes that are specifically *about* computers.
I guess that would be the easiest way to do it. It's probably the easiest and quickest way to be eclipsed by Europe and Asia. How about doing more research and figuring out how to make computer assisted learning work?
Now, if you're truly interested in what real educators have learned about the educational process, you can do some googling on the following topics:
Constructivism
Multiple Intelligences
Ed Tech theory
And here begins my rant about Slashdot, and parent poster, please forgive me if I offend. Lord knows I've said and written some incredibly stupid stuff - orders of magnitude worse than what I took offense at in your post.
Why do we tend to write things like "Of COURSE, any IDIOT would know that XXXXX would solve YYYYY problem?" Do we think that the experts in the field are all sitting around with their thumbs up their fannies? We have a huge field of research in this area. It's fine to share your opinion. That's what Slashdot is about. But come on, don't be so arrogant about it - like the solutions are SO OBVIOUS, ANY IDIOT could figure them out. We are working on the solutions while so many others are just whining and griping.
Inform yourself, do some digging, some reading. Problems are almost always more complex than they first appear. Solutions are almost always more difficult to achieve than it seems they should be.
End rant.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
This phenomena was actually wildly expected among thinking people everywhere. Especially in the math community. My higher math teacher in high school was predicting this 10 years ago... (pre-calc/calc is what he taught), He never let us use calculators for anything, because technology abstracts the basic ideas away, and that is what you need, the basics, then you can build anything once you have those down. He also taught CS classes, basic and pascal, I see it even in the technology sector today, especially in most CS curricula in college that I've seen. They teach purely high level languages that abstract away all CPU/register issues, and so, the students get a dumbed down education not really understanding the way the registers work, how the memory works, how the cpu actually talks to these things, and therefore they write bloated code, because they don't see that there is a more efficient way at a lower level, because that lower level is abstracted away. Bottom line is kids are lazy, if you give them a nice graphing calculator, or a computer that has a nice graphing program, they will never learn pre-calc or calc, because they don't have to, they just type the equation into the program and it spits out the answer... unfortunately when they go to take standarized tests, they can't pass, cause they are now dependent on the technology, in essence they don't know anything, they've become mindless monkeys who know how to type equations into digital devices...
.02
To fix the problem?? No more calculators in math classes period, bring back the slide rules (my understanding of logarythms is severly lacking because I never had to use one... see I can't even spell it right)...
just my
Like practically all of you, this study comes as no suprise to me either. When I was in K-12 back in the mid 80's to late 90's the only thing I remember using a computer in class for was playing a game. I never wrote a single paper at school using a computer, nor did I ever use it to do research. Having a computer in the classroom meant one thing to students and one thing only... games. And the funny thing is none of the teachers I've ever had discouraged that attitude, or more accurately, encouraged the perception of the pc as a learning tool.
I've always beleieved the pc (like tv) has had minimal impact in my acquisition of knowledge because a pc cannot teach you to think. It is the attitudes and actions of the teachers and parents of students that set the stage for their apporach and attitude towards education.
That being said computers cannot be ignored as a tool for aiding students in becoming educated (internet, online encyclopedias, word processing, desktop publishing, blah, blah). For that reason I think school districts shouldn't spend money in purchasing and maintaining computer labs and should offer incentives to the parents of students by supplying them with vouchers to make purchasing a computer for their home more viable. That way the cost of maintaining/upgrading equipment is transferred from the school to the student who is the actual user of the equipment. After all, if a student has purchased a study guide to help him perform better in math or english and if it requires special software to be installed why shouldn't he be able to do so? Let the use and upkeep of computers be the responsibility of those who use them. A voucher system would also give students the opportunity to purchase a computer they are most comfortable with whether it's a Mac, pc (windows/linux), desktop, or laptop. Why should the student be forced to do his homework a certain way using a specific computer/application when he has a choice?
In my mind, there are a vast number of reasons for schools not to have computers in the classroom and having a voucher system in its place. From my own experience, a voucher system for purchasing a computer would have greatly eased the buying process of my family's first pc and I am absolutely positive that is true for millions of other people out there.
Let's not dump too much on the parents. Don't forget that for every case of ADD diagnosed, the school district gets increased federal funds. The schools have a real incentive to find cases of ADD.
I don't know if it's still the case, but about five years ago, I was talking with a psychology professor who noted that there had never been a case of ADD diagnosed outside of the US.
The problem is, computers are a tool but they're being used as a crutch.
Computers are not cost-cutting measures, as far as education is concerned. You will spend money on them. Lots of it. And if you spend it wisely, then there will be great benefit. But do not think you can replace teachers, or librarians, or libraries for that matter. You will not save money by putting computers in the classroom; if you are, then you're doing something wrong.
The main problem is that computers are absolutely wonderful tools. They do very well in terms of augmenting people's existing abilities. However, schools are not teaching students to use computers this way; they're teaching students to essentially replace their own abilities with those of computers. And then we wonder why little Billy can't add, never mind that he's never had to because his teacher always told him to use a calculator instead.
Technology is good. But we're using it inappropriately, and we're teaching it too young. Calculators should be strictly forbidden in math classes, at least up through basic algebra. Basic four-function calculators might be allowed in other classes where math is important but secondary to the overall concepts, but even there it shouldn't be permissible right away. At least through grade school papers should be required to be handwritten, and there's something to be said for requiring them all the way up through high school, with intermediate drafts turned in as well. No better way exists to encourage a clear, concise writing style than making wordiness an inconvenience; any writer can tell you that. Internet-based research, while it should not be forbidden (it's an important resource), should be severely restricted up through middle school. Kids can't be allowed to forget that while a great deal of information can be found on the Net, there is a great deal for which one must continue to look elsewhere.
Even worse than this, however, is that we're not teaching kids what they need to know about computers. We're teaching them essentially all the wrong stuff. A little basic programming should be mandatory. Nothing major, just a few lines of Logo or Python or Cocoa (the kid-based programming environment, not the object-oriented API in Mac OS X) or something else that's something suitably kid-friendly. A little of this, particularly in conjunction with a class in logic and problem-solving skills, could go a very long way. But even before that, where are the gradeschool-level courses in basic computer literacy? Not that we should be handing little Billy a bash prompt in kindergarten, but by fifth grade someone should at least know their way around the basics of a machine; enough to turn it on, turn it off, launch a program, and some basic troubleshooting.
Computers can enhance the mind, and in this they have the potential to do great good. But we're teaching kids in such a way that they replace the mind. The consequences of that will be disastrous.
Damn, I remember having to try to bribe the librarians to let me have grownup books. "Awww, what do you mean i cant read this im old enough!! MOM!! Can i read this!!!"
My parents usually went on the grounds if im old enough to be interested in it, i was old enough to read it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Just wondering - why didn't the administration like the "homework line" you set up? Sounds like a great idea to me...
Officially? Because they said they needed to have control in how we communicated with the parents. That never made sense to me, since that would mean having an administrator sit in on every parent-teacher conference. This was from a district that with a new head who was trying to increase communication with the parents (who all knew about the help line and liked it).
Unofficially -- I can't prove it, but I think they didn't like it because it was new and different and if one teacher had it, it might make others look bad if they didn't do the same.
Let me give you a story about the administrator who told me this (and it will tell you a little about the system I was in). (And, since I've noticed a post or two above hearing part of the story and making judgements without hearing all I did in the classroom, remember, I'm summarzing and not going into all the details here).
There was not much we were allowed in the way of authority to discipline students, and I had several General Math classes (you know -- Seniors who still haven't passed 8th grade math and need it to graduate). I had one class just above that level (Seniors who haven't passed Algebra I in 2 attempts and need another math class to graduate). I had a student in this class I'll call Egbert.
Egbert lived with his grandparents and his parents were basically unreachable. Egbert was a continually disruptive influence in class. I had kept him after school on Fridays with assigned work. He wouldn't do the work -- just sit there and not say anything. I had spent a long time on the phone with his grand parents, but they said nothing the did showed any result. I had basically taken every avenue open to me in tryintg to resolve the problem (including positive reinforcement -- which I always do first). Nothing had worked. So I wrote up a referral to the administrator (the same one who told me to can the homework line). Six weeks later I get the referral back with a sticky note on it saying, "Has this been resolved?"
I considered the cause lost at that point. I had done everything I could. I had documented it. As a last resort, I asked the administrator for help in the required way, and after six weeks of ignoring the problem (and by then the student had figured he had gotten away with it all anyway), he asks if it's taken care of.
The next year they opened up a new middle school in the wealthy part of the district. This administrator was promoted to Principal of that school.
I could rant for hours, but the overall point is this: Computers have almost no place in a classroom unless that is the topic of the course (such as computer repair). For other purposes, a lab setup (preferably an app-server/thin-client model) is superior. Most of the money spent on IT in schools should be redirected to better equipment in other courses, salaries, and maintenance.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Regarding over use of calculators on mathematics and the lack of learning basic principles...well. You know in highschool? those bubble exams? When was the last time you saw space to show your work? I thought so. It always burned me that my teachers would try to emphasize "trying" and "showing your work" but in the end it was the answer that counted more. and on the exam, it was all that mattered.
As for computer classes. My keyboarding teacher in highschool worked in a mill before she became a teacher. she had a diploma and no degree. Result? she single handedly took down a computer lab via boot sector virus that got trasnmitted around. she also had no clue how to fix things that were broken. later, in 'computer apps', the teacher let me troubleshoot most of the class, becuse they were so clueless that if she helped every last one of them follow the directions that were inthe book, or fix somethin another studnet had screwed up, she woudl have had no time to teach.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The sad thing is that a site like WND will go ahead and post something that makes a few good points (if not surrounded in paranoid drudge), yet the very next day go ahead and rah-rah the people who are making this very thing happen. It's almost like random words with no thought surrounding it.
What gets me is that everytime I throw out an opinion regarding an educational issue, it's basically "mind your own business." But many teachers fashions themselves as computer experts and insists on giving me advice on how to run things, and if I don't bend, trying to force it via administrative means...
The sad part of this is, most of this is just for show. "We have computers in every classroom." I bet that is why there is two in each, so they can say computers instead of "a computer." Sounds so much more impressive.
Hate to break this to you, but there have been ADD cases diagnosed outside of the US, for several years they have been diagnosing them here in Canada
I think the best use for computers in schools is as a replacement for the textbook... not necessarily as a subject unto themselves. In my school district (Tracy, CA), there have been a lot of complaints over students having to carry large amounts of heavy textbooks (at least one, sometimes more, for each class). A single elementary school in the district is set up to be a "technology magnet school" and all the students get to use a district-supplied laptop. If every student in the district got a laptop, tablet, PDA, or some form of access to electronic copies of the physical textbooks they have to use now, I think this would greatly reduce the number of parent and student complaints, as well as textbook storage problems. Also, when the information in a textbook becomes outdated, the book itself has to be replaced. With an eBook, only the copy of the file on a central server needs to be updated (patched, not necessarily replaced) and those changes will automatically be distributed to each client accessing the file. I think this would be a much more optimal and focused use of computing technology in schools, as well as a definite step forward in the educational system.
As for emphasizing IT as a subject, I don't think it's absolutely necessary for every student. At my old elementary school, we went into the computer lab for at least one hour every week. We played Mario Teaches Typing for 15 min, and then used the rest of the time to type up a writing assignment that went on our english grade. We also had educational software such as Bailey's Book House and DinoPark Tycoon (???), and Internet access through buggy, crashprone Netscape 2.x. I think this time could've been much better served had typing skills, Internet access, and other such things had been integrated into some other curriculum rather than standing on their own. The students could learn more about the subject at hand while still acquiring useful computer skills.
I also don't doubt the value of certain educational software. Some of the teachers I have right now and have had in the past lead me to believe that an interactive CD-ROM would be more educational than a human literally reciting verbatim from a textbook.
There are a lot of people growing up today who want to learn to use computers in a productive way. For some, this is limited to MS Word and Paint. For others, C, FORTRAN, or whatever else. Not everyone will use computers the same.
The problem is, the computer doesn't sprout arms and legs and a cartoon face on the monitor and teach you to use it. You need qualified people. How many of us out there who bemoan the fact that children today aren't learning what they're supposed to are willing to hang up their $40,000++++ year jobs (if you have one) and start pulling in $20,500 (starting parochial school teachers salary in my area, slightly more for public schools) just to share that knowledge.
I know I wouldn't. And I volunteer with children in other activities and I have found I work great with children, explaining things to their level without dumbing it down more. I've tutored individual students with great success. That being said, wild horses could drag me into a classroom with the education system the way it is today.
Start paying teachers a salary in the ballpark of the professionals of their field, and you'll attract the teachers who are enthused, know what they're doing, and become an asset. That isn't to say that there already aren't, but my experience has shown me that for the most part, before college, computer science teachers are teachers who just couldn't cut it elsewhere, and that's a shame.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
The administration at my kids schools is MUCH more responsive! Teachers are encouraged to learn and use new techniques (as long as the core curriculum is covered). When there are problems it is expected that the teacher will call the parents and try to solve the problem. The administration only becomes involved if the parent and teacher can't work things out. When the adminstration is called in they work hard to help the teacher, student, and parents reach a solution quickly. Whether its extra help, a special program, "homework club", or for those incidents involving explosives, suspension, the adminstration supported the teachers, while being fair to the students, and keeping the parents informed.
Of course things are not always perfect, and the last teachers strike made teacher/parent relations a bit prickly for a while, but overall I'm impressed with the skill and dedication of my kids teachers.
Anarchists never rule
Well, like everything, it has a double edge. Let me share: .. which often introduces subtle bugs. Sad, really.
In CS, these days, I see students all around me in what I call the "code monkey" phenomenon. Instead of trying to understand pointer arethmatic, b+ search trees, memory allocation, etc. They just tweak (their often bad) code and hit compile 87 times until something compiles. In the olden days, when we had to use timesharing and punchcards, it was an ordeal to convert your programs to something the machine could understand. This generally caused you to be extra special careful about what you were doing, and to think critically about what it is the computer was doing as it ran through your program. I don't see that anymore in CS students.. they just add +1 to this, or change around boolean operators
But on the other hands, students that have a clue can use the computer to do fancier, more clever things. I'd say there is a higher "upper limit" for what students can get out of increased ease of use out of their machines... but that also means we can have code monkeys running around that have no idea what they're writing.
Actually, if I could have taught in a school or school system like you describe, I might still be teaching. As it is, I left, took easy jobs for a few years to decide what to do, then started my own business, which is close to really taking off. When it does, I'll be using the profits to make videos -- at first focused on personal/spiritual growth, and later we'll be doing digital film production.
I realized I knew what the system wanted -- and it was more teachers that did not question or try new things. That's not me, I didn't want to be like that, so I left. Unfortunately, all the systems in the area or like that one or worse.
If I could program a child like I write software, I would be patting you on the back, you seem to have a hard time remembering what being a kid is like, let alone understand that people are inherantly not logical.
It's easy for you to optimally conceptualize a simplified mathematical model only because you've been repetitively exposed to all its nuances for most of your life.
For example, you state that addition is subtraction, but you fail to see that addition is subtraction with the concept of negative numbers (a concept dependant on the concept and mechanics of subtraction). Keep in mind that in order for kids to conceptualize this, they must be intimately familiar with the mechanics, which is nessecary for mentally simulating the concepts.
I wholeheartly agree that kids should be taught more conceptual math along with thier mechanical math (when appropriate), but I think your assertions that we can substitute mechanical math with conceptual math is very naive.
In other words, you started the off on a good thought, but failed to think it through. (You should play a devil's advocate a little more)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
" Clearly we are capable of doing both, and if you're going to function effectively in the real world, you'd better be able to do both. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that your approach is "wrong". I'm just saying that it is not a good way to educate people who will have to function in society."
Most people are not good at doing both(look at how many people fail math) however, also we have enough human calculators, the number crunching followers do not innovate, its the creative ones who understand how things work who make all the innovation. What good are you if you can do well on jepordy? you dont help society at all.
" I don't think anyone would argue that you can't teach multiplication as repeated additions, but --apart from a useful too to introduce the topic-- why would you want to do that? Here are a few reasons not to "just teach concepts/formulas": "
The goal is not to teach number crunching but to teach math I thought? Math is just formulas, numbers have nothing to do with math, numbers are like saying that programming is all about interger variables, its not, sure it uses variables but theres alot more to it.
1. It doesn't scale well. Fine. So you're teach multiplication as repeated additions. What are you going to do when you have to teach them exponents? It's easy for children who can multiply as an independent operation to extend their understanding to repeated multiplying, but I would not like to try to convince a classroom that learning that (3+3+3)+(3+3+3)+(3+3+3) is a particularely eligant or useful skill."
3+3+3 = A+A+A
(A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) = A^3
The reason to teach them the formulas without teaching them the numbers is it teaches them what really matters.
The formula is simple.
This formula explains exactly what A squared is, this formula explains EXACTLY.
Your way of teaching would have kids using this formula without even knowing what the hell is going on. Dont tell me kids cant learn this, its alot easier than memorizing the times tables. Here I'll explain it all in one sentence if you cannot remember the formula.
A number which adds to itself by its own value then repeats the process 3 times is squared.
3+3+3 = 9, then add 3 nine times to get the answer.
"# It wastes too much time. Children who don't know basic math facts (memorized, not computed) are at a disadvantage when they are learning higher level math. I'm not talking about calculus here; they are at a disadvantage learning algebra. While other students are distributing, students who don't know math facts can't keep up with the arithmetic."
Thats why we invented the calculator. Einstien failed arithmetic.
# It's not helpful in life. When you're shopping after Christmas and need to figure out what something that is 30% off will cost, it's good to know that 30% is about 1/3 and how to divide by 3 in your head.
Not everyone is capable of doing this. Einstien couldnt do it. Sure its good to be a human calculator if you are gifted in that area but you cannot make everyone into a number cruncher, its not a natural ability for everyone just like not everyone has good handwriting, and no matter how much they practice they will never be able to do this stuff in their head.
The goal here is what? Give people a better understanding of math? Or filter out the number crunchers who are good at memorizing facts from the creative types who manipulate and innovate the facts to create new ones?
You can teach someone to draw by making them learn the facts but they will never truely be an artist. You can take an artist and try to teach them the proper way to draw but they will never be able to draw in any style but their own. When you take math and turn it into just pure number crunching what you are doing is telling people to be human calculators, sure this is useful to you, and sure it might even be useful for everyone, but some people can do this easily because their brain works this way and others just are never going to remember their multiplication tables, will NEVER be able to do math in their head and will ALWAYS need a calculator unless its simple addition/subtraction.
This is why I say why should we bother focusing on number crunching and calculations when we have calculators to do this? The chance of someone growing up in this age without a calculator is slim, the value of being able to do math in your head becomes less as technology advances eventually calculations will cease to matter, computers will be everywhere and all that will matter are the formulas you feed into them.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Three years ago I was responsible for teaching a great many of the public school teachers in Calgary basic computer skills. The Calgary Board of Education decided to make said skills required for their staff, and contracted the training company I was working for at the time to teach classes on basic use of the computer, Internet, scanners, etc.
The experience led me to the conclusion that it is not the presence of computers that makes for a poor classroom experience - it is the ability of the teacher. Many of those I taught actually resisted learning something new, either being techno-phobic or holding the attitude that they were being "forced to learn" by the board. Many had a hard time learning anything at all. The overall attitude I got from many was that they had learned everything they needed to know in teacher's college 10, 20, 30 years ago and through their own experience - and how dare this young whippersnapper try to show them something new.
The reality is that the vast majority of students in any classroom, except for those in low-income areas, will already have access to a computer at home. They will have grown up with one, unlike their teacher, and likely know how to use it better. My advice would be to throw off the censoring software and let them at it. Let the students come up with new and interesting ways to fulfill their assignments with these tools. The same skill is likely beyond the abilities or comprehension of their teacher.
It isn't Bush's or any other president's JOB to fix the problem. That job belongs to the american people and specifically to the consumers of public education, the students and their parents.
It really is sad that so many people in this country act as if it is the government's job to solve all their problems for them. What makes you think the government CAN solve the problem? The government is not your mommy and daddy.
If you want your child to have a better education then DO SOMETHING about it yourself. Encourage other parents to do the same thing. Whining about the president is nothing but a piss-poor excuse for your lack of action.
I don't have children yet, but I can guarantee you that IF they go to public school they'll be educated to a 2nd or 3rd grade level before they enter kindergarten. My plan is to home school them if possible because I know that private schools are only marginally better at best. I find the level of education that 12 years of schooling in this country to be extremely pathetic. But then education in this country on all levels is pretty sad. I should know, I work at the 3rd largest university in the country.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Any idiot can learn how to use a blasted mouse or Word Processor. But I still wasted many hours doing homework on this in college. And I was in computer science.
What they should teach is programming so that children can really understand them.
Unfortunately in America the teachers union opposes educating or hiring computer teachers for budget reasons.
I learned to read and type in the wonderful world of Zork!
>kill troll with sword
>take axe
>verbose
In reading the other replies to your post, I thought of one other thing that might help. This may be a little past your first grader's ability, but the time will come when you play games that involve keeping score. It can be really to encourage her to keep the score. The math will be interspersed with the game and it's time together as a family, so it won't matter that the game slows down to wait for the score to be updated.
Also, to the posters questioning my computational skills, i do quite well. In a store, i can estimate the bill in my head, with taxes and discounts. I balance my checkbook in my head. I am the designated score-keeper for games with my family (and i total the score with each turn, not at the end of game).
And to the memorization naysayers. I can't imagine having to add when I want to do exponents. what a waste of time. And try teaching the concept of negative numbers without first teaching subtraction. There is a reason why negative numbers are not taught in first and second grade, but subtraction is.
and about the finger counting. maybe someone else can comment on this, but you might want to try having her wear mittens or sit on her hands while you do flash cards.
counting fingers is like looking at the keyboard while you learn to touch type. it may help you be fast and accurate at the beginning, but it quickly limits your progress.
Some diagnoses seem to be real, albeit often attributable to weird things like allergies/intolerances, some appear to be phantoms.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A very large number of today's students will eventually want a job where they will be expecteed to have a certain level of computer skills. So, while the computers in the class room may not be making math 100 times easier to learn, or exposing the student to life in India, the student will have an impossible time learning to use a computer with out hands on use.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Hate to break this to you, but there have been ADD cases diagnosed outside of the US, for several years they have been diagnosing them here in Canada
Well, thank heavens the contagion has been been restricted to North America. You don't think the problem might be "metooism" do you? I think it's odd that students in parochial schools don't get ADD. Seems that a nun with a yardstick cures the disease. Perhaps they could make up a serum containing the necessary components to prevent ADD. ;)
Whoa, dude - with your nick, I'd hate to disagree with you about medical problems or medications, but I had a brother diagnosed with ADD because he wasn't interested in school work, and the school wanted him to have to ADD. They got more money. He got drugged. The teacher's life was easier. Good all around, right?
ADD is crap - a catch basin for problems the schools (and some parents) don't want to deal with. When said brother decided he wanted to do well in school some years later, the ADD was mysteriously gone (without the drugs).
Why not, indeed. My initial response was "learn what via computers? Last time I checked, there wasn't that much useful teaching software out there, and close to nothing that improves on human interaction between student and teacher.
If computers are of little use as teaching aids for "normal" students, why on earth would we want to use them as teaching aids for students with apparent learning disabilities? The risk of compounding the problem seems (to me) fairly high with that approach.
If the smaller classroom solution doesn't work because of poor teaching methods, then clearly our current educational system has a significant problem. If we can't even get our human teachers to educate effectively, what makes you think we have the skill and wisdom to build a computer teacher that does any better?
Not to mention that a transition to computer-based teaching would be costly. Taxpayers won't be happy about it, but corporations would probably love to sponsor such a move. I won't go into the implications of that here, but they should be obvious.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Like most things, I think it's unwise to fault the tool. The problem as I see it is that the educators themselves don't understand the basic fundabmentals of computing. This creates a situation where computers are brought into the education environment, the teachers really don't know what to do with them, and so they get thrown at the kids wholesale "here, go learn on these computers" without any guidance or instruction.
I am often amazed at the number of people who have been using computers for years, but still don't understand the bare basics of what that big box is. To many people, I think, when they open a text document, they don't have a conceptual grasp that they have just opened a file for processing, that that file has a physical presence inside that box on the hard drive, etc. To most, that open text file is nothing more than a picture on the tv screen.
I don't know how it is with other technologies but I think one of the amazing things about comptuters is the ability for people to use them without ever having to learn anything about what they're using. If the educators themselves don't grasp the fundamental nature of the tools they've been handed, then how can it come as any surpise that they've become nothing more than an overgrown "Speak N Say" in the classroom.
Not to belabour the point, but this discussion has reminded me of a situation I was in not too long ago. Part of my job involves managing server backups. Well, I get a call one afternoon that a person (Mr. X) has messed up a file, and needs it restored. No problem, I think. I open up the software, find the file in question, and then restore it. Well, I get a call from Mr. X saying that the file I restored didn't have the changes they'd made to it. I explained that backups happen at night, so I could only produce the file that existed the previous night. Any changes that had been made that day were gone. After a bit of silence, Mr. X, exclaimed joyfully, "oooooh! so the changes I made today you won't be able to get to me until tomorrow....". Shocked not the best word, but the closest I can think of to describe my mental state at that particular moment. I had no idea how to approach the subject to Mr. X without being offensive. I ended up simply explaining that any changes made today to the file before it was deleted were gone forever. This seemed to confuse Mr. X mightily, but I didn't have any idea how else to approach it. It later turns out that the problem with the file in the first place, was Mr. X's boss had instructed Mr. X that two files had their names backwards, file1 needed to be file2, and vice versa. Well, to go about this, Mr. X had opened up file1, saved it into the same directory as file2. Opened up file2, and much to his surprise it looked exactly the same as file 2.
I know this is getting long, but the basic point is, Mr. X and millions like him have been using computers for many many years, yet still do not grasp the basic concepts which define a computer. Without these basic concepts, how can we ever hope for our children to become "computer literate".
RFC2119
That's right, this vast new library is ruining our children's education! They are sucked in and spend all their time reading and learning! The shame of it, censor it now or we will never be able to control their little thoughts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Most people can do both reasonably well. The number of people who fail math classes is small (less than 10% in my experience)."
Yeah thats why Americans do so well on their SATs, thats why Americans do sooooo well at Math. Just because 90% get passed doesnt mean 90% are on level in terms of knowledge, most people get passed but dont really know math. Thats why we get lower scores in Math than Japan.
You have here (as you will do repeatedly throughout your post) ignored the fact that I am advocating teach both basic math facts and mathematical reasoning. I am assuming here that what you mean by the formulas is similar to my mathematical reasoning, but when I was in school the phrase just learn the formulas had more of a rote memorization feel to it.
The formulas and rules are all you need to memorize. Formulas and Algorithms have nothing to do with "reasoning" because you can have good reasoning ability without knowing the routines, the formulas, the algorithms, reasoning is just logic.
You can make lots of silly statements like numbers have nothing to do with math. On some level (once you reach a high enough understanding of the subject) these are true, but they don't really serve as useful a purpose when you're dealing with younger minds who are experiencing these ideas for the first time. Here are some more that are equally true and equally dubious in value when teaching:
Even on the most basic level numbers have nothing to do with math. Notes have nothing to do with music, you dont need to know how to read and write notes to make music, knowing how to geometry and trig have nothing to do with knowing how to draw.
Sure these things can help you do something but these things are just tools, numbers are tools, the values are a tool, it doesnt matter the level because teaching in levels is just how you learned, you dont have to learn something at level 1-2-3-4, you can teach something on multiple levels at once if the kids are smart.
Um, that's not right. If 3+3+3 = A+A+A then your second line is not equal to A^3. This is, of course, clear to someone who know (presumably from memorizing, but possibly from using a calculator) that 3^3 = 27 and all those threes that you have on the other side of the equal sign do not. see there you go focusing on numbers and not looking at the formula.
The formula gives you 3 squared, which is 27. Its not cubed or at least I dont think its cubed but I mix the terms up. IT could be cubed, the term doesnt matter, only the formula used to find the solution matters.
You are spending way too much time on this one example, and getting the math wrong anyway. Why would you want to teach a student what cubed or squared was anyway (excepting as far as to say and perhaps have them memorize that we have special words for the two most common exponents)? Is the goal to teach them math or to teach them how to work with numbers? By the way my math is right, I checked it with the calculator.
Other people in other repies to other posts that you've made have adequately pointed out why it is useful to be able to do math when a calculator isn't present,
Yeah and its also useful to know how to ride a horse so that when your car breaks down you can get around, its also useful to be able to do algebra in yourr head without pen or paper, just because something is useful doesnt mean the general population should spend years learning it.
Then why on earth would you not try to teach it to everyone? It is really starting to sound to me like you aren't good at memorizing
I'm not good at memorizing stuff which ill never use. Alot of others are also bad at Math, why should we waste our time? Sure its useful for some people to know this but not for everyone.
Should everyone learn C, C++ and Java so that if their computer somehow runs out of software or has a bug they can fix it themselves? Hell no, thats what programmers are for, we dont need to write our own software so why do we need to do our own number crunching? Let mathematicians who enjoy this do it for us.
Should everyone master anatomy because we all need doctors? should we all learn several languages so someday when we are in afganastan we can communicate better? Please, we are talking about average people here, most of them will never use this garbage and will forget it, in fact my parents dont remember the math garbage they were taught, even my friends dont remember most of the garbage they were taught, simply because they never had to use it, the calculator was always there and faster.
l. Just because some people can not do something is not a reasonable reason that we shouldn't teach it to people who can (and I believe most people can be reasonably proficient with math facts and mathematical reasoning).
Most people can write their own operating systems, most people can be their own doctors, most people CAN learn to speak 7 languages but why do we all need these skills? Especially if its not fun learning this stuff, why should it be a REQUIREMENT for everyone? I Dont mind it being an elective for people who want to be mathmeticians or who enjoy doing this but most Americans hate Math, most do BAD in Math, check out the test scores, we score among the lowest, face it, half of this country is good at math and the other half is not, the ones who arent good at Math are capablee of learning all the garbage but they forget everything they learned within a year and only learn it to pass a test or get a certain score on the SATs. Teach stuff to people who care, dont waste time teaching stuff to people who dont want to learn it and who will never remember it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Those who create computers and the software have no interest in providing tools that allow people to do things for themselves. This is very deeply ingrained in the concept of making people need you. Never teach them to fish and feed themselves, but instead sell them an easy copy of fish you create and lead them to believe they need to return the next day for another meal.
.... constraints....
It's inherit to understand the results of the study.... inherent in the intent by which computer products are produced and sold.
This process has extended now with the adoption of software patents.....
So all this really does make the simple pencil a more useful tool to use in learning than high tech over invented
beyond a few minutes on a @#$@#$ing webbrowser. And I'm in High School; the middle school students are only allowed to go to disney.com and the county school website!
It would be TRIVIAL to take down the entire network (winshit 98 systems with SHARED LOGIN SCRIPTS that are WORLD WRITABLE!!!). In addition, any computer can print to any printer in the school; the principal's included with NO PASSWORD!!!
If the computers aren't being used and the tech coordinators don't know how to secure them then why do we have them?
(This post ignores the obvious fact that winshit boxes suck. The shitty systems (with winshit Nothing There 4.0 sp0 for the server) were configured in such a way that any moron could damage it. This is beyond any whole M$ has placed since Dos 3.3)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
This may come as a shock to many parents and school administrators but hundreds of generations of students have gotten by using only books and personal instruction to learn. Folks such as Einstein, Mozart, Goethe, etc seemed to do pretty well without computer based learning. Maybe it is the modern culture and the lack of a learning environment at home that is the real problem but that would require parents cutting back on their precious careers and the big house to spend time with the kids.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Oooooh, those idiot teachers and administrators. It seems that they're unable to find a use for computers and the Internet as other than a big library! Why, all those kids can really do is ... read.
How "Old School".
... which we spent the next 3 generations progressively wasting.
Even the vast addition of cable-delivery (many more channels) has mostly wasted the medium.
TV's pervasiveness and popularity have brought out the worst in broadcast media.
TV's blue light flickers over the faces of millions of morons, and their ranks grow with each televised generation.
Rubbish. Look: All television did for us was to perform the unprecedented bringing of audio-visual theatre into each home within broadcast range. That had a remarkable potential
So, here we are with another unprecedented event: the bringing of a world library into a connected school (and honestly, into each connected home). The result?: ho hum. I can hear the virtual refrain from middle-class American homes: "Moooom! Now that we've got DSL, why doesn't the computer suck my dick when it shows me webcamgirl porn? Waaaah!"
What the hell does it take to satisfy you people? Does a technological advance have to be hip and sexy in order to be perceived as having value? Students can access knowledge of world-wide span at home, at school and in their public libraries. Literacy rates should be climbing when such an exposure occurs. But I just don't see that. I do see a lot of youth (computer-literate to the last) who have attentions that span comparably to short-lived nuclear particles. Did they expect the computers to do their reading for them?
Do any of you look at modern American grade-school and junior-high texts? They are becoming a blizzard of attention-diverting texts, colors, pictures and overall choppy layout. What ever became of the reasoned argument, which is the strength of textual information?
We must keep our eye on the prize. Books, field trips (to see artwork, manufacturing, etc.), lectures, and YES even the Internet are all tools for learning, and for developing that Holy Grail of education: critical and analytical thinking. If Internet usage seems to produce a drop in, say, understanding mathematics, then it's time to look at the student: his time spent online, what he sees online, and how he interacts with what he finds. Flighty use of an educational resource is more than enough grounds for downgrading its involvement. Yes, this might even mean restricting computers in schools to their libraries, where they probably should have stayed in the first place.
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
Most people are not good at doing both(look at how many people fail math) however, also we have enough human calculators, the number crunching followers do not innovate, its the creative ones who understand how things work who make all the innovation. What good are you if you can do well on jepordy? you dont help society at all.
Conceptual understanding and number-crunching skills are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they're mutually-reinforcing. Encouraging children to rely on using calculators as a crutch will severely limit their mathematical abilities. Calculators can be useful to check an answer, but if you can't do a problem with pencil and paper, you're in trouble.
I think the main reason so many people have trouble with math is that they never really had a solid understanding of the basics. Often this is the fault of the teacher, who may rely too heavily on rote memorization (never revealing concepts like "multiplication is repeated addition") or simply fail to teach some (or all) of their students effectively, often ignoring them (say, because "girls can't do math").
Unfortunately, if your grasp of basic math isn't solid, you'll really struggle with higher math, because it builds so heavily on basic math. Many people seem to struggle with math for many years because of one bad math teacher in their past, who failed to teach them properly. From that point on, it's usually nearly impossible to recover, because the pace of the new material assumes a solid understanding of the previous material, and without that understanding, math becomes a constant struggle.
Consider how many people loathe "word problems". Because there is no rote procedure to translate a word problem into a math formula, any student who depends on rote mechanisms for formula solving may end up guessing as to that initial formula for the word problem. Students with a solid understanding of the concepts involved usually find it quite straightforward to translate the word problem into a formula. Those who are already struggling, and probably have only learned rote skills with no comprehension of what they're doing or why, tend to be downright terrified of word problems, because they know that getting the initial formula wrong will ruin the solution, yet it can look fine to them when they turn it in!
The irony is that "word problems" are exactly how we teach young children basic math in the first place! Such problems help to connect abstract math to the real world, and makes it easier to understand. If anything, math students should do more word problems, and not move on to more advanced concepts until such problems become second nature to the students. Of course, this would take more time (and the problems are harder to construct), but students would actually learn math better, and it would give them a more solid foundation for higher math work.
3+3+3 = A+A+A
(A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) = A^3
The reason to teach them the formulas without teaching them the numbers is it teaches them what really matters.
The formula is simple.
Simple? Maybe for 3^3. Now try the formula for 9^9 and tell me if that still seems "simple" to solve as repeated addition. Conceptually, it may be straightforward, but in practice, it's useless. Moreover, if you only understand multiplication as repeated addition and cannot multiply directly, it's much harder to understand why 9^9 = (9^4) * (9^4) * 9, and in turn, 9^4 = (9^2) * (9^2).
On paper, I just calculated 9^2 (= 9*9 = 81), then 9^4 (= 9^2 * 9^2 = 81 * 81 = 6561), then 9^8 (= 9^4 * 9^4 = 6561 * 6561 = 43046721), and finally 9^9 (= 9^8 * 9 = 43046721 * 9 = 387420489). Have fun trying to calculate that number by adding 9 to itself 43,046,721 times to get the answer your way. I hope you have a lot of time to waste.
Unfortunately, my number-crunching skills are not what they once were. I could only get to 9^4 in my head, and even on paper I only got to 9^8 without error. In the last step, multiplying 7 * 9, I accidently came up with 56 (7 * 8) instead of 63. So I got the wrong answer, 387419789 -- which was obvious when I checked my answer with a calculator. This is why memorizing multiplication tables by rote is important -- without knowing the right answer for a simple multiplication, I could have resorted to repeated adding, but that would have been much more prone to error.
It's been 15 years since I graduated high school, and I haven't kept in practice since then. Back in high school, my brother and I were both on the Math Team (geeks!) and our team often clobbered the competition. Everyone competing was good at math, and calculators were forbidden. How did we get to be so good? Practice. Yes, we had a solid understanding of the concepts, as we needed to. But it also took lots of practice.
Believe it or not, if you do the same type of problem often enough, it really does become second nature, and you can solve it almost effortlessly. Yes, the Math Team took this to levels far beyond what ordinary math students would, but the principle is the same. Go ahead and try to multiply a couple 8-digit numbers by using repeated addition in place of every multiplication and you'll be pulling your hair out. And you'll almost certainly get the wrong answer. It's important to learn the multiplication tables well, so that the trivial multiplications become second nature and the harder ones become manageable.
If you can't even calculate 30% of 70 in your head, that's pathetic. 10% of 70 is 7 (shift the decimal), 7 times 3 is 21. I don't care if numbers aren't your thing, this is a basic skill. There's a reason why "'rithmetic" is one of the "three R's" of traditional education, after all. If you allow yourself to rely on calculators too much, you'll find yourself crippled without them. And while there may not be a lot of need for calculus in everyday life, there's a lot of use for basic math, and even a little algebra.
Despite the availability of calculators, everyone should learn basic math skills. To neglect such basic skills is foolish.
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
First of all, I'm a microwave/RF circuits engineer, and my wife teaches high school biology; we solve differential equations and/or dissect animals regularly :)
:) As Solomon wrote, there's nothing new under the sun; teaching history gives us the backdrop of current events showing us where we came from and hinting to the studious of where we're going.
Education isn't about getting a good job. It's not about learning what will make you employable and bring home the bigger bucks. It's not about money at all.
Education is about making the student a better person. It's about figuring about yourself and the world around you. For example, teaching literature to teenagers puts them in touch with their newly discovered feelings. The angst that Romeo and Juliette feel is something that the average teenager can relate to over their first crush.
Writing papers, essays and other school projects teaches the student how to communicate with others. Without the ability to transfer ideas and share experiences with others, the student will certianly have a difficult and frustrating life!
Math and science lessons develop the student's ability to think critically and reason effectively. People aren't born with the natural ability to THINK; it must be taught. Is the "value size" at Wal-Mart actually a better deal than the smaller box? It may be cheaper by the ounce, but if it's perishable, can it be used up before it expires? Should I refinance my house at a slightly lower rate even if I have to pay points? How far can I drive on that last three gallons before the car sputters to a halt? Will I make it to the house? I like flowers; which ones can I plant that will not die this winter/summer? Now my flowers have bugs. How can I get rid of the bugs without hurting the flowers?
Cooking is chemistry; knowing how to put things together in the right porportions to effect the desired results. Many home maintenance operations are chemistry-- glues, paints, fuels all undergo chemical changes during their use. Furthermore, it's probably important to know why it's bad to mix household cleaners, for instance.
Nobody wants to die young; health classes teach habits that overcome naturally-occuring slothful lifestyles and poor eating habits leading to myriad problems later in life. Students also look better, feel better and have higher self-images when in shape than when not. Finally physically fit individuals tend to be sharper mentally than unfit people.
Knowing history keeps the student for falling for the current political fad. Remembering the past allows us to know they're pulling our leg about "the worst economy of the last fifty years." Learning history instills appreciation for how special our (United States) form of government is in the world, how our current government is far removed from what the Framers intended, and how more people should have paid attention in their history classes
Teaching biology goes hand-in-hand with health. Why is strength training not enough for cardiovascular fitness? Why are aerobics not enough to get "cut?" Food goes in one end, comes out the other; what happens in the middle and why is it necessary? What impact does porcine anatomy play in the raising of hogs? Finally, biology may be the first time that the students deal with their on mortality; human anatomy is not far removed from the specimen on the table.
None of these things are intended make you a better worker bee; they make you a better person.
People think there might be a problem? The schools that I went to as a child employ the use of Apple 2's to this day, under the guise that they teach kids basic computing skills - which is a lot like saying that Tinker Toys or Erector Sets are just one step away from building structures like the World Trade Center.
This sig no verb.
Well, I did say "apparent learning disability".
I suspect that much of what we call "ADD" is simply misunderstanding, laziness, or unwillingness to place responsibility where it belongs, on the part of the diagnosers.
But it seems to me that anyone who can understand things they do not see working in front of them has a distinct advantage over anyone who cannot. Claiming that there is no disadvantage there sounds about as silly as claiming that being a twelve-year-old is some kind of disease that needs to be treated with modern drugs.
The ability to reason coherently in the abstract is a powerful tool. I doubt its usefulness can trivially ignored.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.