Technology In Primary Education, Boon Or Bane?

code_rage writes "This article in the San Francisco Chronicle attacks the zealous use of computers in grade school. In a time of teacher layoffs, San Francisco schools are buying 450 new computers with federal and state grants. The effects on education go beyond the initial costs: educational methods are suffering, as children are learning PowerPoint and teachers are becoming unpaid SysAdmins and content censors. This article is a well-written and brief update to Cliff Stoll's book High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom." Update: 12/01 00:40 GMT by T : Ooops II-- "Classroom" is now correctly spelled.

Comments

Microsofts fault

[tarquin_fim_bim]

San Francisco schools are buying 450 new computers with federal and state grants.

The guilty should be paying

Re:Microsofts fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you take a look at Microsoft's [checkered] past, you would see that as a company, they have made many computer and software donations to schools. Yeah, it's Microsoft software for the most part, so start the conspiracy ranting as you will. But all in all, one might say that their donations have gone a long way to bolster support for computers in the classroom. Certainly they weren't the first, but even the most stout Microsoft hater must admit that they've helped.

Boon

[Anonymous Coward]

Next question?

REGIME CHANGE STARTS AT HOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Plant Bush back in Taxas!

I said it for years..

[Anonymous Coward]

..beginning when I had to use a computer in school. Just fucking useless, mostly a waste of time.

the DMCA is the real problem

[ciaran_o_riordan]

The EUCD, and DMCA, allow publishers to rent books for limited times, etc. If a work is encrypted, you can only access it with publisher-authorised software. Anything else is circumvention, which is a criminal offence. So the software can disable your access after 10 months.

Kids can't take the computer home, so they can't take the book home, they can't buy second hand books etc.

We have to fight the DMCA and the EUCD. Make technology safe before making it a standard part of school. Do we really want to create a new schooling system where the motto is "sharing is violating"?

The content industry has worked this pretty well. Make fair use of "e-books" impossible *before* e-books become popular. So when e-books become popular, the publishers already have complete control of the public.

Re:School Computers....

[diamond0]

Linux is not license-free.

mod it up, it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Teaching majors have the second lowest SAT scores, better only than Social Science majors.

Philosophy majors are the highest, then physics and math majors, EE and EngMech, and then all the other engineering and science, then biology, then tech writing, econ, and other detritus.

The important thing is your child have a working vocabulary of 8000 to 12000 words by high school graduation, have taken high school band, and done some volunteer work involving leadership or independent responsibility. Or a regular job, even a paper route, where they handled money.

And today's school teachers are fucking stupid, and totally overpaid. Even a parent with a high school diploma can out-teach them, that's why homeschooled kids do so well.

Conservatives = dumbing down of education.

[EvanED]

It's not just liberals who are responsible, conservatives have an equal share. Which party is the one that advocates not teaching evolution because it isn't provable science? Are most people who tried to ban the Harry Potter books, probably the most read book amongst young kids in a long long time, conservatives or liberals? See, the blame is equally spread.

Which is why I should be in charge. :-p

Uh...say what?

[EvilSporkMan]

From the article: As any adult knows, system crashes are a fact of high- tech life.
I run Linux. What's a system crash?

OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

*This is completely offtopic*

Dude, I can't believe your name is Adolph Hitler. That's pretty fucked up.