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Children Learn Best When Their Bodies Are Engaged in the Living World. We Must Resist the Ideology of Screen-Based Learning (aeon.co)
Nicholas Tampio, associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, writing for Aeon magazine: As a parent, it is obvious that children learn more when they engage their entire body in a meaningful experience than when they sit at a computer. If you doubt this, just observe children watching an activity on a screen and then doing the same activity for themselves. They are much more engaged riding a horse than watching a video about it, playing a sport with their whole bodies rather than a simulated version of it in an online game.
Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less. Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have contributed millions of dollars to 'personal learning', a term that describes children working by themselves on computers, and Laurene Powell Jobs has bankrolled the XQ Super School project to use technology to 'transcend the confines of traditional teaching methodologies'. Policymakers such as the US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos call personalised learning 'one of the most promising developments in K-12 education', and Rhode Island has announced a statewide personalised learning push for all public school students. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution recommend that Latin-American countries build 'massive e-learning hubs that reach millions'. School administrators tout the advantages of giving all students, including those at kindergarten, personal computers.
Many adults appreciate the power of computers and the internet, and think that children should have access to them as soon as possible. Yet screen learning displaces other, more tactile ways to discover the world. Human beings learn with their eyes, yes, but also their ears, nose, mouth, skin, heart, hands, feet. The more time kids spend on computers, the less time they have to go on field trips, build model airplanes, have recess, hold a book in their hands, or talk with teachers and friends. In the 21st century, schools should not get with the times, as it were, and place children on computers for even more of their days. Instead, schools should provide children with rich experiences that engage their entire bodies.
Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less. Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have contributed millions of dollars to 'personal learning', a term that describes children working by themselves on computers, and Laurene Powell Jobs has bankrolled the XQ Super School project to use technology to 'transcend the confines of traditional teaching methodologies'. Policymakers such as the US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos call personalised learning 'one of the most promising developments in K-12 education', and Rhode Island has announced a statewide personalised learning push for all public school students. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution recommend that Latin-American countries build 'massive e-learning hubs that reach millions'. School administrators tout the advantages of giving all students, including those at kindergarten, personal computers.
Many adults appreciate the power of computers and the internet, and think that children should have access to them as soon as possible. Yet screen learning displaces other, more tactile ways to discover the world. Human beings learn with their eyes, yes, but also their ears, nose, mouth, skin, heart, hands, feet. The more time kids spend on computers, the less time they have to go on field trips, build model airplanes, have recess, hold a book in their hands, or talk with teachers and friends. In the 21st century, schools should not get with the times, as it were, and place children on computers for even more of their days. Instead, schools should provide children with rich experiences that engage their entire bodies.
Or are you advocating we all just live in whatever shit town our parents live in, with all of its associated lack of opportunity and jobs, and constrain ourselves to only breeding with people who are similarly trapped?
No, I'd advocate finding or creating family where you happen to go.
I remember someone pointing out where the American stereotypes of the Chinese laundry, Indian cab driver, and Mexican field worker got started. Or at least speculating how it started. It was someone long ago coming to the USA, finding a profession at random, then hiring immigrants from where they were from to help out "family". These people may have been brothers, or cousins, or "cousins" so far removed that only their shared native language and culture connected them any more as "cousins" than anyone else in the USA. These people moved out of their "shit town" and then sought out others like them and "adopted" them as family.
Some companies are realizing this need for family and take efforts to help new employees find a family. This is not just important in attracting and keeping productive employees but in creating a healthy society. I realized this need for family. I had a job hundreds of miles away from anyone I could recognize as family and I hated it, even though the pay was good. My decision to move back near home was largely made up for me when there was a mass layoff. My brother and his wife had a similar realization, they found jobs near "grandma and grandpa" so their kids would grow up knowing family. My sisters found work hundreds of miles away but they work near where their husbands grew up. They created a family.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.