Slashdot Mirror
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.
Let's start there. Healthy physical and mental development isn't achieved by sitting in school. 4 hours school until puberty, then no more than 6 hours, no homework. The times when the economy had use for obedient worker drones are coming to an end, let's raise healthy children instead.
Albeit it has been brought to my attention in the context of how boys differ in how they learn best compared to girls, this is nonetheless not news.
And I think it makes a lot of sense, too. The concept of being told how to do something to achieve a not really desired, made-up goal is comparably new.
Don't get me wrong, this kind of learning has enabled us to broaden our minds beyond the immediate, has made us much more versatile, but I think it's easy to guess that this is hard on our still very animalistic brains.
Seeing an outcome you actually desire come together will give much more satisfaction. The tangibility draws you in more, I think.
It does make sense for every person to craft something from time to time. Or at the very least do some fixing around the house. At least in me, it also tends to give me a greater sense of accomplishment compared to let's say building a "cloud" for a client.
I might not even necessarily disagree, but "it's obvious" DOESN'T CUT IT, when you're debating a controversial topic, and neither does being a professor of political science who seems to think that having national education standards is evil and will destroy democracy as we know it.
Doing something yourself teaches you more about it than reading about it? Who would have thought...
So let's put little Johnny behind the wheel of that SUV, I'm pretty sure driving is more sensible for him than watching a destruction derby on the screen.
But seriously now. That's not even close to being the problem. The problem is that children want to learn. They come into the world as little information sponges. They want to know everything. You have one simple job: Not killing that willingness to learn.
We usually fail. No later than when we stuff them into schools. Quite frankly, so far school has managed to kill that willingness to learn in everyone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah right.
By observing children, you can also learn that gummy bears are the perfect lunch. And dinner. And of course breakfast.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey, we combined cross-country skiing and shooting and called it a sport, so...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Reading to children is vital. Because it creates interest in those things that contain the stories children want to have. I could read when I was 4, simply because I wanted to have the stories that my grandmother was reading to me by myself, whenever I wanted them, not only when granny was around and had time to read them to me.
Kids learn best when they have a reason to learn. Give them a reason to want to know how to read and your kids, too, can read before they get to school. Plus, they want to read because they have a useful application for that skill.
The same applies to everything. Math, foreign languages, physics, whatever. Kids learn best when they want to learn. Not when you make them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You just spent too much time watching videos of typing on a phone keyboard, and not enough of the wholistic actual typing on a phone keyboard as previous generations had to do. You need to engage your whole body in the living world experience.
"Knowledge flows from a student's eyes and ears, to the fingers, to the pen, to the paper, to the brain." Even a little physical motion of writing improves engagement so much beyond passively reading.
TFA is not realistic. Sure, a kid will learn more riding a horse than watching a video of a horse? So what? How many parents have a horse available?
A more realistic question is a comparison of actual realistic alternatives. Is a kid likely to learn better from a computer or a book? In many cases, the more immersive experience of the computer will win.
As it patently obvious, schools do not do much by way of immersive learning, because it's not an efficient method of learning, say, history. Or maths. These fears of technology are as overblown as the promises that others make. Obviously, what makes most sense is to use a range of pedagogical styles, tailored to the needs of the student, the nature of the subject etc.
And incidentally, screens can actually be used to engage in the real world for learning, and can make for much *more* immersive experiences than traditional methods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In the real world, the choice is often between a bored and angry public school teacher barely out of the rubber room droning on for hours in a classroom full of other dysfunctional kids high on amphetamines vs "screen-based learning". Neither of those is "best", but one may well be a lot better than the other. Guess which one?
To test the hypothesis I learned skydiving on youtube. Whether it works we'll know in about 1½ minute...
-- Make America hate again!
Exactly. Heh, my friend's kid learned to read at age 4 because it helped him playing Minecraft. Motivation is an incredible catalyst for learning, and good teachers can provide it. One teacher at my school got whole classrooms interested in traditionally boring subjects like grammar, etymology and even poetry. Students of one physics teacher were often found in the physics lab during a free hour, doing experiments instead of smoking joints in the stairwell. Think of what those teachers have contributed to the generations who passed through their classrooms. And our school (being a Montessori school) encouraged this: classrooms were made available to students if no scheduled class was taking place, mostly without adult supervision (exceptions being the physics and chemistry labs, the workshop, and the music room, but not the brand new and expensive computer lab).
However, providing motivation is not the same thing as just letting them find their own way. Some schools try this and let kids set their own curriculum. A surprising but telling outcome of an interview conducted with kids at one of those schools was the common remark: "Some more structure would be nice". Kids need to be motivated but they also need (and want) to be guided.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I would recommend the following talk about Education: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_... ("Changing Education Paradigms" from Sir Ken Robinson)
And if there was a way to make them as nutrition and healthy as real food, I would be all for them.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
That's the problem, we consider pretty much anything tasty that consists mostly of raw energy. Sugar, fat, anything that fuels our body. Evolutionary that makes sense, so trying to explain to your kid that that broccoli is better than the ice cream is pretty hard, considering you have millions of years of evolution working against you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The check from Mexico hasn't cleared yet
How about will a kid benefit from playing Farmville, or from actually getting their hands dirty? Will a kid benefit from clicking on "make some pottery" or from actually throwing a pot on the wheel? Those are the real comparisons.
computers/tablets can be a great learning tool, it just depends on how you use them.
they can replace lecture books and greatly enhance on them because they can be made interactive and have various types of media etc.
even for more practical lessons watching a video, for example, is a great introduction if it is combined with actually doing it afterwards.
when i need to do something i haven't done before, i look up several video's on yt to get a general idea and know what to expect before i go on and do it myself.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Talking about living world interactions, there is no other class engaging with full body movements as PE in K-12 schools. But, PE sucks. There is no teaching of sports, e.g. baseball, or soccer, or gymnastics, etc. There is no teaching of basic skills in running, or jumping, or throwing.
^(oo)^pig~
Got a lot of justified criticism, because when you dissect a real animal, you learn the difference between the idealized diagrams in books and in this case computer programs, and the real thing. It's very educational, and an essential thing for most healthcare workers to learn sometime or another. Also useful if your path ends up being biology or biomedicine research.
I'd be willing to teach the coeds real world application of this topic.
Computers have a very basic problem. You are presented with a 2D screen that is popularly presented as this panacea but even with your ability to do so much with it, it is falls very short in some basic ways. Your brain, visual system, body, in fact everything about you is evolved to operate in a 3D world. Your thoughts, even dreams, are in 3D.
A perfect example is how a 2D screen falls short for a task it was obviously designed for: The simple task of reading. Billions of people read off of billions of screens every day. But you can read faster and more effectively from a book. Most people's knee jerk reaction rebels against this idea but a simple speed reading test will confirm it and the reason makes sense once you look at it.
A book is a real 3D object. The text is laid out on a somewhat flat page but even the page is a 3D object. Your brain and visual systems are specifically designed to deal with observing and manipulating it. It has no resolution limitations. Your eyes scan across it exactly in the way they were meant to interpret the world instead of having to deal with the serious limitation of 'scrolling'.
As you go from page to page you are manipulating and processing a natural 3d real world object. An easy example of the power of this is to grab a magazine at random that you haven't looked at. Take 20 seconds and flip from one end to the other quickly. You will have some idea of what content is in the magazine.
- Now try the same exercise with a PDF of a magazine. You won't pick up hardly any impression because it isn't displayed in a way your brain is designed to deal with.
Another simple example is look at all the research showing how physical activity slows the onset of Alzheimers and dementia. These are purely mental conditions but the fact that our brains are primarily designed to deal with the physical world means that moving through the physical world exercises our mental functions even though we aren't consciously aware of it.
Over reliance on computers has actually harmful effects but it is really really easy to do. Here is a basic truth: Any time you automate a human's ability the human will lose that ability. The quickest example is the contacts in your phone. How many phone numbers do you know for your friends and family? Probably at most 2 or 3 and 5 would be pretty extreme. 20+ years ago your average competent adult would know at least 20 phone numbers and many would know a lot more than that. They would also know the complete street address with zipcode to a number of those.
People can't add and multiply in their heads anywhere as well as they could 20 years ago. They can't even apply critical thinking as well as they could a generation ago. (Which partly explains why huge portions of an "educated" populous can be dragged around by their noses by click bait viral "news".)
To go more directly to the point of the article, it is well known that multi sensory teaching techniques are more effective. For people with more difficulty learning multi sensory teaching methods can be the only effective method to get results. For much more information on this look into IMSLEC and their various member organizations.
Computers aren't evil. They are just a tool like a stapler. Use them but at least do it with your eyes open.
It's less expensive than you might think.
My sister sends her kids to Chicago public schools. They have screens everywhere; they teach maths with an app because have 35 kids per class and they don't want to pay the salary for a teacher's assistant. It's horrifying and I can tell that although my nieces can manipulate the numbers OK, they have trouble applying basic arithmetic to the real world.
I send my kids to a Waldorf school. I am aware that there is a lot of bullshit in Waldorf schools, but my kids learn about biology by taking care of the schools's sheep and planting out the school's garden. I can tell that they have a much easier time of connecting what they learn with the world around them, and it seems to stick longer and better.
The approach is better for your kids is a hard call; all schooling philosophies have strengths and weaknesses. But the simple fact is that you can access alternative education for a fairly small financial burden if you look around. The Waldorf school is 150 EUR per child per month, of which I have two. We moved houses to be closer to it. And I am pretty solidly middle class with an income of €40k a year.
So don't claim that putting your kids in contact with the real world is for elites; it simply is not so.
Seriously, why are we reading this? You have a random professor who's written nothing more than an editorial which, while it may sound like common sense, provides no evidence to back up his comments. This is not news.
Just another day in Paradise
Like it or not, the future of education is Virtual Reality. The better it gets, the more real the brain feels it is, and putting every kid in a headset will always be cheaper and more effective than constant field trips. Plus, the number of immersive environments and subjects that can be taught this way are endless.
My field is psychology, and the research being done backs up the statement that students learn as well, or better, in a virtual reality system compared to a typical classroom.
As such, *always* look for the politics in what he's saying not any empathy or altruism.
If you really want to understand what it was like for Vasco da Gama to voyage across the sea, you need a wooden ship, a cloth sail, and a couple years. Of *course* learning by doing is preferred. But we've agreed, out of necessity, that learning by reading is the next best thing. And digital text books improve the reading experience in every way. Mark Twain said "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." But he wasn't suggesting it.
You being amongst them. Now what?
And don't forget the brainwashing because with the animosity that you show it clearly worked.
Animosity? Where's the animosity? I believe you are projecting.
You were not trained to think, you were trained to let others think for you.
Right, the military doesn't train people to think, only a college education can do that. Except that's not true. In the military I was rewarded for showing my ability to interpret the data in front of me, think up solutions, and explain how I got those conclusions to my superiors. In college I had to come to the same conclusion as my professor, interpret the data the same as my professor, and I was rewarded with good grades not for thinking but for praising the thinking of the professor. The military runs on thinking better than the other guy, the other guy being the enemy on the battlefield or the other soldiers competing for a promotion. In college people aren't rewarded for thinking better than the professors. If someone thinks better than the professors then they get "rewarded" with poor grades.
I basic training the motto was "you will leave here smart or you will leave here strong". Those that showed they knew how to work smart, solve problems, and get stuff done, got a few more minutes to eat lunch or write letters home. Those that didn't think so clearly were out in the pit lifting logs over their heads.
In the Army I found people that were curious, and asked a lot of questions. In college I found a lot of students, and professors, that lacked curiosity. Rarely did students ask questions in class, even when the professor asked if anyone had questions. I'd ask the professor questions and it was obvious they lacked the curiosity to seek out more than what was in the textbook that was assigned. College seems to beat independent thinking out of people. I could tell a lot of professors didn't like the ROTC students and military veterans in class. Maybe it's because they asked too many questions.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Except the old way of doing things was book learning and not some sort of full body learning.
"you non-sequiter, immaterial, does not matter cum splat!"
"You shouldn't swear, makes you look less intelligent"
Avoiding swearing doesn't seem to do that much in the way of avoidance.
"FUCK YOU!"
Which you apparently can't accomplish yourself anyway.
"it's obvious" DOESN'T CUT IT, when you're debating a controversial topic
This is exactly correct because it's not just a controversial topic it is also a highly complex topic. For example, it is extremely "obvious" to me that my son is far more engaged in front of a screen learning to program than he was going around several European cities on holiday this summer. So, going on this idiot's logic this clearly means that I must conclude that all students, everywhere are better off learning in front of a screen. If you also like the utterly wrong appeal to authority I'm a full professor of a real science.
However, as a real scientist, I know that without data on many different students my observation of one student is irrelevant for determining education policy for everyone. Not only that but, unlike say electrons people do not always respond in the same way towards any one stimulus. My son loves computers and learning from a screen works well for him. My daughter does not and she definitely benefits more from non-screen learning.
I would have expected that a vaulted associate professor of "political science" would both be politically and scientifically aware enough to know you need data to back up any argument and that people are complex and a variety of approaches is needed to get the best from everyone.
So let's put little Johnny behind the wheel of that SUV, I'm pretty sure driving is more sensible for him than watching a destruction derby on the screen.
You think that's bad? I'm a physics prof and with this idiot's policies teaching nuclear criticality is one lecture that sure to go off with a bang!
I teach Calculus, Upper Math, and Physics at one of the top high schools in China. I can anecdotally say that I agree with the author. We have a lot of bright students who may have been able to grok low end material before they hit my classes, they are used to just looking at the book and getting it. Not many can do that in Calc or Physics. I continually have to remind them to get their pencils out and actually actively learn. The ones that do perform better, pretty much universally.
I am not tech averse, I just don't think tech is the panacea that it is made out to be in University Ed. departments, in North America anyways.
Everything a child needs to learn and practise in the first 3-4 years of elementary school is:
- sports
- music
- maths
- literacy
"Why sir, you can talk and you can write! You can connect to any person from any background" -- I hear that often from all who know me (confirmed by a whole battery of assessments at work). Well, some of those predispositions/talents seem to be genetics (the IQ for example), but then how did I spend my childhood and teenage years?
Easy --> every single minute of free time (of which you have tons) was divided equally between reading fiction and playing with peers (study did not concern me since my father had done such a great job before my school years so that I could go directly in 4th grade, which I did not for social reasons). I had more than 1000 volumes of fiction, including serious stuff like World classics (emphasis on Russian writers, due to politics); even stuff like 1984, which was forbidden book under communism, under me belt before turning 16 and I had often spent 6-12 hrs per day socializing with peers. During vacations in the countryside the kids gang (of which I was the leader) gathered around 8 AM and disbanded around 10PM, sometimes after midnight.
No TV, no PC, no electronic games, not even board games. No comic books (that was a pity; most of those are quite serious and interesting artform), no Superhero movies or cartoons. The hot Sci-Fi show was Blake's seven (no Trek), we had the silly laser pistols made of cardboard. Played with mud, literally, building castles and waging wars...going fishing to the river, playing football, hide-and-seek, cycling "undercover" for 20 km to visit another village against the explicit ban from our parents and so on....
You know what --> within those years, with those kids we experienced just about any social situation you can imagine, multiple times, and we dealt with it without the parents. We did not run for help crying because someone feelings were hurt....When the hormones hit the whole boys-girls dynamic played out. We had the rude, sexists boys which were put in line by the rest of us; we had the jealousy between the girls for the cool boys, we had the first conversations about sex (we had all secretly read the one medical book about sex that every household had at the time) and so on....
And of course there were the endless conversations about stuff from life in general. We talked about science and engineering, about what we have read in books and magazines, I assure you. Often we asked the dads to give tips....to show us the engine of a car, or how to make electrical installation at home, how to make concrete (the dads will ask for help anyway to teach us responsibility and discipline). The grandmothers thought us cooking and gardening, the grandfathers to care for animals and crops. One neighbour is a train driver and will tell us all about it, another is carpenter, another is a farmer and so on....
What I childhood I had, behind the wall, poor as dirt...and it was wonderful!
I am happy to report that all of us are now responsible adults and without exception we are regarded as socially adept and capable individuals!
And yet I know pilots and most of them have never even played a flight sim.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I was one of the care people for an Alzheimer's person. I worked for just a few months. Others worked for years.
One of things I did was take this person for long drives...in the living world. This 80+ year old otherwise frail person would lean forward the whole trip (holding on to the grab bar in my truck).
After I left, for months, this Alzheimer's person would ask the other staff about me. They never asked about anyone else.
This Alzheimer's person clearly learned the best out in nature. They even managed to overcome their own Alzheimer's condition.
The point is not "Who has a horse?" The point is that some experiences mean one heck of a lot more than others. Good teachers know this. They try hard to be enthusiastic...not because enthusiasm fuses thoughts to brain cells, but because when people are enthused, stimulated "in the living world", etc. they open themselves up to other levels of learning.
I come here for the love
I am sick and tired of this claim being made endlessly without any evidence. As a parent and a person who grew up on a computer, I fail to see how its worse than books. In many cases, it's better than books because it allows two-way engagement that books. Sounds like a bunch of Luddites.
Neither the author nor anyone he cites has a background in child psychology, development psychology, neuroscience, or education. He also fails to cite any research supporting his claims. He does cite a few tangential pieces of philosophy, but that doesn't demonstrate any facts in support of his argument.
While he seems to have some credentials relevant to political philosophy, he sadly lacks any discernible expertise relevant to the topic of the article.
This is just another scarcely-informed opinion piece. We've got quite enough of those already. This is almost pointless: weak signal, mostly noise.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
that's the best informed manifesto beaconing humanity back to common sense that's grounded in the real physical environment.
Technology does change wetware, how it processes and enforces binary judgement at the expense of thinking outside the box. Its the best manifesto at the right moment.
I can't think of any quality private schools in the US for $150 a month.
The big story here is the continuing reluctance of the public to support effective, quality public schools for all. The push for technology has more to do with its low cost, not with effectiveness.
TFA is utterly stupid for multiple reasons. Doing something physical that relies on learning physical techniques is not the same as doing something mental that relies on learning mental processes.
You may not be able to use a computer to learn to ride a horse, that doesn't mean you are unable to do it to learn to solve differential equations.
I hope there's more to the thinking that the drivel put forward in the summary. Equating the learning of physical techniques, teach of muscle memory and movement is not the same thing getting an education.
You may not be able to learn to ride a horse on a computer, but you'll likely do just fine learning to solve differential equations and when to use who vs whom. Last I checked Mr Gates and the Zuck were not teaching people to play tennis via their tablets.
When was this? Because they were held to be really valuable during WWII, and Project Whirlwind, which started during the war and created among many things core memory and the idea of the minicomputer, began as a project to build a particularly flexible flight simulator for the Navy (the flexibility is what led to them to using a digital computer, and to develop a new class of them to drive it).
The derision for that Apple ad was in part because we didn't expect such K-12 education programs to show such variability, and the obvious issue that they simply can't simulate things in 3D (this was long before VR), which is something a flight simulator actually does in a manner identical to how it's experienced in a real cockpit, minus the effects of crashing, real G forces and the like of course.
How about will a kid benefit from playing Farmville, or from actually getting their hands dirty?
Nobody considers Farmville to be educational, and nobody is advocating it as an alternative to gardening. So that is a silly example.
Computers are used as an alternative to books and classroom lectures. That is what they should be compared to.
Sure, kids often learn better by doing, rather than watching/reading, but that is an argument against books as much as an argument against computers. Saying "computers are bad" is as meaningless as saying "books are bad".
If "doing" was always superior to reading and online-learning, then the illiterate would be the kings.
You must be kidding. Your definition of "smart" is quite different from what normal people mean by "smart". You aren't smart if you know how to read a map and march from point A to B.
Is a kid likely to learn better from a computer or a book? I
Bah, none of them, at least before 12. Read Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile. People seem to take more than 250 years to understand the obvious.
... roughly 20 years ago. "Silicon Snake Oil" is the book iirc. Good opinionated read. I mostly agree with a solid amount of scepticism concerning media technology in the class room. The raspberry pi is the most of computing that I would let into a classroom. And only with CLI centric/coding lessons. And if we're honest, the raspberry pi is quite a lot.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Isn't that the point of a modern college education? Combine the arts and the sciences?
I was looking into going back to college and found a school near me with a software engineering program. I suspect it's like a lot of schools where such a discipline is coordinated between the engineering and CS/mathematics departments. I could take the same degree under the engineering department or the liberal arts department. In either case I'd be required to take math, statistics, lots of programming, and engineering fundamentals. I'd also have to take some physics, chemistry, and have to choose some physical science electives. Then comes things like literature, rhetoric, speech, and a foreign language. There's a requirement for a "performance art", like interpretive dance or playing some musical instrument. I'd have to take courses on history, "diversity" (whatever that means this week), and philosophy.
If I'm reading the curriculum requirements correctly the only difference between the two departments is that under the engineering degree program I'd have to take two courses in engineering while in the liberal arts degree program I'd take two courses in humanities instead. Either way no one could complete this in four years without carrying in credit for foreign languages from high school and taking enough math in high school to jump right in to calculus in their first year. I guess the coursework could be made up over the summers to still graduate in four years but that would require careful planning as well, because courses offered in the summer are limited.
If I go this route then I guess I'll be able to program a computer, play a piano, and write a sonnet in French.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You mean, several hundred thousand years of hominid evolution in the natural world, wasn't a key indicator?
We've only had 'screen-learning', what, a few decades at most? Sure. That's clearly the better environment.... /s
Hominids have also relied solely on their legs for transportation for several hundreds of thousands of years. We've only had horses and camels for a few millennia, steam-powered trains for a couple of centuries, cars for just over a century and jet airplanes for a few decades... so surely using only legs to get around is better.
Everything has pros and cons, and the only way to figure out what is better is to actually try it and observe the results. Arguing that X is better just because it's what humans have done for a long time is just stupid. In some cases it might be true, but counterexamples abound.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, for those of you that grew up playing outside until street lights came on will definitely appreciate it.
Learn the alphabet song, play with letter-shaped objects, match words to pictures and objects, and use paper books.
Get out pencil and paper and practice.
Count objects, merge and separate sets of physical objects, and, again, get out pencil and paper and practice.
Hands-on exploration of the world and basic science experiments.
Well since you asked; my kid has a couple of horses, we live on a farm, my kid works and trains at our horse trainer's barn, my kid is involved in several equestrian activities / events / teams, we had a sleep over for a couple of horse team members this weekend at our farm, my kid plans to go Friday to the Lexington Kentucky Horse Park ...
There are affordable equine options available for city dwellers and suburban folks, you don't need to live on a farm, or own a horse, you don't need to be wealthy.
We have volunteered at some equine based therapy centers, they use horses to help all sorts of people in need, it's really rewarding.
"There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse" Winston Churchill
You must be kidding. Your definition of "smart" is quite different from what normal people mean by "smart".
That's quite possible I define "smart" differently than "normal people".
You aren't smart if you know how to read a map and march from point A to B.
And yet I get surprised all the time on how many "smart" people can't read a map and march (or walk, drive, bike, or whatever) from point A to point B.
If you think that all it takes to be successful in a modern military is to be able to read a map and march then you have no idea.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Why UNIX?
Nicholas Tampio, associate professor of political science
Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg
You know the big thing missing from debates on how to best educate children?
People who actually know anything about educating children.
Instead of turning to an associate professor of political science, how about we turn to someone with a PHD in early childhood development? Or young childhood education?
You know, turning to someone who actually knows what they are talking about instead of someone spouting off their personal opinion with a fancy-sounding but irrelevant title.
On the other hand, it is still a good idea to spend some time walking. We've evolved to walk, not sit and generally people who spend some time walking are healthier and live longer.
One nice thing now is that we can drive to interesting places to walk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I guess it is that whole Rubes to Pesos exchange stuff takes time? Maybe Deutscha Bank can offer a better exchange rate?
From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Regardless of the ACs very poor communication skills, he or she is right that both are good, especially combined well. In a proper blend they compliment each other.
My four year old daughter is really into planetary astronomy right now. Saturn is her favorite planet, and she's really into the dwarf planets - Pluto, Makemake, etc.
We can go outside and see Saturn as a point of light in the sky. She enjoys that and learns something. Through our $400 telescope, she can just see the rings, which look like one big ring in that scope. She has fun and learns from that, but she really wants to see more. To see the distinct rings, we a screen. We load up Cassini images on her iPad so she can see detail of Saturn, it's moons and rings. The video tells her the names of Saturn's largest moons, and what they are made of.
It's a blend that's best. Similarly, we weren't made with five sense so that we could choose just one. We continously blend input from all five of senses for the best experience and learning. The internet is like a sixth sense to be blended with the other five. My daughter has looked in the telescope and seen a door of light near Jupiter. "That's Titan, the biggest moon", she said "no wait, Titan is Saturn's biggest moon", she corrects herself. Again, she just turned four.
She can't see the Keiper belt objects, but she can tell you about them because she enjoys learning about them on her iPad.
That's definitely not to say she should stare at a screen all day and never see or touch anything in real life, and also models. She enjoyed when I pointed a flashlight at her globe so she can really understand how day and night happen. She was excited when I put the flashlight behind the plastic drain pipe under the sink so she could see the water flowing down through the pipe.
She enjoys see a butterfly in the yard - and then studying super close-up pictures of butterflies on her iPad. That's the blended learning that works best, according to the studies I've seen and the obvious learning my four year old is doing.
The comparison isn't between computers and books -- it's between computers/books and face to face learning. The media just facilitates one-to-many styles of information dissemination. If classrooms shrunk from one teacher with 30 students down to a 1:1 personal tutor model, and all media were eliminated for face to face working in a totally personal way then wouldn't quality of education increase immensely?
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
How would walking turn you to poverty? I choose to not use the car, I have a healthier lifestyle as a result. Please explain.
Why UNIX?
From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
How would walking turn you to poverty?
Motorized vehicles are essential to our economy. There's no way to conduct the large-scale trade that underpins our wealth without using them. And there's absolutely no way to do it with purely human power (no four-legs -- domesticated beasts of burden dramatically increased human productivity).
I choose to not use the car, I have a healthier lifestyle as a result. Please explain.
Now you've changed your argument from one about politics to one of personal health. Getting exercise is clearly good for you, sure. This can be done by walking or in any of many other ways, many of which are more time-efficient. I prefer rowing and cycling, myself, especially rowing because it's a whole-body activity.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
.. and it's not very impressive. This article says: ...the current status of the literature is that there is no evidence to support the use of Learning Styles in this way [matching instruction style to student learning style improves learning]. There are lots of links in the article to the underlying studies.
This is not exactly the same thing as screen-based vs. living-world-based learning, but it does support the idea that statements like "Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world" without supporting studies are not helpful.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Yes, tactile books, because they print Braille along the page edges which imparts important subliminal messages as the unwary child flips though the pages.
It's amazing how much nuance subliminal Braille can communicate with a limited vocabulary of family members (your mother, your father, your sister, your brother), a few sexual acts, some poo words, one or two items of military apparel, and the ubiquitous "hot lead".
On the other side of this, it is actually true that the visual system programs its object model in the first years of life by correlation through the tactile system.
That said, by age nine, the printed world should start to open up whole new worlds, entirely on its own. Even without the supplemental playground Braille.
VR for every student!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Don't forget summer school. This was a standard thing when I was growing up.
In the military I was rewarded for showing my ability to interpret the data in front of me, think up solutions, and explain how I got those conclusions to my superiors.
Same here.
It was a synthesis of "obey orders, follow instructions" and "think on your feet".
Some specialties gave you months of theory before you even got to execute any instructions. So you would have a background, and the necessary knowledge to think and be "smart" about your job.
If you were following orders/instructions and something didn't seem to make sense, you were to stop, put things in a safe condition, and run it up the chain of command. Preferably with an intelligent assessment of what was going on and possible courses of action.
and yes for the snarkist it is technically misspelled
with water resistant/wireless tech there is no reason that children could not be taught OUTSIDE in a garden setting (of course have a normal classroom for when it is too wet, cold, or hot to be safe).
as long as its "just dirt" its not a tragic thing for a kid to get muddy
How much math will a kid learn by digging in the garden vs how much math will a kid learn by playing math training games on a computer?
The comparison is a bit unfair but my point is that the best method depends on the skill you want to teach. Many school subjects are non physical (reading, writing, math) and there may be no practical way of teaching them "hands on" anyway.
A more fair comparison would be spelling in a computer game vs a physical textbook. If the game is more fun and the student therefore spends more time with it, it might be more effective. Also, computers can adapt the difficulty to the student which is something teachers should do but seldom have time for.
Why bother with long headlines?
None for both.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
You are on the brink of disaster, not middle class. €40k a year?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Christian day schools are everywhere...you can attend at that rate but most would elect to attend more and pay more. Psst...they aren't really Christian.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The CHILDREN! Won't SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN???
From a political perspective, yes, 4 legs good, 2 legs better!
Not unless your political perspective is that we should turn the clock back two centuries and all live in what would now be considered abject poverty.
How would walking turn you to poverty?
Motorized vehicles are essential to our economy. There's no way to conduct the large-scale trade that underpins our wealth without using them. And there's absolutely no way to do it with purely human power (no four-legs -- domesticated beasts of burden dramatically increased human productivity).
Is money the only thing that you consider? Have you questioned if every single journey you make in a car is a car-only trip? Could you not use legs instead and try and save some fuel? The economy could perhaps be more focused around cycling, perhaps, I've dropped far more money on cycling than driving in the last four/five years.
I choose to not use the car, I have a healthier lifestyle as a result. Please explain.
Now you've changed your argument from one about politics to one of personal health. Getting exercise is clearly good for you, sure. This can be done by walking or in any of many other ways, many of which are more time-efficient. I prefer rowing and cycling, myself, especially rowing because it's a whole-body activity.
It was never a political argument, it was a reference to the book "Animal Farm".
Why UNIX?
Is money the only thing that you consider?
I didn't say anything about money. I said "our economy", meaning the goods and services produced, moved and consumed. If you like eating, staying warm (or cool, depending), and being able to buy things you need or want, you depend on motorized transport.
It was never a political argument, it was a reference to the book "Animal Farm".
I didn't catch the allusion and just took the words literally -- "from a political perspective".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
How will children and humanity evolve if we force the old ways of learning onto them?