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'Beware Silicon Valley's Gifts To Our Schools' (nationalreview.com)
schwit1 shares a National Review report: After three years, there is no proof that Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's infiltration of the classroom is producing actual academic improvement and results. Take Facebook's efforts for an example. The company -- under fire for privacy breaches worldwide -- is peddling something called "Summit Learning," a web-based curriculum bankrolled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Last month, students in New York City schools walked out in protest of the program. "It's annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long," freshman Mitchel Storman, 14, told the New York Post. He spends close to five hours a day on Summit classes in algebra, biology, English, world history, and physics. Teacher interaction is minimal. "You have to teach yourself," Storman rightly complained. No outside research supports any claim that Summit Learning actually enhances, um, learning. What more studies are showing, however, is that endless hours of screen time are turning kids into zombies who are more easily distracted, less happy, less socially adept, and less physically fit. Standing up to the Silicon Valley Santas and asserting your family's "right to no" may well be the best long-term gift you can give your school-age children.
But seriously how's a bazillionaire with serious control issues and and a deeply programmed "liberal" identity going to self-sooth after a long day at the office, squeezing micro-dollars out of the metadata of the dessicated souls of billions of Facebook screen zombies?
Answer: help poor "inner city" folk get a better education, with expensive apps he paid for all by his wittle self.
Awwwww.
Not only did you pen one of the most opinionated pieces of "journalism" ever, but you used a filler-word, um, in a formal written document.
People who use this phrase never show any, nor are worthy of any.
What are all these wires? What the hell's a mouse? How do I windows?
So much bias it's like all I have is a right speaker.
———
In short, go back to journalism school.
In long, how about you title opinion pieces accordingly and not pretend they are in any way news. Also, go back to any school you attended and demand a refund, then learn how to write a formal document.
...
[Disclamier: I'm a developer born in 70-something who doesn't think children need the internet in their pockets]
My kids are 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. We've felt that 2 hours of screen time (Netflix, computer/console gaming, tablet usage) was a healthy upper limit per day. This idea was based on how my wife and I were raised during the 80's and 90's where most of our childhood was spent outdoors with friends. I know it's quaint these days, but it seemed to work for us; our kids can hold a real conversation with adults while maintaining eye contact, and despite fighting amongst themselves like cats and dogs, we are always complimented on how engaging and polite they are. Not a brag, just context. Maybe they're just good kids and us limiting screen time has nothing to do with it.
...but...
Now that the school has them on Chromebooks 3-5 hours per day during instruction time, then an additional 30-minutes of them just watching Youtube during Resource/Study Hall, then doing "homework" on the Chromebook for an hour at night...screen time has exploded from 2 hours per day to 6.5 hours per day.
They don't have smartphones (yet), but they are literally in the 1% of kids in their schools that don't have smartphones. I think beyond a reasonable amount like 2 hours, time that children spend looking at a screen is time they are not learning how to interact with the world with their senses. Some of their peers can't string 3 sentences together in a single conversation without drifting into looking at their phone or talking about what they saw on their phone.
I may be a minority even here, but I think the school (and these organizations) are doing a huge disservice to these kids...and for what, automated learning with built-in KPIs and a fatter bottom line?
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
TFA is just a smear piece that doesn't even pretend to present a balanced view.
From TFA: What more studies are showing, however, is that endless hours of screen time are turning kids into zombies.
Yet NONE of these "studies" are cited, and TFA does not give any scientific criteria for what constitutes a "zombie".
I have no idea if Zuck's program works or not, but TFA is garbage journalism that sheds no light. The editors at National Review should be ashamed of themselves for publishing it. They are better than that.
THOSE are your examples of "REAL life skills"?!? THOSE?
You could have said budgetting/banking, cooking, cleaning & tidying, critical thinking, running a business, taxes, knitting, job interviewing, public speaking, ethics, voting/government, life sciences (camping, fishing, etc), wood/metal/construction shop, electronics, etc.
All of which are far more useful and things most people run into everyday!