God, Are you there? It's me...
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious.
"Students should learn to read and write in school." I am happy to say that I did not learn to read or write in school. My parents and my sister taught me before I ever reached pre-school. Fact: The U.S. has the highest ADULT illiteracy rate among first-world countries. Maybe the education of generations past wasn't so great.
"The simple fact of the matter is that kids today are dumber than kids of yesterday and the Internet aint helping." Neither is overcrowding, malnutrition, or teachers being forced to teach subjects for which they are not trained. As my older sister is a high school teacher, I speak from first hand accounts. All the books in the world are useless if you don't have someone competent to teach a kid how to apply the knowledge.
The computer, foremost, is a tool. It can be a very effective teaching tool. Just as books, lectures and even field trips can be. It cannot and should not be thought of as a magical device capable of replacing any of these other methods. But, when used in schools it is more effective to have uncensored access to the Internet. Teaching kids what is bad, how to avoid it and how to deal with it is infinitely better than hiding it behind a marginally sufficient filter and pretending it doesn't exist.
I graduated during the Internet's infancy from a rural/suburban school district. As early a junior high there were kids doing drugs and girls getting pregnant. All we had was the Nintendo Entertainment System. An ignorant person is someone who allows him/herself to be ignorant. No "old school" educational system will change that.
Robot fighting started with Robot Wars in the UK back in 1995. I wish the shows would make it over here. They only have webcasts of a few previous events on their website. What I would really like to see is a BattleBots vs. Robot Wars smackdown. American Revolution Version 2.0.
"Extraordinary statements need extraordinary proof."
Fact: The District of Columbia has the toughest gun laws in the U.S., much stricter than most of the world also.
Fact: The District of Columbia has had the first or second highest per-capita murder rate for the past ten years. Combine that with one of the highest rates of overall violent crime.
Spankfish is absolutely right about the U.S. rate of incarceration. A closer look at those statistics show most prisoners are serving time for drug convictions not gun convictions.
"Those who would sacrfice liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
Slashdot Mirror
God, Are you there? It's me...
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious.
"Students should learn to read and write in school." I am happy to say that I did not learn to read or write in school. My parents and my sister taught me before I ever reached pre-school. Fact: The U.S. has the highest ADULT illiteracy rate among first-world countries. Maybe the education of generations past wasn't so great.
"The simple fact of the matter is that kids today are dumber than kids of yesterday and the Internet aint helping." Neither is overcrowding, malnutrition, or teachers being forced to teach subjects for which they are not trained. As my older sister is a high school teacher, I speak from first hand accounts. All the books in the world are useless if you don't have someone competent to teach a kid how to apply the knowledge.
The computer, foremost, is a tool. It can be a very effective teaching tool. Just as books, lectures and even field trips can be. It cannot and should not be thought of as a magical device capable of replacing any of these other methods. But, when used in schools it is more effective to have uncensored access to the Internet. Teaching kids what is bad, how to avoid it and how to deal with it is infinitely better than hiding it behind a marginally sufficient filter and pretending it doesn't exist.
I graduated during the Internet's infancy from a rural/suburban school district. As early a junior high there were kids doing drugs and girls getting pregnant. All we had was the Nintendo Entertainment System. An ignorant person is someone who allows him/herself to be ignorant. No "old school" educational system will change that.
Robot fighting started with Robot Wars in the UK back in 1995. I wish the shows would make it over here. They only have webcasts of a few previous events on their website. What I would really like to see is a BattleBots vs. Robot Wars smackdown. American Revolution Version 2.0.
"Extraordinary statements need extraordinary proof."
Fact: The District of Columbia has the toughest gun laws in the U.S., much stricter than most of the world also.
Fact: The District of Columbia has had the first or second highest per-capita murder rate for the past ten years. Combine that with one of the highest rates of overall violent crime.
Spankfish is absolutely right about the U.S. rate of incarceration. A closer look at those statistics show most prisoners are serving time for drug convictions not gun convictions.
"Those who would sacrfice liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin