[HN Gopher] Where Educational Technology Fails: A seventh-grader...
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Where Educational Technology Fails: A seventh-grader's perspective
Author : subdomain
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-11-16 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (micahblachman.beehiiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (micahblachman.beehiiv.com)
| mjevans wrote:
| Maybe work should be put into make the curriculum more engaging
| so that it's less drudgery and boring work and more rewarding.
|
| A practical example of this from fitness is turning exercise into
| a sport.
| Razengan wrote:
| Early school should be like a game onboarding tutorial for this
| world:
|
| "You are a human."
|
| "You are on this planet."
|
| "This is what this world is like."
|
| "This is what humans have made so far."
|
| "This is what's out there."
|
| and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their own
| goals instead of just funneling them into the endless
| capitalist churn.
| analog31 wrote:
| "You are a human."
|
| "Here's the refrigerator."
|
| "Here's a cell phone."
| Razengan wrote:
| Of course, actually yes: Expose new humans to the latest
| technology right away, WHILE it's still awe-inspiring to
| them, before it become as routine as breathing, and explain
| how it's made, how we got there, and how life was before
| then.
|
| That'd be a much better way of teaching multiple subjects
| that are boring and irrelevant on their own.
|
| You're not supposed to have phones or computers in class
| but you're supposed to somehow be interested in the math
| and other sciences that make those things possible?
|
| You go home and your life there is much more entertaining
| than in school, but you have no idea how what you're being
| taught in school ties into the things at home.
| analog31 wrote:
| I don't think a way of teaching has been found, that
| doesn't require a willingness to be at least moderately
| bored, and that isn't to some extent disconnected from
| everyday life.
|
| Even using computers in class, which I endorse, involves
| acceptance that many of the uses will seem boring.
|
| Making everything as entertaining as commercial media is
| too much to ask.
| Razengan wrote:
| One just needs an exciting goal to reach, something to
| look forward to.
|
| For me for example, a lot of the work in developing the
| game is mundane boilerplate and looking up solutions to
| solved problems, but I can bear through it because I
| really want to play the game I'm trying to make.
|
| Education should optimize for finding such "goals" for
| each individual person, instead of just finding a "use"
| for each person to be put to, as another poster put it.
| LoFiSamurai wrote:
| Do you have kids? You're going straight to planets huh.
| Razengan wrote:
| No but I think I can still think like one and I can
| remember what would have gotten my interest back then
| before dropping out because video games were so much more
| interesting :')
|
| Before I realized this world is just as interesting, but
| school does everything to make you bored of it before you
| can explore it.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything is
| boring work. That even goes for the individual tasks.
| Found a good physics problem? Well, you might be excited
| about it but 95% of solving it is going to be thinking
| about assumptions and doing rote mathematical
| manipulations. You are likely to get sick of it before
| even getting to any answer, much less the right one.
| There are also many important/useful fields that are not
| very interesting.
|
| In a sense, the most important thing school does is to
| build up within students a tolerance of boredom and an
| appreciation of the fact that most work is potentially
| boring.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything
| is boring work._
|
| You can plow through boring work if the end goal is
| exciting. For example, when developing a game that you
| yourself want to play :)
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Most people are not like that. Even playing video games
| will be boring, if it's your JOB. Much more so if you
| need to do hundreds of hours of cerebral work to get to
| the point where you can have a little fun lol...
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Most people are not like that._
|
| Not that most people like games, but everyone has their
| own goal, even if they haven't discovered them yet, even
| if it's just to chill in a nice place and do nothing all
| day, they can still find better ways to be lazy! (build
| better furniture, explore the search for the ideal
| climate etc.)
|
| What is with all this defeatist give-up-by-default
| attitude? There's NO fucking way that the current common
| system of human education, which has been pretty much the
| same for hundreds of years, is perfect.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| I'm just being real. If admitting that life is a hell of
| a lot of work makes me defeatist, so be it. The current
| system of human education is "only" several hundred years
| old, but that is long enough to see what works and what
| doesn't for the most part. What sure as hell doesn't work
| to reach success and provide for society is to loaf
| around aimlessly as if we don't know what skills are
| useful for modern life.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| "This is what the world is like" is a full education in
| itself.
| Razengan wrote:
| Again, it doesn't have to be an info dump, like how
| education is now and has forever been, just reciting rote
| explanations to questions nobody (at that age) asks.
|
| Just enough to get you hooked into the "game" you've just
| spawned into.
| nemomarx wrote:
| does this ever work in tutorials in games? People skip
| the explanations and then complain later that they're
| confused or didn't know x and y feature existed.
|
| We already have people say they wish they'd learned how
| to do their taxes or balance budgets - imagine what 12
| year olds might think is uninteresting that comes up
| later, right?
| Razengan wrote:
| In the last 20 years or so, how much of the knowledge
| that we know and use in life is from what we learned in
| school (and remember) versus looking it up on the
| internet or asking someone only during the moment we need
| that knowledge?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Grammar and reading comprehension are important and can be
| enjoyable or at least unlock the enjoyment of understanding
| literature ...but I seriously doubt a 10 year old is going to
| think to take a class in it on their own.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| >and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their
| own goals instead of just funneling them into the endless
| capitalist churn.
|
| This "capitalist churn" is how we get things done for
| society. While some exploration makes sense, the vast
| majority of people are not gifted in the arts or endowed with
| genius. They must be prepared for life with basic skills that
| can be put to good use. Even under communist "utopian"
| regimes, children are forced to do basically the same stuff
| they do under capitalist regimes, because people and their
| needs are the same under both.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "You are a human."
|
| "You are on this planet."
|
| "This is what this world is like."
|
| "This is what humans have made so far."
|
| "This is what's out there."
|
| That's basically what school is. Many of these topics can't
| be explained in reasonable detail and complexity until after
| 10 years old.
| analog31 wrote:
| Just have overworked teachers with minimal tech savvy compete
| for engagement with trillion dollar companies that employ
| armies of psychologists and programmers, and who have popular
| momentum on their side. Have them do this without turning into
| the industry they're competing with.
|
| I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my concerts
| if I just come up with material that's more engaging than
| Taylor Swift.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my
| concerts if I just come up with material that's more engaging
| than Taylor Swift.
|
| Even without knowing anything about your music, I'm 98 %
| certain that I would prefer to go to your concert than to a
| Taylor Swift concert. :-)
| antonvs wrote:
| The key part that wasn't mentioned is "...more engaging to
| a mass audience."
| clickety_clack wrote:
| The tough thing is probably trying to make it Type 2 fun, where
| hard work leads to rewards rather than Type 1 fun that's
| basically just entertainment. Ultimately, learning something
| new is always kind of painful, and learning to push through
| that pain is in itself a key lesson you have to learn for adult
| life.
| card_zero wrote:
| No. Fun is learning. You've just internalized an ugly
| perspective.
| mindslight wrote:
| So are you saying that binge watching a TV series is just
| as educational as learning a new programming language?
| graemep wrote:
| No, but learning a new programming language can be more
| fun than watching a TV series.
|
| This forum has plenty of past comments from people who
| have learned a programming language for fun when they
| could have spent that time watching a TV series.
| card_zero wrote:
| Exactly! Also, depending on the person, in fact _yes._
| mindslight wrote:
| "Learning is fun" for the right type of person is a far
| cry from an assertion of "fun is learning" that implies
| whenever someone is having fun, they're learning. The
| point is that getting to a place where learning a new
| programming language is fun requires developing a lot of
| skill and willpower, which can easily be short circuited
| by things that are fun but _not_ learning.
| card_zero wrote:
| Willpower - or not. Some of us learned languages
| unhesitatingly, with delight. So what? Do the other
| people have to take part too?
|
| (Actually I remember hating C when I got to the part of
| K&R about pointers. I threw the book across the room. I
| hated it for about 12 hours. Then I woke up the next
| morning and was all like "pointers are brilliant", it was
| weird.)
|
| I guess you can guide people into a subject, assuring
| them the whole way through that the subject is probably
| going to get enjoyable, and in the meantime making the
| experience enjoyable through social effects and
| entertainment - _while allowing them freedom to back out
| if in fact you 're boring them._ But that doesn't demand
| their willpower. It hinges on their interest.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _Do the other people have to take part too?_
|
| Yes?
|
| It's great that learning things was fun for you. I'm
| there with you myself. I had amazing lucid dreams the
| night after I learned Ocaml...
|
| But this entire thread is about teaching children, many
| of whom need guidance, support, and unfortunately
| sometimes control to mitigate their attraction to easy-
| but-unhealthy activities.
|
| Not everyone is going to be a programmer. But even if
| we're talking about structuring learning such that it's
| compelling on its own, then we're kind of assuming
| everyone is going to have a calling and also find it
| relatively young. That feels pretty naive.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes, "learning is fun" does not imply "fun is learning".
| I agree the latter is not always true so I would strongly
| disagree with "all fun is learning".
|
| What I would say that there are enough fun things that
| provide learning that kids (especially younger ones - its
| difference once exams and qualifications start looming)
| can learn primarily through fun. Provide the environment
| and guidance and encouragement. Think about how many fun
| things kids do is learning. Playing games, making things,
| drawing. The TV series might be a documentary or produced
| by a different culture or be based on a book that is
| worth reading, or may be of cultural value in its own
| right. It may create an opportunity to talk to children
| about related topics (I am very much a fan of
| "conversational learning").
|
| > The point is that getting to a place where learning a
| new programming language is fun requires developing a lot
| of skill and willpower
|
| I am old enough that I learned because my parents bought
| me what was then called a "home computer" and it was fun
| to learn programming. I did not have much skill or will
| power at that point (I would have been about 10).
|
| More generally, children can learn a lot without skill
| and will power. It needs opportunities and guidance and
| encouragement. I agree that sticking kids in front of a
| TV or giving them a tablet with a bunch of simplistic
| games will mean they do not learn.
| graemep wrote:
| I agree, Learning is fun. It becomes something you need to
| push through because a bad educational system destroyed the
| fun.
|
| Its sometimes necessary to learn some thing that are not
| fun, buts is exceptional, especially for children.
| card_zero wrote:
| I don't think that's even real learning. But that's a
| slightly offensive thing to say to diligent swots, I
| guess. Well done swots, have a gold star anyway.
| graemep wrote:
| I think it can be real learning, but it often is not.
|
| You made me laugh anyway.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| First of all, you are saying I think learning should not be
| fun at all, when I am actually saying that learning is type
| 2 fun, and people need to learn how to do that to be happy,
| fulfilled adults.
|
| Second, in refuting me, it seems you are stating that
| learning should be Type 1 fun, which I totally disagree
| with. You are severely limiting your potential if you only
| do things that are entertaining. And not just in an
| accidental way: you are also setting yourself up for a life
| in which you follow the things that are made to be
| entertaining for you, by advertisers or whoever else thinks
| they can gain by leading you along.
|
| I enjoy learning new things, I've learned new languages,
| musical instruments, and I've switched careers a couple of
| times which has led to all kinds of new things I had to
| learn to do. The fact is, that the real fun happens after
| mastery, and after a brief "this is cool" bump where you
| bang a drum for a couple of minutes on the beach or
| whatever, there is a long period of practice where you
| pretty much have to put in the work before you can get to
| that fun flow state of mastery.
| card_zero wrote:
| Well, I just ignored the whole thing about type 1 and
| type 2 fun. I guess type 2 is something about being
| patient. Thing is, though, if it's actually fun, it's not
| painful, and if it _is_ painful, it 's not necessary as
| part of learning, and isn't helping.
|
| I suppose we often have to do painful things to maintain
| stability, or advance, and indirectly therefore they're
| necessary as part of a strategy to continue learning.
| Like, I don't know, work a terrible job to pay the rent.
| But that's indirect, not intrinsic to learning, so those
| things don't count.
| card_zero wrote:
| _Less_ drudgery and boring work? How about _not_ drudgery and
| _not_ boring. To accomplish this the thing has to be optional,
| and it has to be freely chosen. No amount of window dressing on
| a thing you 're forced to do makes it truly fun. But that's not
| possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated,
| and so we get endless "make learning fun!" crap on top of
| compulsory drudgery.
| jacknews wrote:
| Life is not all fun. You need to learn how to buckle up and
| just get it done.
| card_zero wrote:
| "Life" seems to be a codeword for _other people being
| obstructive._ It 's sadly true, you end up learning to be
| pragmatic and defeated.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 'Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being
| obstructive.'
|
| If one chooses the modern life, then they're stuck within
| the constraints of society. You could be nearly self
| sufficient, but that would be even more difficult.
| hereme888 wrote:
| But school is 13 years of mostly boring, stressful and
| irrelevant learning. What adult on earth would willingly
| take up that sort of work? None except the small percent of
| academically-oriented personalities.
|
| Teacher: "today we're going to learn about the three types
| of rocks, and the quadratic equation."
|
| Student: "what for? I've never seen an adult discuss or use
| that in real life."
|
| Teacher: "you might need it some day, and its part of the
| curriculum."
| gf000 wrote:
| Well, (some?) humans have inherent curiosity about how to
| world operates, see all the litany of questions small
| children have.
|
| Education should attempt to somehow tap into that as a
| core motivation, though that will surely not be enough or
| good for everyone.
|
| But learning is work, and there is no way around that.
| card_zero wrote:
| Is work fun?
| gf000 wrote:
| Can be. Working hard for something and achieving it can
| be a great source of fun, and many people chase it.
| hereme888 wrote:
| I estimate more than 50% of people have an aversion to
| learning because of their school experience.
|
| True learning, and curiosity-driven learning, boosts
| dopamine, hence most learning in modern society should be
| inherently "pleasurable". Of course this excludes hard
| lessons we have to learn through painful experiences.
|
| Even really difficult learning, like at the Masters - phD
| level, the painful parts of learning should constitute a
| small percent of the person's overall learning.
|
| Children are often accused of being unmotivated or lazy,
| but these are usually accusations from boring adults who
| can't see the magnitude of their error. A child will
| focus on a video game for hours, even a difficult one,
| and will still remember the information a week later. But
| give a child a boring and pointless video game, with no
| specific goal or accomplishment, and no one will play it.
| This is why the quadratic equation has become such a meme
| among "anti-schoolers". It's the epitome of pointlessness
| for the general population.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of
| work?"
|
| Probably most people. 6 hour days, lunch provided, recess
| with your friends, no real responsibilities. Sounds
| better than most jobs.
|
| Rocks are easy to turn into fun since they're physical
| things and you can go over knapping flint, etc.
| graemep wrote:
| Its not that hard to balance, but it takes individual
| attention. Learning is intrinsically fun and you need to
| avoid turning it into drudgery.
|
| I home educated by kids from about eight up to sixteen when
| they had done GCSEs (exams school kids in the UK do at 16). I
| very rarely had to force them to do anything, but I did have
| to make an effort to find the right approach to make things
| interesting.
|
| I think the solution is to let kids do what they choose but
| intervene if they are not learning at all. This takes
| judgement and knowing them as individuals.
|
| You could do it in schools if you have a very low student-
| teacher ratio (I say below 10 to 1 - so in the UK you would
| need about double the number of teachers in the state
| system), trusted teachers' judgement over metrics, and had
| more flexibility about learning to individual needs rather
| the prescribing exactly what kids need to learn at a
| particular age.
| foobarian wrote:
| > But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to
| possibly not be educated
|
| It's not not possible, but the problem is you'd end up with a
| majority uneducated populous who would decide that
| sacrificing goats and watering crops with Gatorade is the
| thing to do, and they would hang you if you disagreed
| card_zero wrote:
| I don't know. I'd like Mike Judge's opinion on this point.
| Does trapping people in a building and forcing them to
| stack up academic KPIs really make them less stupid? I
| suppose it keeps them away from superstition and hoaxes and
| scams. Maybe. Does it even help with that? It's probably
| the socialization that matters.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They already have tons interesting and gamified stuff in
| schools. Part of learning should also include how to tackle
| subjects you find boring. Discipline and perseverance are
| useful life skills that I think are increasingly disappearing.
| jacknews wrote:
| "teach kids how to use technology responsibly"
|
| OK
|
| I teach a code club. I try to get the students excited and
| focused, and especially on projects where they work together, it
| generally works really well, even for students who obviously
| aren't quite 'into it'.
|
| But at absolutely any opportunity where they are not focused (and
| there's always someone) they try to play roblox or other games.
| They try to have it running in the background and switch. And
| even installed a workspace switcher so it wasn't obvious they had
| game windows open.
|
| It's really like highly addictive drugs. For kids, at least, the
| best solution is to make them unavailable while they are supposed
| to be learning.
| card_zero wrote:
| This is because they like playing Roblox, and are getting
| something out of playing Roblox, and are not persuaded that
| your thing is more rewarding for them, and unless you can pull
| a miracle of engaging enthusiasm out of the bag _they 're
| right._
| jacknews wrote:
| So if they take crack cocaine instead of literature class,
| they're right too?
|
| Sorry, but learning is actually a slog. The best we can do is
| get them addicted to learning, instead of gaming, but let's
| help them on the way by removing the gaming temptation while
| they are in class.
| card_zero wrote:
| Learning is not a slog. Cramming for exams, that's a slog,
| but only tenuously relates to learning.
|
| OK, so sometimes a person may get all fired up about a
| project and slog through reams of - effort - in order to
| get some stage done, out of a deep desire to see what
| happens next. And from an external perspective that seems
| very worthy because it seems deeper than something that's
| just constantly rewarding. But is it necessary, proper,
| that any given person be doing such a deep and onerous
| thing all the time? Or even very often? Is it for the
| external observer, who knows nothing of the person's
| internal processes and feelings, to decide these things?
| Mind your own beeswax.
|
| Crack doesn't count, IMO, because it games the system.
| Probably now you'll say something to compare Roblox
| unironically to crack "because dopamine". Did you know, we
| get dopamine released when doing _anything we enjoy?_ But
| there 's always a lot of people ready to claim that
| electronic devices are literally addictive, because it's a
| trendy thing to say, and the pressure of this opinion is
| like a physical force, a great gaseous mass of idiots. I
| shouldn't have got involved with this conversation, I have
| important video games to play.
| graemep wrote:
| I very much agree that learning is not a slog, and its
| sad that people are educated in ways that leaves them
| believing that learning has to be a slog.
|
| Where I disagree with you is that I do think it is true
| that some things are addictive and are designed to be
| addictive (social media is), but its the things people do
| on devices that are addictive, not the devices
| themselves.
|
| I agree "dopamine release" is not a bad thing per se, but
| when businesses hire psychologists to figure out how to
| get people to spend more time on their app people are
| being manipulated in a disturbing way.
|
| Edit - inserted missing "not"
| card_zero wrote:
| > is a bad thing
|
| I'll take that as "is _not_ a bad thing. "
|
| One point about manipulative attempts to increase
| engagement is that they only have to apply statistically,
| that is, increase _total_ engagement. Another point is
| that people just enjoy doing dumb things to relax. It 's
| then offensive (to me, too!) that businesses exploit this
| to promote things. But it's not disturbing if somebody is
| really into, say, jigsaw puzzles. We don't claim
| Ravensburger is hacking people's brains with their
| carefully designed colorful and complex pictures that
| draw you in and keep you playing. That's because
| Ravensburger are not a bunch of sinister jerks, which is
| the real issue. But the brain-hacking capacity of
| infinite phone videos isn't any more real than that of
| the jigsaws.
| graemep wrote:
| I'll take that as "is not a bad thing."
|
| Yes, and I have now edited it. Thank you.
|
| > not a bunch of sinister jerks, which is the real issue.
|
| I agree with this.
|
| > But the brain-hacking capacity of infinite phone videos
| isn't any more real than that of the jigsaws.
|
| I am not sure about this, and I am convinced that some
| things (e.g. social media) do have greater brain-hacking
| capacity.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Some learning is a slog. We have to go through it because
| it's required to understand the thing we really want to
| learn about. And we don't appreciate that until we're on
| the other side. The teacher/professor can say "you need
| to understand this, even though it's not obviously
| applicable yet, just trust me" and that is the part you
| have to slog through but you eventually see the point.
|
| Other stuff we slog through just because we've decided it
| makes a student well-rounded. I like reading fiction, but
| I never liked reading "literature" and then trying to
| write an analysis of it. It was absolutely a slog, and
| even 40 years later I cannot see that my life is any
| worse off because I never loved reading Homer or
| Shakespeare or Chaucer or Tolstoy.
| card_zero wrote:
| I recognize what you're talking about, from mathematics.
| But you're either being genuinely interested, in which
| case it's a delightful slog that you're keen on, or else
| (more commonly) you're being perversely stubborn for
| external reasons like prestige. In the latter case it's a
| sort of perverse-learning that isn't really worthy of the
| name, and although it's somewhat more sophisticated than
| rote memorization, the understanding is shallow and
| short-lived. I used to hate mathematics, so I did six
| years of pure mathematics, and now I really hate it.
|
| I was reading parts of the Iliad for fun recently, on the
| other hand, because somebody had asked a question, and I
| enjoy slogging through dense texts to find obscure facts.
| It's horribly written because names are frequently
| oblique, like "the old one" or "son of ..." instead of an
| actual name, and everybody talks in flowery speeches.
| Shakespeare suffers from the flowery speeches thing too.
| Beowulf is also tedious to read because of all the
| kennings (talking in riddles). Chaucer on the other hand
| is sometimes dirty and amusing. Tolstoy, never tried.
| Gilgamesh, though, is well-written, fast-paced and highly
| entertaining, I reckon literature should probably have
| stopped there, all the authors after that were just
| derivative hacks.
|
| But in summary it depends what you're into.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Offline-first teaching! Let them only be able to read docs
| available to them
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This is now going on in college. I was just hearing from a
| professor the other day that it's impossible to keep students
| off of social media. They cannot sit for a 50 minute lecture
| without pulling out their phones (that's if they even
| physically come to class; if they're online, they are half-
| listening at best).
|
| These are now the COVID lockdown and post-pandemic kids. They
| come in to college unprepared/lacking mastery of prerequisites,
| don't listen in class, they don't come to office hours, they
| don't do their homework (or try to have ChatGPT do it) and get
| upset when they fail.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The word your looking for is Discipline. The way to control
| babies and animals it to simply take it away from them. This is
| not the way to control twelve year olds.
| Retric wrote:
| That's a strategy doomed to failure.
|
| 12 year old kids are still developing the brain structures to
| be able to handle discipline. Meanwhile a large fraction of
| adults are failing to do what you're expecting a 12 year old to
| get right.
|
| When you look around and everyone is suddenly overweight and
| addicted to their phones humans didn't suddenly lose willpower,
| their environment changed.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Sure but in less than 6 years your 12 year old is a complete
| adult. You must give them the gift of Adult discipline in
| that short period of time.
|
| Without that you will get the result in your final sentence.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| I would argue that 18 is not a complete adult just one
| defined legally as an adult by our legal system. I would
| argue that the definition of complete adult is relatively
| arbitrary and mostly cultural.
|
| "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
| invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building,
| write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
| comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
| alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
| manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
| efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
|
| -- Robert A. Heinlein
| graemep wrote:
| I agree that an 18 year old is not fully developed, but
| they have to be able to make sensible decisions by the
| time they are legally an adult, because you have no means
| of stopping them any more. At the very least enough sense
| to know when they need to ask for advice.
|
| Heinlein is right in principle but its a big ask. can do
| quite a bit of that list, but I have never butchered a
| hog or conned a ship or planned an invasion. I am pretty
| sure I could pitch manure but finding out whether you can
| die gallantly is likely to be the last thing you find
| out.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| I knew as soon as I read this that you are a parent.
| graemep wrote:
| I am, and one of my daughters is 22 and the other 17 so I
| have seen a lot of the process of growing up.
| danaris wrote:
| Specialization is for _societies_.
|
| No human has the capability to learn to do all the things
| necessary to sustain a modern technological lifestyle
| solo, with the limited time we have on this planet. At
| best, someone who's wealthy enough not to have to do all
| the boring, time-consuming parts might be able to learn a
| decent subset.
|
| Heinlein's purported philosophy fits very well with the
| all-too-American "rugged individualist" perspective that
| every person should be completely self-sufficient, but it
| doesn't actually hold up if you study psychology,
| sociology, or history.
|
| It is, perhaps, also relevant that this quote is from the
| book "Time Enough for Love", whose main character,
| Lazarus Long, has been alive for many centuries.
| jv22222 wrote:
| > in less than 6 years your 12 year old is a complete adult
|
| They really aren't. Brains are not close to being fully
| developed until the age of 25.
|
| The gift of "adult discipline" is quite a flawed idea.
| Depending on how far you take it, that's exactly the kind
| of thing that can create trauma, depression, low self
| esteem and perhaps worst can affect creativity self
| expression and just wanting to play.
|
| Play, undiscipline, rebelliousness, is exactly where the
| Apple Macintosh came from and so many other amazing
| technologies and ideas came from in the world.
|
| I'd say exactly the opposite, we need to find ways of
| removing discipline and conformity and extending play and
| self-expression into adult life for as long as possible as
| it is the foundation of so much goodness.
|
| That said, if your idea of "Adult discipline" is chock-o-
| block full of play and self-expression then I'm all ears.
| danaris wrote:
| > Brains are not close to being fully developed until the
| age of 25.
|
| Brains continue developing throughout our lifetimes.
|
| The study that _appeared_ to show them stopping
| development at 25 _did not have any participants older
| than 25_.
|
| It would be convenient to have a specific age we can
| point to where we can say " _now_ you 're fully adult!"
| based on biological factors, but I'm afraid we'll just
| have to use our flawed human judgement and draw imperfect
| lines.
|
| That said, it _is_ fairly well-understood when various of
| the structures and functions in the brain responsible for
| certain basic capacities (like discipline) first develop,
| on average.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The study that appeared to show them stopping
| development at 25 did not have any participants older
| than 25.
|
| Its not one study, its a multitude of studies of a
| different functions, and the popular conception about
| "brain development" not being full until the mid 20s is
| specifically about where multiple studies show the
| average peak in executive function occurs (with a slow
| decline after the peak, which obviously wouldn't be seen
| if it was only based on studies of younger people.)
|
| Other functions peak anywhere from a little earlier, to
| much later, to, in a few cases, continuing to develop
| without a discernible age-related peak.
| Retric wrote:
| The drinking age is 21 in the US 18 is not quite full
| adulthood, so 12 is still quite young. Even just 1 year is
| a big deal for kids, 6 years is a huge jump look at 0 vs 6
| vs 12 vs 18 and these are very different people.
|
| You see my last sentence when you don't change how our
| parents were raised. A 12 year old isn't ready to handle
| the full responsibility of a smartphone or grocery shopping
| etc, but that doesn't mean you can't introduce aspects of a
| smartphone.
| gf000 wrote:
| > Meanwhile a large fraction of adults are failing to do what
| you're expecting a 12 year old to get right.
|
| Is it not because they failed to learn it in there teenage
| years?
|
| My mother is a teacher and she noticed that kids that
| regularly do some kind of competitive sports tend to be much
| more hardworking in school, and it does extend to their
| university studies as well. Meanwhile "former gifted
| children" often experience the first year of university as a
| giant slap on the face, because they never learnt how to
| study, how to work hard for something, and being smart is
| often not enough at this level. Many can't even stand up from
| that hit.
|
| So this is absolutely a huge disservice to not teach children
| some sort of self-discipline, motivation is never enough,
| there will always be days when you don't have enough of the
| latter, and only the former could push you forward then.
| Retric wrote:
| I agree learning should happen, but you don't learn to
| drive a car by someone handing you the keys on day 1.
|
| Learning just about anything looks very different than
| handling the full responsibility of doing the thing
| correctly in your own. 'How to teach someone to use a
| cellphone' is a much better question than 'is 12 years old
| enough to be given one.'
| pessimizer wrote:
| There isn't any educational technology. There are (and have been,
| for decades, accomplishing nothing) a bunch of companies trying
| to come up with ways to exploit educational institutions to
| create revolving income streams and failing. Letting kids access
| the internet at school is just an admission of complete failure,
| being bad at blocking bad sites doesn't make that failure any
| worse.
|
| No phones, no internet at school. If you can't bring enough
| material into the building within books and teacher's brains to
| teach, you're terrible and pointless. Leave the screens to their
| software and programming classes.
|
| I'd say it will be a blessing when this debacle is replaced with
| AI, except the AI will also come from the revolving income stream
| guys, and will also have children's well-being as an
| afterthought. It will be the same failure, but with 4x the margin
| going to 1/100 the previous number of vendors, just like every
| "tech advance" in the past decade.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Parent of two teenagers. Came here to say exactly this.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| This. Exactly this.
|
| The answer isn't some fancy security software or screening, it
| is much simpler: no software, period. The bulk of school should
| be learning in a classroom, computers are not required.
|
| They can and should be allowed in limited doses early on, and
| can build over time, particularly as courses either obviously
| require it or the computers truly facilitate the learning.
|
| We had her public school teachers trying to tell us the answer
| to our daughter's reading issues was more screen time. We ended
| up sending her to a private religious school with very limited
| screen time, and she is now an A and B student.
|
| This is a huge problem in public schools because state and
| federal governments are complicit in burying kids (and
| parents!) in unnecessary technology. During Covid, the feds
| flooded schools with literal billions of dollars that did not
| go to better teachers, it went to smart boards and MacBook pros
| and iPads and dozens of "School as a Service" providers who
| existed only to extract money from clueless superintendents who
| have a seemingly endless supply of tax money to draw from.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I teach a 5th grade computer science class at my school. We
| just finished our "chatbot" project. I thought the kids some
| very simple Python syntax--assigning variables, concatenating
| strings, input, print, if, elif, else--and they made programs
| that could have a conversation with the user.
|
| I _suppose_ I could have done this without internet on air-
| gapped laptops. They do need laptops though, and the internet
| makes it much easier for them to submit their work for me to
| review after class.
|
| I realize that a bounded computer science class probably isn't
| what you're talking about. However, my school has in fact
| really been trying to clamp down on technology use this year,
| and it has been challenging for the computer science
| department!
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > If you can't bring enough material into the building within
| books and teacher's brains to teach, you're terrible and
| pointless.
|
| The numbers are smaller and smaller, but there will still be
| kids whose only access to the internet is their parents'
| smartphones. When I personally mentored a couple of pretty
| bright high school student interns, one of whom scored above
| 1500 SATs and a 36 ACT, they both found it really helpful to
| look at Khan Academy / YouTube clips to better understand what
| I was explaining.
|
| If the poorer kids don't have access to these explanatory
| videos, except when their parents are done with their phones,
| they will fall further behind than they otherwise would have.
|
| Perhaps a compromise would be to limit internet access to the
| school library?
| mariodiana wrote:
| I'm may be a little off-topic here (but I don't think so).
|
| In my opinion, elementary school (grades K-5) should really focus
| a good deal on rote memorization, but only if this focuses on
| teaching every kind of game and technique to facilitate that kind
| of learning. By that I mean making flash cards, learning to
| create and use mnemonic devices, etc.
|
| I just asked ChatGPT, and got something like 15 different
| techniques, some of which can be used with kindergarteners, all
| of which can be used by grade 5.
|
| There are always going to be "boring" things to learn. These
| things are often no longer boring once you know them by heart. In
| fact, they're often extremely valuable to know. I think by grade
| 5, if kids are going to be taught anything, they need to be
| taught the techniques that they can use--on their own--to make
| learning fun.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This is the classical approach where early education
| ("grammar") is focused on learning facts.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Yes. But I'm adding that learning methods should be
| explicitly taught, to where they become second nature to the
| student.
| Herring wrote:
| In my opinion too many people have opinions where they
| shouldn't. Just import a working system, like Estonia
| successfully imported from Finland. You don't have the skills
| to roll your own.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| That was exceptionally well written for a 7th grader.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I plugged it into a couple of free readability analyzers and
| got 10th - 12th grade reading levels.
|
| https://charactercalculator.com/readability-checker/
|
| - Reading Level: 10th to 12th grade
|
| - Reading Score: 59.00
|
| - Reading Note: Fairly difficult to read
|
| https://hemingwayapp.com/readability-checker
|
| - Readability checker: Grade 10; OK. Aim for 9.
|
| - 5 of 19 sentences are very hard to read.
|
| - 6 of 19 sentences are hard to read.
|
| There are some poor word choices[1], but yes, all in all this
| 7th grader is definitely writing above grade level. Hopefully
| his English teachers give him feedback pertinent to his
| demonstrated ability.
|
| [1] - E.g. "That's not to say a school's system is necessarily
| completely ineffective. Last year, my school had left unblocked
| the spammy-sounding Unblocked Games 66."
|
| would be easier to understand if re-written as:
|
| "That's not to say a school's system is completely ineffective.
| Last year, my school failed to block the spammy-sounding
| "Unblocked Games 66.""
| 650 wrote:
| There are multiple em dashes present. I strongly suspect AI
| help.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I hate this trend because I use em dashes a lot in my
| writing. Someone tell the AIs to throttle back on them a bit
| -- people might think I'm using AI when I'm not.
| gampleman wrote:
| Where has educational technology not been failing?
| riedel wrote:
| This reminds me of the times playing snake on our TI 84
| calculators.
| kkfx wrote:
| You can't force people to learn, you must interest them, and
| FLOSS desktops would help much, if well presented. Otherwise you
| only create dysfunctional dictatorship who only exalt conformism
| and mediocrity.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I think laws/regulations are very similar. "Obvious" ones are
| good (e.g. violence, food safety), analogous to "of course they
| should block actually inappropriate content". But you can't force
| people and companies to behave via laws and regulations, and
| fine-grained laws and regulations don't work, because of
| loopholes.
|
| To get a healthy society, you must teach people how to behave,
| then (again, still explicitly prevent serious crimes, but
| otherwise) trust them. Some will take advantage of the system,
| but they may still face natural and social consequences, and some
| abuse of the system is OK.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > But you can't force people and companies to behave via laws
| and regulations
|
| I guess I'm not really following where this logic is going. Are
| you saying "therefore we should not have laws and regulations"?
| I highly doubt that's what you actually mean, but I am unsure
| how to parse what you do mean if not that.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| We should have laws and regulations for things that are
| important and (relatively) easy to define and enforce. But
| laws and regulations aren't enough, because people find
| loopholes, and trying to patch these loopholes with more laws
| and regulations doesn't work.
|
| Examples of "obvious" laws and regulations: physical violence
| should be policed, companies should have to pay salaries and
| have basic restrictions on work hours, safety, sanitation,
| etc. Examples of things that can't really be regulated:
| "gambling" and "harmful social media". When does a game
| become "gambling"? When does a site become "social media" and
| "harmful"? Various countries have legal definitions for
| these, but they're very long, so companies find loopholes
| (e.g. sports betting, loot-boxes); or they straight-up break
| the laws, but the government doesn't bother to enforce them,
| because it's too difficult and the general population doesn't
| notice or care enough. Complex and ineffective laws and
| regulations also tend to have unintended consequences, like
| Balatro being considered "gambling" in Australia, and the
| UK's "Online Safety Act" affecting small forums.
|
| Part of the reason is that the people writing and enforcing
| laws and regulations themselves are corrupt. But this goes
| back to the source: you can't police those people with more
| laws, because their enforcers are also corrupt, and so on. A
| society is controlled and its morality is defined by its
| people, so to some extent, a society must teach its people to
| be moral and give them the leeway to still behave immoral.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I guess I'm having trouble squaring this with something
| like DUI laws. Some people still drive drunk despite having
| them, but I think we all largely agree that the existence
| of these laws and their enforcement leads to fewer
| instances of drunk driving and is overall good for society.
|
| That being said maybe I'm still not quite grasping the
| thrust of your point, but it sounds to me like you're
| saying "corrupt/bad people ignore laws so laws meant to
| stop them are pointless." Is that an accurate summary?
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Teaching has gotten lazy.
|
| In my day, tests were on paper and collected at the end of class.
|
| Now they're online and kids exchange answers by taking the cell
| phone to the bathroom.
|
| Or they will exploit the online nature and compare answers during
| the passing period AFTER the class a submit it before the next
| class starts. Teachers can't be bothered to close the test when
| class ends!
|
| Instead of being 25-50% short response, tests are all multiple
| choice so they can be automatically graded.
|
| To think my teachers recorded grades in a ledger and computed
| averages by hand for classes of 35+ students...
| jeffjeffbear wrote:
| > Teachers can't be bothered to close the test when class ends!
|
| What about students who need extra time, which can be part of
| an IEP, and other issues, I don't think that part is lazy. Also
| a decent amount of the usage of Canvas or similar LMS's is
| subject to school or district wide rules.
|
| Edit: I taught highschool CS during the pandemic to try to help
| out with issues in my district.
| empressplay wrote:
| Project-based learning / assessment is much more common now.
|
| Students have to explain their process when they present their
| projects, and answer questions, which ensures they did the
| work.
|
| These projects make up most of their grades.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > Back in _my_ day there was _nothing_ wrong with how testing
| happened, I know because _I_ succeeded in that system.
|
| The above is maybe not an entirely fair summary, but I think it
| captures the _spirit_ of Bobby 's comment in vivid detail.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| This feels like an uninformed opinion. Are you saying teachers
| aren't fully occupied during the day? That would be news to me.
| If you admit to teaching being a full time job, what would you
| rather see teachers not do so they can spend a few extra hours
| grading? Just claiming that teachers need to give paper
| assignments and spend time grading by hand without considering
| the tradeoffs sounds like a step backward.
|
| Cell phones haven't magically made students cheat. Students
| were cheating plenty with paper tests too. Ands if the students
| are trading answers with cell phones, they will definitely have
| a way to trade answers to paper tests. Nearly every smartphone
| has a camera. Instead we should figure out how to regulate cell
| phone use at school if they are the enabler for cheating.
|
| Teaching is undoubtedly different than it was a few decades
| ago. There is technology integrated into most schools and
| classrooms. The requirements of teachers has changed, but I
| wouldn't say teachers have gotten lazy.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Before I lodge my criticism: the kid's right. DNS blocking has
| always been a non-solution to the "kids screwing around on school
| computers" problem. When I was his age, we'd pull up
| breadfish.co.uk on all the computers in a single pod in the
| library, then un-mute all of them at once. They blocked
| breadfish, but then we just started pulling it up on youtube.
|
| 1:1 ed tech (e.g. chromebooks) probably exacerbates the problem
| because kids have a single machine that's their own. They can
| customize it as they please, for better and worse.
|
| When I was his age, my school's thin clients would wipe most of
| your customizations every time you logged out. For the handful of
| standalone desktops, you'd still have to set stuff up on each
| machine individually. This limited the effectiveness of the
| various tricks we played to get past IT guardrails.
|
| I think the title is a little misleading, though. The essay
| details why DNS-level blocking doesn't work in educational
| environments. The title suggests it'd talk about why ed-tech
| fails in a more general case. Remember, projectors, document
| cameras, VHS players, and Smart boards were all red-hot tech at
| some point. Even today, ed-tech is more than just computers
| assigned to kids.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| It's depressing that anyone would call internet censorship
| "educational technology"
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