Sunday, December 18, 2016

One of the Problems in American Education is Computers

Of one thing you can be sure when kids bring their computers to class:  their scores will go down.  As we saw in a recent comparative international survey of educational achievement in students, the scores for Americans were down across the board and scoring far below the level needed for competition with the hotshots in other countries.  (Science Daily:  Internet use in class tied to lower test scores)

Warning: Surfing the internet in class is now linked to poorer test scores, even among the most intelligent and motivated of students.

Michigan State University researchers studied laptop use in an introductory psychology course and found the average time spent browsing the web for non-class-related purposes was 37 minutes. Students spent the most time on social media, reading email, shopping for items such as clothes and watching videos.

And their academic performance suffered. Internet use was a significant predictor of students' final exam score even when their intelligence and motivation were taken into account, said Susan Ravizza, associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study.


- Science Daily


Read the article for the full spiel but you already know the truth of it so the thing I see is the young 'uns really don't have any kind grok going for the brutality of the Big League.  There's no 'just a minute, I was playing with Twitter.  What were you saying?'

You know how it goes but they seriously don't get it.  In the Big League, you keep up or get out.  Here's the pink slip, get your shit, and get the fuck out.  They walk you to the parking lot and it's over that fast.  I'm not exaggerating; I've seen it.

It's not that you have to be cutthroat at worker rather than management levels but you've got to be really good or you can't play.


Hopefully you see it is not my purpose to bash America with this but rather ask, with reasonable concern, what will motivate the little monsters.  You can put a kid in a million-dollar classroom but it won't be worth a dime if the kid spends the day jacking with the latest hashtag game.

Ed:  you play with hashtags, you old nag of a hypocrite!

Yah but I'm not defending a job.

In part it's to observe and a few of them are witty so they must be intelligent but they're not being too smart.

WTF?


Where are the dreams, mates?  What do the little fuckers want?

You can easily see they want equal rights unless they're hateful wastrels and they're probably all for world peace except the aforementioned wastrels but all we know from that is they're ready to compete to be Miss America.


I'm looking for kids who are just aching to make something, to build something, whether it's a starship or something I can't even imagine.  Am I missing that or is it not happening?

The artists show me some of that since their hope is now or sometime in the future people will get it with what they make.  Those ones seem to be on it but what of the others.


Sure this is Christmas and this is something we can give them which they do not seem to have now.

Ed:  you're asking for something too!

Fair enough as I do want to see these kids with a vision of a future and they're in it.  Right now it seems so many are just passing time (e.g. Twitter) and you know how quickly that luxury fades.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone looks for the complex answer. But children arent assigned homework(a goal of public education) so there is less study time. Parents are no longer involved in the education process. Maybe only a couple of parent teacher conferences a year
Just another example of bringing education to its lowest common denominator. We dont want a child getting an advantage because of parental participation most dont

Anonymous said...

A,computer is only a tool. I would declare operator error on this issue

Unknown said...

I'm not at all defending the educational system since it's not getting the job done for a zillion complex reasons, just as you say and more. It's not to take out computers all that much but it seems the problem they were studying was when computers were not required for the course. Then they found students were just jacking around with online far too much.

I see another problem in this: incredibly boring teachers. The symptom of bored students breaks at least two ways with parents failing to motivate the kid and / or teachers failing to do it. We see the answer is often to drug the kid and that's when I get really bent.

Anonymous said...

Teachers are using the computers the same way lazy parents use TVS as babysitters.
With class sizes pushing 30 kids per teacher and no teacher assistants, it is easy to see why they do this.
Parents used to volunteer to help in classes but that has disappeared from public schools as most families are two income families or worse just one parent families.
Watching the Fairy Princess go from a private school to a public school is rather excruciating. As the level of instruction in a public school is scary.

Unknown said...

A bad teacher will suck with or without a computer. The Mister Chips kind may be hard to find or all over the place. Unknown. When I hear of this ADD so much, it says to me those kids are bored.