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Tech Is Amazing for learning, but the unfortunate truth is that companies got a conflict of interests when it comes to education. The same companies who are pushing the most braindead brainrot and designing apps to be as addictive as humanly possible are then the same ones who sell school learning applications
Ask yourself, What Would Black Hat do?
No idea
As a Computer Scientist, I increasingly believe this tech might actually be poison for the human mind, and I’m not sure what to do about it.
I want to believe we can make it actually useful. But I don’t know if that’s possible or not.
I think the problem with computers is when you make shit too easy.
Play a game. Tap on store. Tap on install. Play.
When I was growing up getting shit to run on my 286 was a challenge, Changing memory allocations, IRQ ports, a myriad of errors and work arounds, cfg files, memory editing, command lines, basic, and all that stuff meant you were forced to think.
The irony is script kiddies of the 90s would be viewed upon as hardcore hackers these days.
Indeed it warmed the cockles of my heart when my son got into Half Life and asked me to show him how to use the console.
I was like, awww you’ve taken your first step into a larger world.
I get your point bro, but it’s just half of the story. The real issue is not tech as a whole, but the conflict of interests of big evil corps. Tech is fantastic and can supercharge human learning, but the fact that most software is made with the sole purpose of maximizing engagement had led to those issues. The issue is the business model, not the tech itself
Lets be clear: the tech is fantastic, the application is not. We are handing children mind control feeds while they are still forming their identity. If we had these kids working in linux shells, learning the nitty gritty problem solving behind the tech, learning how to use it to build rather than shoehorning it into problems that absolutely dont need it then I think the story would be different
There are studies that show the tactile nature of books and hand written notes improves retention and encourages more thought, so it would seem likely that going more digital would have negative impacts on education.
Even that grifter Sam Altman was talking about how he takes notes a while back.
People in my school literally failed PE, all you had to do was literally change your clothes. This is just people boogy manning tech so they feel smart. Fact is these kids will not be held back no matter what, and even if you hold them back they don’t care. They don’t see why they should bother learning in school, their parents don’t care about how they are doing in school. Passing American K-12 is essentially putting 4 brain cells of effort. We spend more money on education per capita then the rest of the world. Talk about class sizes, text books blah blah blah dosen’t matter when you have kids bullying teachers out of their jobs
Problem is its a balance. kids need to learn without technology but they also have to learn to responsibly use technology. In addition they need to be prepared to learn remotely. I actually think that at least by high school but as early as possible it would be good for every student to learn from home once a week. They will then be prepared for something like another covid as well as the modern work world.
I suppose what’s needed is to look at data from other countries and see if the data is similar. They’ve found a correlation but, as anybody remotely versed in science should know, correlation does not imply causation
You’re absolutely right. Looking at data from multiple countries would help show whether the pattern holds or if it’s just a local coincidence. Correlation can point us toward questions, but it’s never proof of causation on its own, that requires much deeper analysis.👌
Surely more blame for dumber kids falls on the Republican push to remove actual science from textbooks, than the format in which they are delivered.
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Correlation
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Causation
Hey, Computer, what’s been happening to
- Average Class size
- Average teacher years of experience
- Average annual hours in school
Had it been?
- Up
- Down
- Down
But sure, also, they’ve replaced a stack of 5 lb textbooks nobody reads with a tablet computer nobody uses.
https://seatingchartmaker.app/articles/class-size-statistics/ USA seems stable for class size?
The typical class size in US public schools is 16-23 students. In the academic year 2020-2021, the mean class size was 18.3 students, a slight decrease from the 2017-2018 average of 19.6 students. These figures represent the mean across both primary and secondary education.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/class-size
In the United States, average class sizes vary widely, with national averages indicating 21.2 students in elementary schools and up to 26.8 in secondary schools.
COVID exacerbated the situation over the last five years.
The situation of class sizes decreasing? The article you gave is from 2021 so im guessing its just methodology of oecd vs nces? the closest citation to that claim is from a 2013 NCES source though.
Don’t forget the negative effects of Social media on developing minds.
It reads like one of those boomer comics complaining about young people experiencing the consequences of boomer actions.
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I’ve been hearing about this. And the software isn’t great, I hear stories of kids taking tests online and software glitches keep them from completing the tests. I love computers, but you know what always works? Pencil and paper.
Idk… I’ve had a few pretty shitty pencils.
“The kids are so smart they figured out this computer stuff I could never” - 75 yo Deborah, School District Superintendent
No Deborah, the kids had a mandatory computer literacy class which helped them understand the fundamentals of computing.
Key word “had”
Back in the 00’s when I was secondary school. My friends and I, would turn off the firewall, and bypass the website restrictions. This is just so we could download and play runescape, but I also played the halo combat evovled demo. It was only my group of friends who figured out how. We never shared the simple method with anyone, because we didn’t want it getting patched.
I’m sure the systemic defunding and dismantling of the public education system across the United States at the hands of Republican lawmakers over the same timeframe has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Right? It always confounds and amazes me when people discount this simple fact.
Education has been fucked over so hard in this country, repeatedly. They want people dumb.
Some one has PAID them to do this. They’re a tool used by the powerful (just like Ds), the mega-rich use BOTH parties, just like you would use a Phillips or a standard screwdriver.
Ds have been in power a huge amount of that time, depending on the time frame they’ve even had the majority of the time… and they took just as much of a part in the “dismantling the public education system”.
Look at the RESULTS instead of listening to what they SAY. They’ll say anything (they being all of them)
Yes, I know, bOtH pArTiEs and so forth, you got me, you win, etc.
Blame it on the technology though, because admitting that Republicans plan are ALWAYS terrible for anyone below the 1%, without exception, somehow is impossible.
It’s almost like the people drawing these conclusions from incomplete data are… poorly educated?
It’s also happening in areas where education HASN’T been defended or dismantled. It’s happening in areas that aren’t Republican controlled too.
Fuck MAGA with a moldy pine tree but blaming this problem solely on them means it can’t be solved because whatever is happening isn’t being caused by them.
Which locations weren’t impacted by the first trump administration’s education department or no child left behind?
I never said it was solely on them, but saying that has no bearing on it is ridiculous as well.
We also had COVID which many/most schools had no fucking idea how to handle. There’s basically an entire year of wasted education there.
Remote learning is a completely different beast. And digital social interaction is completely different than being physically at school with friends. Social interactions are a large part of learning as well.
In this instance, I’d say it doesn’t.
The lockdown from COVID stunted a lot of development. Then the tablets and just that kids are always on a screen drive it home. That and kids and parents don’t care as much about failing grades, and the “no child left behind” has gotten about as corrupt and lazy as our government. Now it just means “your kids going to the next grade, regardless”
How does systemic defunding lead to schools buying up tablets and notebooks?
This seems more like straight up corruption to me, or dumb administrators believing the nonsense Google sells them about Chromebooks being better for learning or whatever
We should be investing in teachers not technology.
Teachers are a cost-center
Technology is a profit-center
What are you, some kind of socialist? Your system will never work. We’ll all run out of money!
Teachers are paid a pittance in the US. Shows our values as a society. They’re educating the next generations, but that doesn’t make number go up right this second, so they are compensated accordingly.
In California most of my teachers were making 6 figures in my rural town, the problem is that kids don’t care about learning, their parents especially do not care at all.
Exactly, it’s a sad reflection of priorities. The work they do shapes the future, yet the pay doesn’t reflect that impact at all.
It’s more than just lack of effort here though, it’s systematic pollution they are allowing into our food and water with abandon.
into education too, into everything they can actually
Yeah, the systemic tearing down of public education definitely had an effect as well.
You know, it wasn’t always like this
Not very long ago, just before your time
Right before the towers fell, circa '99
This was catalogs, travel blogs, a chatroom or two
We set our sights and spent our nights waiting
For you, you, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad, you were barely two
And it did all the things we designed it to do
Now, look at you, oh, ha, look at you
You, you, unstoppable, watchable
Your time is now, your inside’s out, honey, how you grew
And if we stick together, who knows what we’ll do?
It was always the plan
to put the world in your hand~ Bo Burnham
Kind of hard to take the article seriously when it ends with:
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Corporate bullshit like that used to just be mildly amusing, now it’s actively enraging.
Public money gets funneled to the tech bros and the population gets dumber. It’s a conservative win-win.
And the begining of civil distruction
