PC UPDATE SysAdmin Ron
PC UPDATE SysAdmin Ron Harrington pointed me towards a 1997 article questioning the value of computers in the classroom. This quote had me pulling out what little hair I have left:
In a poll taken early last year U.S. teachers ranked computer skills and media technology as more “essential” than the study of European history, biology, chemistry, and physics; than dealing with social problems such as drugs and family breakdown; than learning practical job skills; and than reading modern American writers such as Steinbeck and Hemingway or classic ones such as Plato and Shakespeare.
History and biology- sure. I can buy that. But chemistry?! What are we coming to? Seriously, I’ve long felt that computer training was supplanting education. In our pre-homeschooling days, our oldest was taught “keyboarding” in the 1st grade. What a waste of time! Teach them to read first.
BTW, Ron Harrington doesn’t let his kids use the computer. His rationale seems pretty, er, rational to me:
[I]t’s because they need to be prepared for a fast-changing high-tech world. For that world, they need to be able to read well, think logically and creatively, and solve problems. There’s no evidence computers will help them aquire those abilities, and considerable evidence computers will do harm.