In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
The problem isn’t “Tech” or “Laptops” or even “Tablets” ; but the addictive nonsense so-called “Tech-companies” spend all their efforts designing instead of trying to solve any actual problems…
IMO, in the US
- Common core replaced a better curriculum. Courses seem dumbed down and doesn’t really prepare you anymore for college maths
- Grades were extremely inflated during covid because obviously students would not be motivated to study
- Grades are a lot lenient now. Most classes are passing people that would’ve previously been considered a fail
- AI was touted as a replacement for thinking and had repercussions when students started using it to just do all the work
- School is increasingly a for profit system now. Most colleges are increasing tuition without improving classes, and attracting enrollment by touting the hollywood college life experience.
- There’s a lot of negativity in the younger generation, especially as those who see their older siblings fail to find anything in the job market. What’s the point of college if it can’t land you a good job?
Not USAian so can’t comment on 1 and 5.
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And 2. I believe are too recent for this. That’s more of a gen alpha thing, gen z already went through most of school before 2020/2022.
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Directly causes 6.
I believe 3. Is the root of all evil. And no, 5. Does not cause 3., since I went to a public university. In my case, 3. Was influenced by something similar to 5.: the political party in power encouraging their side of culture instead of focusing on education.
- Is not easy to fix though. Low standards create bad students, which lowers the standards even more. Creating a downward spiral that is at a pretty low point now. So low in fact that 4. Happened. If the standards were higher, AI wouldn’t meet the standards, and only students that genuinely put in the effort would pass.
This is not in isolation though. The reason standards started to fall is because higher education became a NEED. As portrayed by the media, if you don’t go for higher education, you will end up in a stagnant job that pays minimum wage. So everyone needed to get higher education, so there was a lot of pressure to let all these new students pass.
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So you’re saying the lockdowns had long term negative effects… Interesting 🤔
Like with most things, there’s always a price to an action
Lockdowns are important to curb infection and protect vulnerable people. Did it have long term negative effects? Yes, that’s inevitable. Could we have handled both the lockdown and post lockdown better? Sure. But protecting people heavily outweighs the consequences.
As opposed to the massacre of an uncurbed pandemic
(Also, those effects don’t exist in a vacuum, and without much in the way of an attempt to mitigate them, the knock-on effects become more severe than they would have to.)
…In the pile with the other disappointments.
tosses it on top of X-men after Fall of X
For sure. I love my kids, he’s 15. He scores above average in the state/national tests (map ect). He can tell me the date, when the first bomb dropped in fallou 4, but has no fucking idea when the declaration of independence was signed, can’t figure out how to cook anything from a box, can’t name 10 countries in the world, and had zero idea how to do anything for himself.
The sad thing is I taught for 20 years in elementary level. All the have us teach is tests, ELA, Math, fuck science,art, geography,history. These kids are literally functionally mentally handicapped because they just want higher and higher test scores to jerk off to at the cost of kids who are functional.
first bomb dropped in fallout? what about ww2, japan? i have been hearing some people go through HS not knowing 1945 happened.
The history curriculum must be reworked as a FPS.
Unironically, I do think there is a great opportunity in education for video games.
Unfortunately, the historically inspired games I most prominently see are the likes of Assassin’s Creed whose creativity clearly runs just as freely as all the slaves they sweep under the rug and who use the names of historical events and figures as faithfully as a CEO uses those of ethical values.
If these are the games children learn from, no wonder their education is as fucked up as the past these games present should be, but isn’t.
the slaves they sweep under the rug
whilst I do agree that a game that touts itself as a historical simulator should try to be realistic, I can see how it might kill the enjoyability of the game or conversely lead to more perverse and sadistic actions from the player…
Yeah, but portraying Sparta as these noble heroes while tacitly omitting the fact that 80% of their populace was brutally enslaved is a bit irresponsible. Likewise, the Vikings politely killing guards but sparing civilians, taking only treasure neatly prepared in chests, without so much as an implication that the player character’s band is exceptional in that respect, just glosses over the rape, murder and the slave trade that was such a lucrative business for the Vikings.
In the case of AC, they already have mechanisms for discouraging violence against civilians (desynchronization). I’m sure other games could come up with some other solution. If you want to discourage sadistic actions, establish some in-universe reason why the PC diverges from the norm, make that divergence clear, use it as a source of conflict with less progressive fractions to contrast their brutality. Just don’t pretend it didn’t happen.
I’m down for fantastic stories, I appreciate that the battles in these games are chaotic for the of action gameplay fun, I’m happy to suspend disbelief for entertainment.
But the past can hold valuable lessons; corrupting them enables those who would use it deceptively to push some political agenda.
Oh that’s true, I forgot about the desync mechanic. That is a bit odd to just portray this 1 dimensional view of noble heroes. God of War has shown that the male power fantasy can still co-exist with the idea that the hero can do horrible things and still relate to the player, so I’m not sure why Ubisoft would prefer to bury their heads
Honestly, GoW 2018 was a really good commentary on the cycle of violence, processing trauma and self-loathing, emotional vulnerability… This is entirely tangential, but there’s one moment where Kratos and Atreus look out at some beautiful view opening up before them. Kratos tentatively reaches out to put his hand on Atreus’ shoulder, then hesitates, pulls it back. It broke my heart, breaks it over and over every time I think about it. The game undeniably is a power fantasy, but it hardly pulls punches in digging up Kratos’ issues and flaws, including calling out that tough macho persona.
Anyway, on topic: I think the portrayal of Sparta in particular goes back to a circular issue of pop media. When depicting something, the audience usually approaches in with expectations and preconceptions shaped by other works. These works in turn call back to previous ones, partially built on the writings of 19th century historians belonging to their respective elites and accordingly biased to let the Spartan elites look good, drawing on source material written by ancient Greek elites that will also have identified more with the Spartiates than the Helots.
If I make a game or movie about Sparta, most people will involuntarily form some association with 300. If I then (accurately) present their warrior-elite as cruel bastards that largely eschew the arts, don’t actually do much combat training, don’t value individual prowess so much as coherence in the phalanx, have a very average track record in war; if I show them marching to Athens and back several times because they had no siegecraft to actually take it; if I point out their selling out Greece to the Persians…
I don’t think players will enjoy it. That’s not a fun Sparta. It doesn’t stack up to the glorious expectations. There are no heroics, just disappointment.
Historians will love it, but critics will open with “if you’re looking for the heroes of 300, you won’t find them here” and players will close the tab.In that light, a publisher primarily interested in money won’t want to take the risk of honesty, if they care at all.
With the Vikings, the causes may differ (and I don’t know the historiography here), but the result is similar: we’ve ended up with an image of big tough heathen warriors, possibly shaped more by the impressions of English monks whose churches they were burning or those Vikings that ended up converting to Christianity, and less by the of slaves that were dragged away or people killed in the raids. Again, Ubisoft won’t want to risk kicking up a fuss by smearing that image.
Additionally, the factor you pointed out that you might not want to indulge player cruelty adds complexity to the question of how to frame those issues. Complexity requires more writing work, which costs money, and we’re back at “a publisher primarily interested in money”.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the games, despite being aware of those issues. My complaint is rather with a media landscape that has painted an image nobody dares disrupt because it’s not profitable. The education to enable such disruption would have to come from the outside, which leads to the initial problem: If games are the best way to convey that information, but the industry has backed itself into a corner where it can’t easily do so, we’re at a deadlock.
Then history would be the favorite subject by many pupils.
You can’t make such a statement about a whole generation without referring to a large cohort study.
I don’t know about that, even with their digital lobotomy, gen z votes a lot smarter than older generations.
the older Gen z , the younger ones are pretty lacking, plus thier aspiration is to be influencers, at least some of them.
Stupid kids! Choose a more realistic career, like astronaut.
67 skibbidy dapper.
The above is probably why.
I’m willing to bet most of us laughed at E so I’m not saying a damn thing lol
badger badger badger badger mushroom
snaaaaaaaake snaaaaaaake
Younger gen z are incredibly dumb this really isn’t anything new or up for debate.
So is most people, myself included. Millennial btw
Millennial is like the only generation that comfortably says we’re all stupid.
You only need to read the headlines in any newspaper to come to this conclusion.
I honestly blame the software we use. It’s made to be profitable, not to educate. Every fucking article is full of bullshit “click here!” for profit.
Where is the global and universal app to learn fucking everything? That teaches you, lets you read unlimited textbooks (oh piracy!) or science papers, quizzes you, scores you, lets you compete with others, gives you a diploma that is worth something?
Why do we expect an internet that has been captured by capitalism and is algorithmically tuned to maximize profit and brainwashing to be good for intelligence? That is what advertising is brainwashing, and it ru(i)ns everything.
PS: Of course, I have no idea how good online learning resources of schools actually are. I’m just going to assume they are abyssal. Because why wouldn’t they be terrible.
Blame the parents that have abdicated their responsibility to raise their children and outsource that to screens.
My kids have grown up with screens since birth, but our going-into-fourth-grader has a 12th grade reading level and our going-into-second-grader has an 11th grade reading level because we make teaching them at home a priority.
They both score way above grade level in math and science as well. Their teachers constantly say they can tell which parents actually make their kids education a priority and which parents don’t give a shit and expect the teachers to do it all.
Let’s apply some critical thinking here. You’re saying your 7yr old has the reading comprehension of a 17yr old. I don’t buy that. I read voraciously as a child and in 7th grade I had an 11th grade reading level. I have a 7yr old who reads voraciously and they are nowhere near an 11th grade level. They rarely get screen time either. Education is a huge priority for us as well, but 11th grade reading level at 7? That ain’t real.
Probably this says more about this specific school district and what they expect of their students than about the reading comprehension a child compared to an adolescent.
I mean believe it or don’t. I don’t give a shit lol. It’s true. I was the same way as a kid, far ahead of all of my peers with a high school reading level in first grade, twice in school scored the highest in the state for standardized testing for my grade. I even got two little trophies from the state for it.
Their mom is an insane reader as well, and clocks 100+ books a year.
They got a great head start with genetics, but we’ve also put a ton of effort into fostering that.
Well done. Did you limit screen time and got them to read physical books and such? And yeah, it’s definitely impossible without parenting, but you also need the right “tools” or learning environment and software. I don’t think that exists, at least not as open source / non commercial.
Yeah they are limited on their screen time. They have to do an hour of reading before they can do any fun screen time, then they can do whatever until bed as long as homework is done.
At bedtime they have to be in bed, but can use their kindles to read until 10 when they automatically lock on them.
I learned a lot because there was friction in the tools. There’s a point where „accessible“ software (and I don’t mean accessible in the sense of making it usable with screen readers and other disability support) becomes detrimental. Like the complete abstraction that mobile devices have from a filesystem now - many younger people can’t use a hierarchical file explorer as a result.
Yeah that’s definitely true, IT systems becoming too easy to use. They should have given the students raspberry PIs and some wire and mechanical switches instead of McBooks, let them build their own laptops lol.
That poor child in the stock photo getting shown for an article on how children are getting dumber…
That being said, the reason why children are getting ‘dumber’ is probably because a) education is getting less money every year b) social media is destroying their attention span c) intelligence isn’t valued enough by society
At no point is getting a notebook part of the problem. Young people need to learn how to use technology.
Problem: we’re not spending enough on educators to teach kids
News Articles: we paid apple 10 billion dollars but the laptops made these kids dumber.
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You gave a bunch of kids systems they’re completely locked out of modifying and garden walled to shit and then act shocked when they learn nothing from them.
Jesus
That’s not true, they learned something. It just wasn’t beneficial at all.
As a society, we chose to only teach ONE FUCKING GENERATION how to use technology and then went “well, young people ‘just understand’ technology, we don’t need to teach it anymore” and then somehow decided to just give all the kids a fucking tablet or laptop and assume they would LEARN THROUGH OSMOSIS I GUESS? Meanwhile we are defunding education across the country to absolutely shameful lows. (yes, I’m focused on the USA - I doubt “Cooney Horvath” is basing this broad generalization meant to scare people into buying his books on a study of ALL CHILDREN ALL OVER THE WORLD) AND THEN we let tech-bro-oligarchs decide EVERYTHING related to tech for two entire fucking decades and are just SHOCKED they did the thing that was best for profits, not the children (whose lives it was actively ruining for profit).
BUT YES, JARED HORNY CORVATH, your astute observations PROVE it was the fault of the LAPTOP that the next generations are “INHERANTLY DUMBER” (feels like a dog whistle, I dunno for what - but it’s trying to justify something, I can feel it in my bones).
moreover, I’m convinced the entire reason my generation (millennials) turned out to be tech-savvy was because adults didn’t understand it, were trying to control and curtail our usage, and we were mostly focused on finding ways to circumvent boomer and gen-x meddling in our usage.
Nah that’s not it. People who used computers in the 50s, 60s and 70s were tech savvy. But that was just a small percentage of the population.
When mass adoption of computers started in the late eighties, through the nineties and early 00s computers needed a lot of tinkering and care in their usage.
People were forced to use their brains to use the computer and learn tech skills. Then computers started to become a lot more streamlined and people didn’t have to put as much thought into using them. It parallels cars and TVs, just in a more complex system.
People who used computers in the 60s were more tech savvy than people who used computers in the 70s who were more savvy than those in the 80s who were better at computers than those in the 90s and so on. Because they had to learn more to use them and take care of them.
New tech (like the web) meant you had to get used to new stuff, which younger people do better than older people.
But if you speak to a boomer who has kept up with the technology you can bet that they are more capable and have more knowledge about tech than us millennials.
With cars, I don’t get it we’ve even collectively given up standard maintenance. When I tell people I did my own oil change or change my brake pads, they look at me like I’m some sort of magician or Tim Taylor. It’s like, dudes, you’re supposed to be doing it yourself – it’s not hard. And it costs me $40 to diy an oil change compared to $100 for a Quick Lube. Brake pads are a little more difficult, but also are standard maintenance and totally possible. Cost savings of diy vs shop there is hundreds of dollars.
I’ve not met boomers that have kept up on tech. In fact, all of the boomers I know now use tech like the Gen Z kids.
I was once in a room with a boomer, I’m a Millennial, and a Gen Zer. I said, “your generation invented the tech, my generation perfected it, and your generation takes it all for granted.”
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THIS. PREACH. I couldn’t say it better myself. Abso-friggin-lutely.
“Technology” is SUCH an abused word by these absolute simpletons. “Technology” didn’t cause this. They did what they always do: They thoughtlessly expect their false god, The Market, to somehow organically solve the problem of education and human betterment, if only we sacrifice enough money to it.
Giving kids laptops? MAYBE, right? Huge MAYBE. Ask any generation if elementary schoolers on unsupervised internet connections was a good friggin idea.
But tablets and Chromebooks?! GTFO. Right out. Those things are barely “technology.” They’re consumption devices optimized primarily to make ongoing profit from their users.
In 95% of cases, I’ll wager, nobody’s getting hands-on learning from a friggin iPad or Chromebook. Trying to “replace” standard desktops with those things collectively killed a huge chunk of our cognitive abilities as a society.
we let tech-bro-oligarchs decide EVERYTHING related to tech for two entire fucking decades and are just SHOCKED they did the thing that was best for profits, not the children (whose lives it was actively ruining for profit).
ONE. HUNDRED. PERCENT.
So many usability decisions and standards were coming from public univerisities and publicly transparent nonprofits. (Why we have an Internet that’s open source at its core, for instance. But I have a lot to research…) Even privately, standards were about the benefit of the users, rather than
“Let’s copy every decision Apple makes because look at their stonk price and slavishly drooling fanbase.”
My mom used to be awesome with our Windows 95 Packard Bell. She used internet forums, she figured out eBay when it was brand new, she ran DXDiag when games weren’t working. She knew how to freaking DEFRAG the thing.
Now she struggles and panics to do the most basic thing if it’s not 1-step on her iPhone. It’s tragic. Heartbreaking. And I hate them for it.
We let the filthy marketers from packaged goods and casino industries run amok in tech, and that’s how we got here : Tech is largely not the incredible new tools we dreamed of to live better lives, instead its often closer to smoking and gambling .
If you let marketers take over anything , unregulated, it inevitably takes the form of toxic vice, because our poorest choices make them the richest.
Mainstream technology doesn’t connect us, it isolates us. It doesn’t educate us, it actively endeavors to make us stupid . Every freaking bit of bandwidth reaching our eyeballs on the mainstream net is dedicated to reducing “friction” to rob our wallets and personal data.
I’m INFURIATED that most people can’t even handle organizing a file system anymore. Only private schools seem to teach actual computer education, and they all bought into this stupid lie that the “future” is cloud subscriptions served on brainrot e-waste.
I feel like we need to start “desktop computer clubs” or something. Seeing this crap like they’re trying to extinguish the personal computer is basically a declaration of war in my book…
My mom used to be awesome with our Windows 95 Packard Bell […] Now she struggles and panics to do the most basic thing if it’s not 1-step on her iPhone.
Hey, pardon me if I’m overstepping, but I’m going through the evaluation process with my mom right now and this could be an early sign of dementia (one that we initially dismissed). It could be nothing, but it might be a good idea to get her checked out if you have any other reason to be concerned.
straight facts.
the vacuum of responsible leadership/sane regulations opened the doors for corporations to colonize every corner of online activity. they have run amok with behavior-changing technologies. rather than implementing these new tools thoughtfully in the classroom (and at home), idiotic people wrote enormous checks to Apple and Microsoft, Google and other vendors, assuming that the kids would just, ya know, figure it out. magically, somehow.
a separate but related thought: we need to recognize that:
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how kids use personal devices at home shapes their usage patterns at school. if their only reference point for what a “computer” is and does is unlimited brainrot attention baiting consumption, then guess what? they will see these devices purely as entertainment/addiction machines and nothing more.
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kids mimic their parents behavior. if parents are zonked out all night mindlessly binging endless short form content and tv shows, they will come to understand that behavior as “normal” and “appropriate” and even “good”. society at large (and some parents) think kids must abide by different expectations than the ones they place on adults. kids know that’s hypocritical bullshit and will either emulate the bad behavior (with post hoc rationalizations) or resent the behavior (with maladaptations/ internalized guilt or resentment).
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ive seen parents give phones to toddlers watching on the phones, ipads just to shut them up. defunding is mostly done by republicans, underfunding is pretty everywhere else, even in pretty decent blue areas. the money goes to admin/bureaucracy and redtaping teachers. the books, i recently saw students at my former hs, from 10+years ago sitll using the same kind of book( the blue book for chemistry edition), but they need to use newer books with updated info.
Nailed it. This is equally true for many countries beyond the US.
Nothing in USA rewards intelligence. Not education system, not employers, not government. Why develop a skill that isn’t in demand? Would you want to develop medieval brickmaking just because some researcher is measuring for it?
And who designed the software and tools leading to this?
Google.
Which is run by their parents’ generation
It’s run by techbros who live in a different reality then the rest of us.
they do, plus they SHIELD thier children from the brainrot they caused with thier SOcial media, propaganda. so they can go through life academically achieving, nepotized jobs, assuming most of them dont become lazy and entitled, probably setting them up for political/celebrity careers to perpetuate the cycle.
I don’t think framing it generationally is useful. Your average mum and dad have little to nothing to do with it.
Mostly posting this because holy shit what a jump to blame schools distributing laptops being the cause and not psychologically addictive social media algorithms having a total domination of their attention
Definitely nothing to do with the fact that schools giving out laptops disproportionately benefits less wealthier families
Giving kids laptops was a great idea. Letting corporations use those laptops to brainwash our children was probably not.
“Educational” software is terrible.
It educates kids to use MS Office and ChatGPT.
Many got chromebooks and just had google everything.
Someone clearly hasn’t played Typing of the Dead.
You shut your whore mouth about Oregon Trail
It was a different time.
Nah, it’s a bad idea, especially with internet connection. They are portals of distraction.
My schools just had a computer lab, and we still mostly figured out how to play games or hack the computers.
I remember one time, on very locked down PCs, I figured out how to use DirectX diagnostic tools to start a group chat on the local network. I didn’t even know about that thing, nor was there internet.
I can imagine computers being good only as fully controlled environments with secured connections, no USBs, total control over what software can be opened and used. Anything less is a waste of time.
“These things that I was given access to during my formative years and education? Yea, we absolutely shouldn’t let kids today have any access to them at all… for reasons(?)”
Anything can be a portal to distraction for kids that are bored to tears by an awful teacher, better not let them have colored pencils, they might ‘waste time’ drawing. If they don’t interact with computers at all for their education, they will definitely only think about computers as a box for games and/or youtube, and they will struggle with their use for a long time after. We need an environment to explore the systems and the world around us, where there can be boundaries if we get too far out in left field before we are dropped into the real world with real consequences.
I had one at home. The lab was fairly useless and definitely not good for exploration. I learned from breaking and reinstalling the OS and other things; if you do that at school, you get in trouble.
The issue was not being willing or able to curate their online experiences when given computers.
Right, like I’ve seen parents shove a tablet or a phone in their toddlers hands before they learn how to walk properly, and they keep scrolling mind numbing short form slop on it, and they want to talk about school laptops lol
It would have been a longer and more complex article requiring a lot of research if they tried to go through all the issues that could be contributing. Hell, it’d be a book.
multiple books, each discussing a different issue.
THANK YOU. As a teacher, this guy made me rage hard. And even harder when older teachers who already hate technology latched on to it as an excuse. Show me evidence for fucks sake when middle school teachers are ALSO now teaching multiple subject areas, have way less prep time, the school has less money, are also responsible for live online grading and access to assignments.
Also, I love fediverse. Rational mind heaven
And even harder when older teachers who already hate technology latched on to it as an excuse.
I’m glad I’m out of middle and high school, both were hell for my ability to learn due to teachers like this. I’ve tried and tested the fact that I objectively learn better on computers than books and writing, but the many teachers who would outright ban laptops in their classes because “you can’t learn on those, you all get distracted” would cripple my ability to learn. Writing is difficult for me as well, and I’ve always had horrible and slow hand writing, but I have abnormally fast typing speed and can type notes while listening fully to the teacher, which is why I breezed through my more tech focused classes for instance.
Of course, I don’t blame those technologically conservative teachers for their views, since monetary interests have crippled the medium enough to make digital education difficult for the vast majority of people, but that doesn’t mean some aren’t the opposite and learn quicker and of higher quality on digital mediums rather than the standard analog mediums.
Correct, and an actual study can isolate variables and when you do that, tech is usually a boon. It’s especially easy to do with tech, but long term studies are still difficult because of history effects and imperfect control groups.
I can believe Gen Z is doing worse, but almost every study I’ve been around in education has found Socioeconomic Status to be the strongest factor (by far) and given Gen Z and Alpha are raised by the first generations to have economic decline, it stands to reason that’s probably the main factor here.
School interventions do help to some degree to mitigate SES, it’s just hard when it’s this bad for this long. We’re talking decades of decline.
That is brought up near the end of the article.
While teachers may be intending for these tools to be strictly educational, students often have different ideas. According to a 2014 study, which surveyed and observed 3,000 university students, students engaged in off-task activities on their computers nearly two-thirds of the time.
Horvath blamed this tendency to get off-track as a key contributor to technology hindering learning. When one’s attention is interrupted, it takes time to refocus. Task-switching also is associated with weaker memory formation and greater rates of error. Grappling with a challenging singular subject matter is hard, Horvath said. For the best learning to happen, it’s supposed to be.
“Unfortunately, ease has never been a defining characteristic of learning,” he said. “Learning is effortful, difficult, and oftentimes uncomfortable. But it’s the friction that makes learning deep and transferable into the future.”
Sustained attention to a singular subject is anathema to how technology today has been deployed, argues Jean Twenge, San Diego State University psychology professor studying generational differences and the author of 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. More time on screens isn’t just ineffective in facilitating learnings; it’s counterproductive.
“Many apps, including social media and gaming apps, are designed to be addictive,” Twenge told Fortune. “Their business model is based on users spending the most time possible on the apps, and checking back as frequently as possible.”
Learning is effortful, difficult, and oftentimes uncomfortable.
It doesn’t have to be. Rote memorization always is for me, but that’s not really learning. And you can focus on just about anything when the alternative is a shitty textbook poorly explaining something that just won’t click with you. Look out the window, doodle, count the ceiling tiles, daydream about not being stuck in school, …
Be careful not to conflate effortful with boring. Learning can be fun but fun doesn’t mean easy or lacking in effort. Fun just makes it easier to remain motivated.
Learning can take effort and be fun, that’s true. Same goes for difficult. But if you put those two in with uncomfortable then I hear that it’s meant to be painful, essentially. Goddamn kids need to sit still and learn, and they can not do anything else for hours, or else!
The burden of proof is on you for your claim.
Why does learning not need to be effortful or not difficult or not oftentimes uncomfortable?
Why does learning not need to be effortful or not difficult or not oftentimes uncomfortable?
From the context the combination of these three words sounded to me like they are demanding kids sit still and focus for hours, and that if they fail then that’s a lack of effort, determination or intelligence. You can work through a problem slowly and deliberately because it’s hard to understand, that can feel very rewarding even if it’s hard. But you can also be forced to mentally strain yourself for hours, not because of the subject itself is difficult but because the environment, the provided material, the pressure, … make learning in and of itself take a lot more effort than it needs to.
Yeah, I have literally never gotten better at anything without effort, difficulty, and sometimes being uncomfortable. These things are ingrained to mastering any skill.
I think if it as no difference than lifting weights.
Do hard things till they get easy, then do harder things.
Your average person should probably not walk into the gym and start by trying to lift the heaviest weight they can. Many people stay active and healthy by doing something much easier, like walking or jogging with minimal or no weight.
Something that we learn to do as children almost instinctively…
Something… Easy.
Give the kids a blank laptop that they must erase weekly, and a thumb drive with the basic Gentoo installer.
I know you’re joking, but what would result if this actually happened would be after 1 week 99% of the laptops would never be powered on again and simply be handed back in at the end of the term.
Never underestimate ingenuity. Although the lazy kids would ask the smart kids for shortcuts. Most likely.
I’d be more worried about the 1% that are still being used. You’ve created a group of kids that know more about the computers than most IT departments.
Those aren’t kids to worry about. Those are kids to put into advanced classes because they’ve got some great understanding of complex topics and problem solving skills.
Well that’ll definitely make them resilient in the face of adversity, at the very least.
I also think schools are not evolving to the reality. There’s little incentive to memorize facts in a world where they are so easily acceptable. So we shouldn’t teach the memorization of facts.
We should teach people how to use information, how to criticize it, how to synthesize it, how to apply it. If these pursuits are taken seriously students will retain the information.
This issue is that’s much more difficult to test for than the memorization of facts.
I couldn’t disagree more. We should not be teaching kids to rely their phones. This is literally the same attitude the article talks about.
Rote memorization sucks but it’s 100% a necessary skill if you’re going to learn literally anything. Do you really want an electrician who lives on his phone because he didn’t memorize important aspects of his job? How about a surgeon or a lawyer?
There’s no getting around the fact that you need to memorize things if you’re doing to develop a deep level of skill in any given field. Your phone or laptop is not always going to be there.
I teach immigrants the local language, and students are never grateful to be taught a language. Students are grateful when you teach them how to learn a language.
That might seem like a distinction without a difference, but it’s not. There are thousands of words that people use in common conversation, tens of thousands that you can find in standard newspapers and normal literature, and even more if you want to read academic or specialized literature. When I teach the meaning of one word, that’s giving the students a fish. When I teach them how to break down prefixes or give them advice for increasing their exposure to language input, that’s teaching them how to fish.
The problem is that it only works for students who care. That’s fine by me, because I teach adults and they can decide whether they want to learn or not.
I don’t know how k-12 teachers navigate that, because it’s not exactly the student’s choice- we’ve decided as a society that kids need to learn certain things, whether they want to or not (basically), and that means that schoolteachers need to be able to teach students who don’t care or actively want not to learn (at least about a given subject). Just teaching them to teach themselves doesn’t work there, so you have to teach them some facts, because otherwise they won’t learn any.
It sucks, but I don’t know if it can be fixed. It’s reasonable that students don’t care about every subject, and it’s reasonable that there are things we’ve decided they need to learn, regardless of their interest. Teachers can’t always make a subject interesting to everyone, so sometimes you have to teach the base facts.
Students are grateful when you teach them how to learn a language.
I relate to this immensely. I’m taking german classes currently and the professor is driving me insane.
She uses an immersion only method where she speaks German at us and we do exercises from a book.
I am slowly getting an understanding of the past imperfect and various grammatical rules but only barely. There has been no real instruction on how these rules work so when I encounter a new verb or noun it’s a total guess everytime.
From my understanding speaking with some Germans, this is the preffered method for teaching English to school children. Which I must admit does seem to work well the English proficiency of the average person is quite high, even amongst those too afraid to speak it their comprehension is high.
The issue is I do not want to be learning German for the next 8 years as a German student would learn English in school. Also my brain is fundamentally different than a child’s. If they were to explain the rules and grammatical concepts it would be much much easier to understand.
A blended approach where the rules for new grammatical concepts are first explained followed with the immersion based exercises we’ve been doing would be ideal.
Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I actually teach German, and especially for students who have a good language sense for English (so if “I singed a song” immediately sticks out to you), tenses are mostly (with some obvious exceptions, like present progressive and preterite/perfect) pretty similar.
She’s probably trying to get your brain to recognize an irregular verb so you don’t have to learn each verb anew, but that’s a problem you’re less likely to have as an English speaker (for example, you’d say “Morgen singe ich, gestern sang ich, heute habe ich noch nicht gesungen,” which is pretty intuitive after English).
Fwiw, you do retain it longer if she sets it up so you can draw your own conclusions, but you also learn more slowly. And if you’re highly motivated, you’ll probably remember it well enough either way.
The whole class speaks English at a B2 level since that’s what is required for International students at the university. I do feel like that could be capitalized on given the similarities.
Honestly I truly feel like I paid someone to read the Kurs DaF A1 book to me. Rarely there are other exercises or explanations.
Comparing other language course I’ve had I liked my high school French teacher’s approach. She primed us with explanations of the new concepts and grammatical rules. Then she followed up with immersion and exercises.
My Spanish courses in college and high school were just memorization based. I technically reached a higher level of course in Spanish, but remember next to nothing. My comprehension of French is much better.
Truthfully I need to dedicate more time to my German, but my other studies being all English take up my time. I’m here for a master’s degree. The language is an additional skill I would like.
And if you care for learner’s perspectives, give quizzes. I don’t know how to explain it, but when we took our first test I felt a lot of concepts click into place because I had to perform if that makes sense. It’s like my brain felt the pressure and acted. It made me wish we had regular quizzes on the content in between tests.
Honestly I truly feel like I paid someone to read the Kurs DaF A1 book to me. Rarely there are other exercises or explanations.
That’s rough. I’m currently teaching at a school where they basically hired me to do that, but they’re not upset that I’m not. The teachers at the school are mainly university students in language related fields, but they mostly don’t have any experience or training in didactics (my autocorrect twigged on that-is it still pedagogy when you’re teaching adults?), so that’s an okay way to get people doing an alright job.
I’m almost done with my masters thesis in German instruction, so I’m not an expert teacher or anything, but I know how to construct an assignment and what didactic principles should guide a lesson plan. And just teaching to the book makes me feel pointless/like I’m cheating.
If you want a pretty good guide to grammar based on comparison with English, then try English Grammar for Students of German
And if you care for learner’s perspectives, give quizzes. I don’t know how to explain it, but when we took our first test I felt a lot of concepts click into place because I had to perform if that makes sense. It’s like my brain felt the pressure and acted. It made me wish we had regular quizzes on the content in between tests.
That’s very good advice, thank you. One of my students currently is in his mid 50s and he’s got a lot of experience learning things (not just his age, he’s had a lot of huge life changes that required him to do totally new things), and it’s so incredibly helpful. I gave them a quiz when I started teaching them (their last teacher went on leave partway through) and everyone (good naturedly) groaned a little, but he was 100% down for it and got the class to settle.
It helped show me their gaps, and I was able to anonymize them and have them peer correct, which was even more helpful
Just relying on classes is slow no matter what method they use. You need to study at home as well and something different from what you learn in class so don’t use the textbook from class. I think the best way to learn a language is to focus on vocabulary first. Like learn the 2000 most frequently used words first through rote memorization. Then grammer comes more naturally since you can get a lot of things from context. Also native speakers don’t know the grammar rules by heart, to them forming a correct sentence just comes naturally. Sure it’s good to know the grammar rules and concepts, but to make it come naturally requires a ton of reading and listening and eventually speaking and writing and that requires a large vocabulary.
The most used method for vocabulary is flash cards. Many people use a program called Anki and a German flash card deck has already been made by the community.
My seventh grade English teacher got permission from admin (she told us this) to spend her whole semester with us teaching vocabulary. Word roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc. That was helpful, and interesting, and the first time I enjoyed learning English. I still struggled in English, but I did better after that.
I was homeschooled. My mom was always avidly against what she called “read and regurgitate.” Instead she supported “teach how to learn.”
It was a different world back then, but the lessons still serve me well.
it’s like blaming the obesity epidemic on plates…
You actually can influence how full a person feels after a set amount of food based on how big or small the plate is on which the food was served.
The addictive qualities of ultra processed foods at the same time as the diminishing nutrition of processed and unprocessed foods alike is obviously so much more of a contributing factor, but isn’t it nuts that plates can also have a measurable effect?
when it’s microplastics!
Then it’ll make the wealthy stupider.
the wealthy know this, they are shielding them from it, placing them in montiserri type schools, aka rich people tutoring, learning grind+ make sure they are in sports, get all extracarricular. with a poorer family its an IPAD/TV/computer doomscrolling , or watching youtube, streamers.
I would be willing to bet that is the case, but good luck doing a study to test the hypothesis.
