How computers make kids dumb

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How computers make kids dumb

Post by mankrip »

The Register wrote:How computers make kids dumb
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Monday 21st March 2005 20:45 GMT

Comment A study of 100,000 pupils in 31 countries around the world has concluded that using computers makes kids dumb. Avoiding PCs in the classroom and at home improved the literacy and numeracy of the children studied. The UK's Royal Economic Society finds no ground for the correlation that politicans make between IT use and education.

The authors, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of Munich University, used the PISA tests to measure the skills of 100,000 15 year-olds. When social factors were taken into account, PC literacy was no more valuable than ability to use a telephone or the internet, the study discovered.

"Holding other family characteristics constant, students perform significantly worse if they have computers at home," the authors conclude. By contrast, children with access to 500 books in their homes performed better. The negative correlation, the researchers explain, is because children with computers neglect their homework more.

The Royal Society's quantitative approach mirrors concerned raised by qualitative analysis of technology in education. Children are now awash with "facts", but don't know what to do with them.

Schoolchildren are developing a "problem-solving deficit disorder", and losing the ability to analyze. A better way, experts insist, is to encourage creativity. And the best remedy for this is to turn off the computer and stimulate childrens' imaginations.

The value of creativity, imagination and critical thinking over "information" access is self-evident, you'd think. But an alliance of convenience between technology vendors, who want to stuff more unwanted computers into classrooms, lazy governments, for whom IT is a way of appearing "modern" while cutting education budgets, ensures the issue doesn't stay in the headlines for very long.

In the US, programs designed to connect schools to the internet have become a pork barrel for questionable sales tactics from the some of the industry's biggest vendors.

"Technology is not destiny, its design and use flow from human choices" the US Alliance For Childhood wrote in its critical report Tech Tonic: Towards A New Literacy last September. This was a follow-up to the Alliance's scathing report Fools Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood, which is also available in Spanish. Both are free PDF downloads from the Alliance's website, and a good resource for concerned parents.

"The pervasive use of advanced technologies and their low cost have reduced hands-on experiences for children, including the simple but overwhelmingly rewarding experience of taking things apart and putting them back together. Without this, technology becomes a mystery, leading to a perspective that might well be called 'magic consciousness'," observe the Alliance for Childhood authors.

"This consciousness is a perversion of the magical enchantment that naturally pervades a child?s world and is too quickly destroyed by adult insistence on viewing the world mechanically."
Long distance information

A few grown-ups would benefit from following the recommendations too. For years technology-advocates have made the lazy equation that "information" is "power" - but "information", we're belatedly discovering, doesn't in itself mean anything. As anyone who's watched the quality of online discussions deteriorate over the past ten years, "problem-solving deficit disorder" isn't entirely confined to schoolchildren. Many of today's debaters prefer "Fisking" - line-by-line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff - to rational debate or building a coherent argument.

During the 2004 Presidential TV debate season, technophiles advocated extending this approach to real-time "fact checking" of the candidates. But not all facts have equal value. And neither do they necessarily supply context - a blizzard of facts obscures the moral choices a voter weighs in making his decision.

For people who consider "facts" are an adequate substitute for knowledge, Google and the internet couldn't get here quickly enough.
And here's a similar article:
The Register wrote:Email destroys the mind faster than marijuana - study
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Friday 22nd April 2005 09:10 GMT

Modern technology depletes human cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs, according to a psychiatric study conducted at King's College, London. And the curse of 'messaging' is to blame.

Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users, in a clinical trial of over a thousand participants. Doziness, lethargy and an inability to focus are classic characteristics of a spliffhead, but email users exhibited these particular symptoms to a "startling" degree, according to Dr Glenn Wilson.

The deterioration in mental capacity was the direct result of the trialists' addiction to technology, researchers discovered.

Email addicts were bombarded by context switches and developed an inability to distinguish between trivial and significant messages. Incredibly, 20 per cent of trialists jeopardized their immediate social relations by rushing off to "check their messages" in the middle of a conversation.

Wilson's research is no flash in the pan. Computer technology in its modern, "interconnected" form is dumbing down the population more rapidly than television.

A study of 100,000 school children in over 30 countries around the world testified that non-computer using kids performed better in literacy and numeracy schools than PC-using children. Education experts have dubbed it the "problem solving deficit disorder".

Awash with facts, we've forgotten how to think.

King's College's pioneering study focussed solely on messaging - but there are many other emerging technologies that could be dumbing down technologies too, and their consequences haven't been fully explored.

We look forward to studies that examine the IQ lossage involved in the many other unavoidable parts of everyday life. Chores such as editing the Windows Registry (-2) , writing a weblog (-15), or reading the Ask Jack column in The Guardian (-175).
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Post by neoak »

500 books? How much space they can take? :roll:

IMO, the article is true. Kids are not ready for computers. They just degenerate and all the time they do is chat through Messenger, send *&^%&$# Fowards, and visiting Jokes sites and things like that.
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Post by |darc| »

It's thinking...
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Post by butters »

Kids need computers just like we do, but in moderation. Parents have gotten lazy raising their kids. In my generation they would let the TV or Nintendo babysit their kids. Now they are letting the computer do it.

I can see a way to give kids unlimited access to a computer without any of the problems mentioned in the article. Simply give the kid a restricted account that can only use certain apps, install a web filter that you can customize, and check up on the kid from time to time. It all comes down to parenting in the end.
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Post by greay »

They said the same thing about books when those became widly available.
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Post by Ex-Cyber »

Computers don't "make kids dumb". The problem is that our ability to make quality hardware has vastly outstripped our ability to find worthwhile things to do with it, so it's become an expensive, time-consuming toy for many people.
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Re: How computers make kids dumb

Post by mattcky666 »

Fragger wrote:
The Register wrote:How computers make kids dumb
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Monday 21st March 2005 20:45 GMT

Comment A study of 100,000 pupils in 31 countries around the world has concluded that using computers makes kids dumb. Avoiding PCs in the classroom and at home improved the literacy and numeracy of the children studied. The UK's Royal Economic Society finds no ground for the correlation that politicans make between IT use and education.

The authors, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of Munich University, used the PISA tests to measure the skills of 100,000 15 year-olds. When social factors were taken into account, PC literacy was no more valuable than ability to use a telephone or the internet, the study discovered.

"Holding other family characteristics constant, students perform significantly worse if they have computers at home," the authors conclude. By contrast, children with access to 500 books in their homes performed better. The negative correlation, the researchers explain, is because children with computers neglect their homework more.

The Royal Society's quantitative approach mirrors concerned raised by qualitative analysis of technology in education. Children are now awash with "facts", but don't know what to do with them.

Schoolchildren are developing a "problem-solving deficit disorder", and losing the ability to analyze. A better way, experts insist, is to encourage creativity. And the best remedy for this is to turn off the computer and stimulate childrens' imaginations.

The value of creativity, imagination and critical thinking over "information" access is self-evident, you'd think. But an alliance of convenience between technology vendors, who want to stuff more unwanted computers into classrooms, lazy governments, for whom IT is a way of appearing "modern" while cutting education budgets, ensures the issue doesn't stay in the headlines for very long.

In the US, programs designed to connect schools to the internet have become a pork barrel for questionable sales tactics from the some of the industry's biggest vendors.

"Technology is not destiny, its design and use flow from human choices" the US Alliance For Childhood wrote in its critical report Tech Tonic: Towards A New Literacy last September. This was a follow-up to the Alliance's scathing report Fools Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood, which is also available in Spanish. Both are free PDF downloads from the Alliance's website, and a good resource for concerned parents.

"The pervasive use of advanced technologies and their low cost have reduced hands-on experiences for children, including the simple but overwhelmingly rewarding experience of taking things apart and putting them back together. Without this, technology becomes a mystery, leading to a perspective that might well be called 'magic consciousness'," observe the Alliance for Childhood authors.

"This consciousness is a perversion of the magical enchantment that naturally pervades a child?s world and is too quickly destroyed by adult insistence on viewing the world mechanically."
Long distance information

A few grown-ups would benefit from following the recommendations too. For years technology-advocates have made the lazy equation that "information" is "power" - but "information", we're belatedly discovering, doesn't in itself mean anything. As anyone who's watched the quality of online discussions deteriorate over the past ten years, "problem-solving deficit disorder" isn't entirely confined to schoolchildren. Many of today's debaters prefer "Fisking" - line-by-line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff - to rational debate or building a coherent argument.

During the 2004 Presidential TV debate season, technophiles advocated extending this approach to real-time "fact checking" of the candidates. But not all facts have equal value. And neither do they necessarily supply context - a blizzard of facts obscures the moral choices a voter weighs in making his decision.

For people who consider "facts" are an adequate substitute for knowledge, Google and the internet couldn't get here quickly enough.


*link already posted*
the other story was quite recent though
Last edited by mattcky666 on Sun Apr 24, 2005 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How computers make kids dumb

Post by butters »

mattcky666 wrote: http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewto ... =computers

the other story was quite recent though
You do realize |darc| linked to that topic 3 posts ago right? Or was your redundancy for a reason?

Heh, now I'm laughing out loud thinking about redundancy in a redundant post.
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Post by SuperMegatron »

"Holding other family characteristics constant, students perform significantly worse if they have computers at home," the authors conclude. By contrast, children with access to 500 books in their homes performed better."
This study is crap. Having 500 books means a family is wealthy and by default their kids would do better. A more accurate study would take the computer out of a kids house bring in 500 books and look for a change in their grades.
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Haven't read the article but yeah, people were so damn intelligent just yesterday (think of colonialization, slavery, racism, facism, industrialization without trade unions) because they had 500 books but today's and tomorrow's generations'll be as dumb as rocks... because of computers... Nah...
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Post by Egotistical EvilN »

Uh...500 books means your rich? I picked up 20 or so last week at the thrift store for $10, and a set of encyclopedias for $15.
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Post by greay »

EvilN wrote:Uh...500 books means your rich? I picked up 20 or so last week at the thrift store for $10, and a set of encyclopedias for $15.
Whether or not books are actually expensive, they're still luxury items. And a household with that many is most likely wealthy.
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Post by |darc| »

EvilN wrote:Uh...500 books means your rich? I picked up 20 or so last week at the thrift store for $10, and a set of encyclopedias for $15.
Do you honestly think that the average blue collar family has the time to select 500 pertinent books for their children? Do you think they'll actually know what is needed and required of their children in their courses? Do you think they'll know this stuff even though they most likely don't have any clue about the school topics themselves?

And what books did you pick up at the thrift store? The only books you're really going to get any good information out of are larger nonfiction textbooks.
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Post by Egotistical EvilN »

1)Yes. If they have an hour of free time a day, they can decide on books.
2)Ask teachers. Common sense.
3)Ask teachers. Common sense.

Particularly good samples, and all of these costing less than $1?
Alien Years
3 other Silverburg books
Wind in the Willows
IvanHoe
Pride and Prejudice

I can take a photo of my thrift store library, if you like.
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Post by |darc| »

EvilN wrote:1)Yes. If they have an hour of free time a day, they can decide on books.
Maybe you don't realize this because you're homeschooled, but no working class parent is going to want to take time out of their day to think about books. The parents would have nowhere to start.
EvilN wrote:2)Ask teachers. Common sense.
By the time the teacher gives the parent a good summary of what is needed in books, the teacher could have just taught the parents the course. Working class parents aren't exactly the most educated. You can't just say "oh, get a book on <topic>." It doesn't work that way. If you want truly pertinent books you need a background.
EvilN wrote:3)Ask teachers. Common sense.
How do you just "ask teachers" everything? Are you saying one day after school the teacher should teach the entire course to the parent? :roll: Its hard for a parent to play a role in their child's education when the parent is horribly undereducated.
EvilN wrote:Particularly good samples, and all of these costing less than $1?
Alien Years
3 other Silverburg books
Wind in the Willows
IvanHoe
Pride and Prejudice
Novels have literary value but not much else. You're not going to gain anything from them besides some English skills and an expanded vocabulary. I made that point in my first post.
EvilN wrote:I can take a photo of my thrift store library, if you like.
Sure... go ahead...
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Post by Covar »

|darc| wrote: Novels have literary value but not much else. You're not going to gain anything from them besides some English skills and an expanded vocabulary. I made that point in my first post.
not true, you can learn a lot of stuff indirectly by reading books. example i learned a lot about english words, and culture through the harry potter books. Hatchet and My side of the mountain are about surviving in the wilderness, and in reading them a person will be a little more informed than someone who knows nothing about the wild. never actually learned in a class what to do about a poisonous snake bite, but i did read or saw on tv about sucking out the poison. i knew about the ranks of military officers by watching M*A*S*H. Theres a lot of info besides vocabulary to be learned by reading fiction, just because it doesn't out and out tell you doesn't mean its not there.
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Post by |darc| »

Covar wrote:
|darc| wrote: Novels have literary value but not much else. You're not going to gain anything from them besides some English skills and an expanded vocabulary. I made that point in my first post.
not true, you can learn a lot of stuff indirectly by reading books. example i learned a lot about english words, and culture through the harry potter books. Hatchet and My side of the mountain are about surviving in the wilderness, and in reading them a person will be a little more informed than someone who knows nothing about the wild. never actually learned in a class what to do about a poisonous snake bite, but i did read or saw on tv about sucking out the poison. i knew about the ranks of military officers by watching M*A*S*H. Theres a lot of info besides vocabulary to be learned by reading fiction, just because it doesn't out and out tell you doesn't mean its not there.
Yeah I understand, perhaps I should've elaborated on that more.

I don't think those 500 books they were talking about had much room for fiction, though.
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Post by Covar »

maybe
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Post by Ender »

Bah. I don't think it's particularly surprising. I mean really, I know I had way better math skills before I started using calculators.
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Post by Lartrak »

never actually learned in a class what to do about a poisonous snake bite, but i did read or saw on tv about sucking out the poison
It's often not the best idea, because your mouth is very sensitive and is filled with small cuts due to contact with teeth. You can sometimes make snake bites WORSE by sucking out the poison.
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