The issue here is that the technology itself, instruction, and implementation was incredibly poor this century. Schools weren’t doing basic things like typing classes for primary school, there was no instruction on how to program or use the operating systems, and kids weren’t given PCs; they were given tablets and chrome books which favored internet access based learning platforms over products stored locally on machines.
I grew up during the 1980s, and my primary schools had 1 apple pc in the classroom. We took turns learning typing. We learned how to operate the machines by inserting floppies and typing commands. Things we were given access to were all instructional. I have vivid memories of learning math via computer with a program called number muncher.
Access to the tech was limited and supervised. This is what created an environment that taught me how to use computers as I transitioned to secondary education. This century, all of the implemented controls were related to limiting access to pornography rather than teaching students anything about the actual tech. Now we have a generation of people entering the workforce that don’t know how to use PCs just like the boomer demographic.
I grew up in the 90’s, there were Apple //es orMacs with edutainment software on them that we’d be taken to once a week, and by high school there were several computer labs full of Windows XP machines scattered around, a couple “public” ones that teachers would occasionally schedule to take the class to to do some research or type up an essay, and a few that were computer focused, I took a class on MS Office in one of those, and that’s where I was when I first heard the planes hit the towers.
About that time is when it felt like the manager and politician class latched on. That putting computers in schools made them look good, it was a bragging point, “Look how modern and up to date we are” so they’d start to cram computers in where they didn’t need to be. My junior year in college I took a calculus class that was in a CAD workstation classroom. We were told not to touch the large, loud computers on our desks and had to try to see the board around the monitors. That was probably the most egregious case but it happened a lot. “Don’t touch the computers, this isn’t a computer class.” Like all the fresh shiny equipment colleges will walk tour groups into, turn on the lights, show off that they have it, turn the lights back off because no classes take place in there, that equipment is for owning not teaching.
Now the shift is, kids get issued a chromebook and use that instead of pencil, paper and textbook. “We’ll use these because that’s what it’s like these days.”
Can confirm. I’ve spent several hours the last few weeks teaching a friend’s 24 year old daughter basic computer literacy on a W11 system. None of her friend group could help because they know just as little. When we started, she didn’t know how to shut down or reset the system.
I worked in a school system after 2011 in a county going technology first hard. They had thinkpads initially but the cost was so high for them that chromebooks became much more tantalizing as a budgetary measure. I do agree with you though whole hearted, because of a lack of instruction on computer usage and understanding kids were taught to just click this icon, do the work, be done with out. There was little to no attempt to explain the technology behind what they were doing. As a tech I would try to for the ones that’d listen but for them to really grasp it would require an actual class to do so.
As well kids are being given screens far too young for their developing minds and those screens allow access to short attention span favoring content and slop. If you Googled something you might remember more likely when I was a teen, you didn’t have instant access to it. Now y do and I think it’s detrimental what can be accessed.
When I first started working on computers in 1994, I thought that by 2010 every kid/teen/adult would be able to repair their computers themselves.
How wrong I was. They know how to use computers and tablets but the hardware is a mystery to them.
I worked at a STEM university and was helping a Computer Science student with his laptop. It had a SSD and a platter HD in it for storage. The platter HD was failing and needed replacing. I wrote to the student stating he “needed a new HD”. He had no clue what I meant. He didn’t even know it was possible to replace. He was going to buy a new laptop.
Capital is trying to corral all the tech into “the cloud” so they can control it all and rent it out forever.
They do not want anyone to know anything about hardware.
This most recent hubris with AI is because they think it can be used to create new tech and instruct installers so they no longer need ANY human capacity with knowledge.
Of course that was not and never will be true but isn’t it interesting how the billionaire class will pounce on any opportunity to cement their power without reliance on society hmmm it’s almost like they’re the fucking bad guys
I was born in 1996, but the older generation (it’s Russia) that remembers Soviet schools sometimes remembers Soviet educational PCs. Those were a few series, I don’t remember names, the point is there were Apple II clones and there were PDP-11 clones (but in PC form factor, even with networking ability in the sense of there being one master machine and slave machines booting from it ; but those were not terminals).
So, that older generation remembers as if something normal being taught to program in BASIC, FORTRAN, later C or Pascal and operate machines. Soviet life was quite a lot poorer than even 90s despite all the retroactive disdain for that decade, still informatics classes were apparently at least educationally useful and had at least one operable machine usually.
The 90s generations at least got some computer instruction of general use.
And my generation got Windows machines and no real understanding by anyone what informatics classes are even for. Unless it’s some special school or at least with math focus.
Things people were taught in the 80s and which somehow don’t transition at all to their operation of modern PCs, that contrast still terrifies me.
So - it’s the same everywhere, it seems, because of the idea prevalent in the 00s that my generation is going to just wing it because of being exposed to electronics since childhood. An absolutely nutcase and absolutely winning (in the sense of popularity) idea.
I even have a pre-school brochure somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, with algorithmic problems and solutions. The earlier the better.
One can think in paranoid/cynical ways - “fools are easier to rule” or “so that’s why they were pushing hacker movies in the 90s to scare everyone”. I honestly think it was just fear of some day being less than capable of understanding the technology we rely upon to keep breathing. And that fear is unsubstantiated, because similarly to that most people don’t understand city planning, logistics, oil refineries, electrical engineering and one can go on. But due to that fear of singularity it was easier to start imagining that somehow new generations will gain hard knowledge naturally.
But even that wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for Microsoft. Hate them with passion. EDIT: For managing to sell, coerce and impose their monopoly upon the world and upon education most of all
I feel this is just a tangent though. The main issue is kids test scores in math and reading not improving/dropping since switching to utilizing more technology. Whether they know how to use the OS properly or type faster was supposed to be a bonus to PCs in the classroom.
This article shows a lot of examples of teaching failures, but we need an actual study showing tech isn’t helping, or the correct way to teach with tech.
The issue here is that the technology itself, instruction, and implementation was incredibly poor this century. Schools weren’t doing basic things like typing classes for primary school, there was no instruction on how to program or use the operating systems, and kids weren’t given PCs; they were given tablets and chrome books which favored internet access based learning platforms over products stored locally on machines.
I grew up during the 1980s, and my primary schools had 1 apple pc in the classroom. We took turns learning typing. We learned how to operate the machines by inserting floppies and typing commands. Things we were given access to were all instructional. I have vivid memories of learning math via computer with a program called number muncher.
Access to the tech was limited and supervised. This is what created an environment that taught me how to use computers as I transitioned to secondary education. This century, all of the implemented controls were related to limiting access to pornography rather than teaching students anything about the actual tech. Now we have a generation of people entering the workforce that don’t know how to use PCs just like the boomer demographic.
I grew up in the 90’s, there were Apple //es orMacs with edutainment software on them that we’d be taken to once a week, and by high school there were several computer labs full of Windows XP machines scattered around, a couple “public” ones that teachers would occasionally schedule to take the class to to do some research or type up an essay, and a few that were computer focused, I took a class on MS Office in one of those, and that’s where I was when I first heard the planes hit the towers.
About that time is when it felt like the manager and politician class latched on. That putting computers in schools made them look good, it was a bragging point, “Look how modern and up to date we are” so they’d start to cram computers in where they didn’t need to be. My junior year in college I took a calculus class that was in a CAD workstation classroom. We were told not to touch the large, loud computers on our desks and had to try to see the board around the monitors. That was probably the most egregious case but it happened a lot. “Don’t touch the computers, this isn’t a computer class.” Like all the fresh shiny equipment colleges will walk tour groups into, turn on the lights, show off that they have it, turn the lights back off because no classes take place in there, that equipment is for owning not teaching.
Now the shift is, kids get issued a chromebook and use that instead of pencil, paper and textbook. “We’ll use these because that’s what it’s like these days.”
Can confirm. I’ve spent several hours the last few weeks teaching a friend’s 24 year old daughter basic computer literacy on a W11 system. None of her friend group could help because they know just as little. When we started, she didn’t know how to shut down or reset the system.
I worked in a school system after 2011 in a county going technology first hard. They had thinkpads initially but the cost was so high for them that chromebooks became much more tantalizing as a budgetary measure. I do agree with you though whole hearted, because of a lack of instruction on computer usage and understanding kids were taught to just click this icon, do the work, be done with out. There was little to no attempt to explain the technology behind what they were doing. As a tech I would try to for the ones that’d listen but for them to really grasp it would require an actual class to do so.
As well kids are being given screens far too young for their developing minds and those screens allow access to short attention span favoring content and slop. If you Googled something you might remember more likely when I was a teen, you didn’t have instant access to it. Now y do and I think it’s detrimental what can be accessed.
When I first started working on computers in 1994, I thought that by 2010 every kid/teen/adult would be able to repair their computers themselves. How wrong I was. They know how to use computers and tablets but the hardware is a mystery to them.
I worked at a STEM university and was helping a Computer Science student with his laptop. It had a SSD and a platter HD in it for storage. The platter HD was failing and needed replacing. I wrote to the student stating he “needed a new HD”. He had no clue what I meant. He didn’t even know it was possible to replace. He was going to buy a new laptop.
Capital is trying to corral all the tech into “the cloud” so they can control it all and rent it out forever.
They do not want anyone to know anything about hardware.
This most recent hubris with AI is because they think it can be used to create new tech and instruct installers so they no longer need ANY human capacity with knowledge.
Of course that was not and never will be true but isn’t it interesting how the billionaire class will pounce on any opportunity to cement their power without reliance on society hmmm it’s almost like they’re the fucking bad guys
I was born in 1996, but the older generation (it’s Russia) that remembers Soviet schools sometimes remembers Soviet educational PCs. Those were a few series, I don’t remember names, the point is there were Apple II clones and there were PDP-11 clones (but in PC form factor, even with networking ability in the sense of there being one master machine and slave machines booting from it ; but those were not terminals).
So, that older generation remembers as if something normal being taught to program in BASIC, FORTRAN, later C or Pascal and operate machines. Soviet life was quite a lot poorer than even 90s despite all the retroactive disdain for that decade, still informatics classes were apparently at least educationally useful and had at least one operable machine usually.
The 90s generations at least got some computer instruction of general use.
And my generation got Windows machines and no real understanding by anyone what informatics classes are even for. Unless it’s some special school or at least with math focus.
Things people were taught in the 80s and which somehow don’t transition at all to their operation of modern PCs, that contrast still terrifies me.
So - it’s the same everywhere, it seems, because of the idea prevalent in the 00s that my generation is going to just wing it because of being exposed to electronics since childhood. An absolutely nutcase and absolutely winning (in the sense of popularity) idea.
I even have a pre-school brochure somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, with algorithmic problems and solutions. The earlier the better.
One can think in paranoid/cynical ways - “fools are easier to rule” or “so that’s why they were pushing hacker movies in the 90s to scare everyone”. I honestly think it was just fear of some day being less than capable of understanding the technology we rely upon to keep breathing. And that fear is unsubstantiated, because similarly to that most people don’t understand city planning, logistics, oil refineries, electrical engineering and one can go on. But due to that fear of singularity it was easier to start imagining that somehow new generations will gain hard knowledge naturally.
But even that wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for Microsoft. Hate them with passion. EDIT: For managing to sell, coerce and impose their monopoly upon the world and upon education most of all
I feel this is just a tangent though. The main issue is kids test scores in math and reading not improving/dropping since switching to utilizing more technology. Whether they know how to use the OS properly or type faster was supposed to be a bonus to PCs in the classroom.
This article shows a lot of examples of teaching failures, but we need an actual study showing tech isn’t helping, or the correct way to teach with tech.