Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
How Can We Teach Children To Read If They...
Repost from Alex at Somebody Should Do Something
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Mountains of additional e-waste. Check.
Thousands (millions?) of children, who don’t posses the basic writing skills. Check.
Thousands (millions?) of children, who don’t posses the basic reading comprehension skills. Check.
A whole generation (or, now, two?) that does not posses actual critical thinking (or, actual computer) skills. Check.
Education dollars that could have been spent a lot more strategically and with a far better outcome, wasted. Check.
Private information, behavioral patterns, search patterns, writing patterns, etc. of thousands (millions?) of children handed over to some of the biggest privacy invaders of our time. Check.
No child left behind, indeed.
“Earlier this year, in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said that Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations, despite its unprecedented access to technology. He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one.
While skills measured by these tests, like literacy and numeracy, aren’t always indicative of intelligence, they are a reflection of cognitive capability, which Horvath said has been on the decline over the last decade or so.
Citing Program for International Student Assessment data taken from 15-year-olds across the world and other standardized tests, Horvath noted not only dipping test scores, but also a stark correlation in scores and time spent on computers in school, such that more screen time was related to worse scores. He blamed students having unfettered access to technology that atrophied rather than bolstered learning capabilities. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 also didn’t help.”
Gee Brain, and Who enabled that “unfettered access to technology”?
One would think that pouring over the results of PISA (provided by the OECD) would be at the top of the daily-things-to-do by any given member of any given board of education in the country. A couple of years ago, when chatting with a local board member (in Jefferson County, Colorado), I asked if they knew what OECD is. They did not. In a state (Colorado) that often likes to pretend as if it is somehow “worldly”, of all places.
To be fair (and as is evident from the quotations above), it was not Colorado that started this trend to kill off the good aspects of classical education. You know – ability to read, think critically, ability to write (gasp, with one’s hand, since that’s been scientifically shown to be intricately tied to one’s brain development). And then, to complement that classical education with the relevant and pertinent technology trends of the day, such as high-tech computer labs (yes, full of graphic cards to do the ML/AI stuff) and maker spaces stuffed with additive manufacturing equipment, etc.
As in, focus the hard-to-find education dollars strategically on things of higher value, where it makes sense. Oh, yeah, also increase the teacher salaries and support and enable them to be more autonomous based on their class’ needs, instead of levying more “standardized” bullshit on them to contend with, maybe? Then again, what would one expect from a large swath of “consultants” and “elected officials” who are out of touch, out of date, out of the real world (or have certain money-backed interests in mind)?
To be clear, we are NOT talking about the teachers and principals, but about the district-level bureaucrats and schools boards. Along with the “consultants” the boards (and city councils) seem to be so fond of.
Their, too often typical, approach is to lean on the “experts”. An “expert” will come to a School Board or a City Council meeting and spout off about their “research and data.” They even have shiny charts. That’s Power Point Slides for the old people in the room (those of us about the break a hip rocking out to the Beastie Boys).
Instead of listening to the said expert and then continuing further, independent, research, the “elected officials” will then turn around to the public, who is often begging them to consider a diversity of points of view, and say, “we have listened to the people and are holding a vote on a subject for which we’ve already formed an opinion on.” A bit reductive, perhaps, but, go ahead and attend a few of these board or council meetings. And pay a close attention to those political campaign contributions as well. Corporations (and other big money interests), being people and all, have a lot to say, it seems.
One could argue that the schools were spending exorbitant amounts on printed textbooks, before the computers were handed out to every kid. Yes, they were. So are college students. What if a fraction of the dollars spent on the “education technology” was spent on developing a “Star Trek” device that could provide paper-like readability and a tablet-like ability to scribble right on the loaded, free, textbooks. Textbooks that were actually standardized across the land. With the ability to submit bug reports, same as with software, to be reviewed and implemented via a panel of actual subject-matter experts. I know, sounds downright socialist, but if you want technology in the classroom, at least devise technology that’s actually useful for the task at hand.
It is imperative to provide paper-book-like experience, instead of the mess of the so-called resources today, served up on devices that are not conducive not only to reading, but to reading in a social setting.
“Studies on the inner workings of the brain confirm the idea that human interaction helps develop beginning readers’ capacity for understanding. But they suggest that reading paper books is associated with that progress, too. In one study, researchers found that 3- and 4-year-old children had more activation in language regions of the brain when they read a book with an adult like a parent than when they listened to an audiobook or read from a digital app. When they read on an iPad, activation was lowest of all. In another study, MRI scans of 8- to 12-year-olds showed stronger reading circuits in those who spent more time reading paper books than those who spent their time on screens.”
https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/books-vs-screens-what-does-the-latest-research-say
After you realize that a whole generation, or two, is now screwed, proceed to reading Andrew Yang’s latest post. It’s about to, potentially, get exponentially worse. Well, I have also said something along these lines before, but to be fair, Andrew is a touch more eloquent.
So, how about this call for action – it is long past time to hold the board of education members and other “elected officials” (think city council and state level) criminally liable for the decisions they have made (and continue to make) to the detriment of whole generations.
In Jefferson County (Colorado), there is no shortage of emails from the Board and the Superintendent about how much they “care about our children.” Everyone says they “care about the children” – it’s one of the quintessential go-to political moves. Instead of saying, “we have no clue about what the future holds and we are irrelevant skill-wise and have no business of being involved in setting the trends and curriculum for educating the future generations for things to come that we have never seeing before”, of course you say “we care about the children.” Then, you proceed to do all the things under the guise of “caring about the children”, while setting up the said children for failure. To be a touch fair, some parents should have a look in a mirror as well and ask why are the schools being treated as glorified day care by some. Reading to the kid, or just asking them if they did their homework costs nothing, but does require being involved as a parent. Handing them a tablet does not qualify as “being a parent” – then again, I am not an expert on such things.
How about holding those responsible (and there are many) criminally responsible for once? How will the country (and not just the provincial swaths of Colorado) recover from a whole generation (or two) of people who were setup for failure? Despite mountains of scientific research and real-word data, set on the road to failure, seemingly intentionally? Can an education board member plead ignorance or “that they relied on expert opinion” as defense in the court of law? Despite having a fiduciary responsibility to only consider the said expert opinion, but vote based on multiple, reliable sources of data and actual research)? Will people finally stop ostracizing those who kept saying that simply being able to write and read is not just “a boomer thing to do”?
Time will tell (and already is doing so, in the harshest ways possible) as to the enormous amount of harm done by the decisions of those who claim to “care about the children”.