Monday, September 05, 2011

The DC Mind, Part 207,444

On the topic of "computers for all in the classroom!!!!"

...Since the Clinton Administration, liberal “experts” have argued that giving every kid a laptop, “educational” software and Internet access will produce a generation of geniuses. That has to be the stupidest idea in the history of education. Of course, it hasn’t worked. But that doesn’t discourage the New Age nerds who run the Obama adminstration’s education policy.

Computers are tools, just like socket wrenches and hammers.  Excel is a super-speedy way to crunch numbers, Word helps you spell; but access to the 'net does not make you smarter.  It only gives you access to a lot of ideas, some of which are worthwhile.

The Times reports on the miserable performance of students in Arizona’s Kyrene school district, where taxpayers have spent $33 million to digitize classrooms since 2005

(Flat since 2005)

...Obama’s National Education Technology Plan calls for a “transformation of American education” that will be “powered by technology”:
The National Education Technology Plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, calls for applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement.
Obama’s report echoes a 1997 Clinton administration plan urging the same thing. There isn’t a lot of research to support the notion that saturating classrooms with high-tech toys, but the American counterparts of the Slobovian Agricultural Ministry don’t have any other ideas.

There are counter-examples.

...the moronic liberal elite tries to keep kids “engaged” in the classroom with video games. It is the antithesis of education, which begins with discipline and extended concentration span. A tsunami of talent is spilling out of Asia–not just musicians and artists, but mathematicians and engineers and physicists who are as comfortable with Mozart as with quantum mechanics.

(One can argue that many PRC "academic achievers" are matchbook-college graduates.  But one can NOT argue that the kids cited above do not exist.)

Spengler's suggestion:  classical music lessons for the kiddies.  He's serious, and he's right.

1 comment:

Jimfavreur said...

I don't know if a computer is like socket wrenches . I can at least figure out how to work socket wrenches . I remember when I first started using a computer. I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on. I kept thinking that I just had to press the keys on the keyboard.