Don't bother buying computers for schools, says OECD report

A new report published today by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says that “even countries which have invested heavily in information and communication technologies for education” cannot point to improved reading, mathematics or science among students. Teaching basic literacy and numeracy, the …

[veti]

Is it my imagination

... or have we seen this story before? Approximately once every four to eight months for the past ten years or so?

And yet there has been, so far as I know, no slowdown in the sale of computers to schools. Nor will there be this time.

Because if any politician wants to be seen as spending on education, buying a few computers is a lot cheaper than training and employing more teachers. Ditto if any company wants to burnish its "community" credentials. And for the schools themselves, it gives them something to brag about to prospective punters. Deploying computers is a lot easier than improving test scores.

So yeah. I don't doubt this is true, but it's irrelevant because nobody cares. That's not what the computers are there for.

[420Penguin]

Re: Is it my imagination

I agree. It is easier to quantify the results of money spent on computers -- you get physical objects -- than money spent on teacher training and art and music where the end result of developing students into better people is ephemeral. In fact, when the computers arrive they are used to train students in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint... all the better to make good worker drones. It is better to spend the time teaching students how to think logically and develop real problem-solving abilities, but that could make them dangerous to entrenched interests.

Do computers have a place in schools? Yes, if they're used to teach the fundamentals of technology by allowing the kids to pull them apart, reassemble them and work with Open Source Software, but only as an elective for those kids so inclined. Unfortunately, nothing is going to stop the technology-buying juggernaut spurred on by manufacturers, middlemen, education technology lobbies (like Code.org and Fwd.us) and the politicians and school administrators that they have seduced.

[.,.]

Re: Is it my imagination

"if any politician wants to be seen as spending on education, buying a few computers is a lot cheaper than training and employing more teachers"

Had to laugh at this. I'm currently involved in a project to get old kit (from businesses, old schools, universities, etc - basically anywhere that is looking to dispose of a ton of uniform kit) into local schools. Most of the schools I deal with had Pentium 4's, or older, running XP, and in some cases, even Windows 2000!

Their entire IT budget gets spent on projector lamps (all of which desperately need replacing), the cost of internet + filtering, software licensing and an IT technician. New computers? BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

[Jim 59]

Re: Is it my imagination

Another bear on the woods?

It's not the technology but what you do with it. In the early 80s my school had 1283 pupils and one computer. But computer was always busy, it was always being programmed. For several years, the school churned out Computer Studies pupils capable of programming.

Then came the great dumbening of the Labour years. School got 100 computers or whatever, and the kids just learned powerpoint. British software industry migrated overseas. Was last seen in Asia. Where, surprisingly, the school computers are always busy, always being programmed...

[Tom 13]

Re: training and employing more teachers.

That's not the answer either, at least not in the US and probably not in the UK which for all the differences, I expect have largely similar systems even though we tend to emphasize the differences. The problem is the quality of the teachers. I was smarter than at least half my teachers in school and could run circles around them pretty much whenever I wanted to. Some of them were downright worthless like my astronomy teacher (who was otherwise a good friend from other activities) or counterproductive like my chemistry and physics teachers. In all my years, I only had one outstanding teacher, ironically in my worst subject: mathematics. He left teaching for administrative work the year I graduated. He should have had another 20 good years of teaching kids geometry and probability and statistics. He also introduced me to computer programming. Yes, some of the reason he left was money. With two kids going to college, his expenses were headed up dramatically. But more of it came down to the classes he taught. The last time I saw him he said to me: "Tom, some of the classes like yours I really enjoyed teaching. But typically half of them, I feel like a machine up here. Maybe the faces change a bit, but they're interchangeable and not interested in learning." He felt he needed to get out before he became a bad teacher.

Full disclosure: as what was termed an Honors student in my school, I generally had the best teachers available in the school. You know the old joke about half of them are dumber than average? Yeah, my teachers were in the top 10%.

[frank ly]

I wonder why

"The USA and UK skipped the digital literacy test and therefore created some statistical kinks that required ironing out, likely giving critics a useful starting point for alternative analyses."

Any theories?

[Grikath]

Re: I wonder why

Pretty simple:

Modern education is heavily geared to turn individuals into happy, well-adjusted ( if medicated) Citizens, ready to enter the treadmill of the Workforce. Developing an analytical mind is most definitely not part of the curriculum ( unless you're in the Right School, of course) , given that individuals with that particular skill tend to be able to poke holes in the smoke-and-mirrors of the System, and we can't have that now, can we?

Bureaucracy being what it is, the Powers that Be, however, are wholly convinced it is possible to train an analytical mind which is solely employed to the subjects the flavour-du-jour demands, and nothing else. Generally in the time-honoured traditions of throwing Committees, Evaluation Reports, and loads of Citizen-generated money towards the people who have been in the Right Schools in a firm pro-active manner.

Which, of course, fails, given that the basic skills needed for a successful programmer ( or technician of any kind) are Anathema to the System, and must be stamped out at any cost.

Remember kids! Creativity, critical thought , and analytic minds breed Terrorists!! Think of the Children!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I wonder why

Oh, for fucks sake, quit with the conspiracy theorist bullshit. The reason educational systems tend not to develop analytical skills is because it's harder to teach, especially with larger classes.

It's a similar same problem as teachers not being able to take full advantage of technology, which needs:

(1) money to train

(2) time to train

(3) time to practice

(4) (probably most important) technophobic teachers to be booted out. My wife was the "expert" in her small school, a friend is the "expert" in her workplace: it's not because they're gurus, it's because they're open to the technology and willing to learn.

[Charles Manning]

Well duh....

Having been involved in homeschooling, as well as a developer for over 30 years, I am sometimes asked by people as to what computer their 12 year old darling should get to learn about computing.

I tell them none.

Even if the 12 yo wants to grow up as a programmer, they can learn a lot without any computer at all. Rather get a big tub of Lego. Programming is basically about design and debugging. Both of these are skills you can learn with Lego.

So you want to build a bridge? Well you can just hoe into it, or you can take a slightly structured approach, building towers, testing them then building something to join them together. The process of designing a program is not much different: break the problem down into smaller pieces.

Then do some analysis as to why bits broke off the bridge. Is there a better way to bond the bricks so they are stronger? Try different ideas.... ie debugging.

Many of the programming problems I work with on a daily basis are due to bottlenecks causing buffer overflows etc. Basically plumbing problems.

But no, people want to give their kids computers because it seems fashionable.

[Naselus]

Re: Well duh....

"Even if the 12 yo wants to grow up as a programmer, they can learn a lot without any computer at all. Rather get a big tub of Lego."

I certainly learned a lot from my Lego Pirates Turbo Pascal set, with the special compiler bricks.

[dotdavid]

Re: Well duh....

"Even if the 12 yo wants to grow up as a programmer, they can learn a lot without any computer at all. Rather get a big tub of Lego"

The computer is far cheaper nowadays.

[Ole Juul]

The old man was right

"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." ~ Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: The old man was right

Well, a mastery of some human language, anyway. It needn't necessarily be your native one.

[SBU]

15 year olds require more than the basics

Teaching basic literacy and numeracy, the report adds, “will do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than solely expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services.”

If your teaching basic literacy and numeracy to 15 year olds, you missed the boat.

[Dr Scrum Master]

Re: 15 year olds require more than the basics

If your teaching basic literacy and numeracy to 15 year olds, you missed the boat

Is correct use of the apostrophe considered basic these days or not?

[SBU]

Re: 15 year olds require more than the basics

derp. Oh well....

[A Non e-mouse]

Teacher Vs Equipment

The best thing you can do to help anyone learn (adult or child) is to give them a knowledgeable, inspiring, passionate teacher.

[P. Lee]

Re: Teacher Vs Equipment

and take away distractions.

Like, er, computer games, instagram, facebook, instant messaging, video messaging.

Sorry, what was it you wanted to buy again?

[Roland6]

Re: Teacher Vs Equipment

>and take away distractions.

Like, er, computer games, instagram, facebook, instant messaging, video messaging.

You mean give them OS/2 or even a PCW8256?

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: Teacher Vs Equipment

Good teachers are in my experience essentially the ONLY way to get good results.

Shiny equipment is NOT a requirement. I so often wish I could modify students' computers to have one Megabyte of RAM and run at 10 MHz (at least when the program is being executed). The mentioned Pentium4 systems are pretty much overkill when it comes to learn programming.

A necessary condition is that the student is motivated and wants to learn (by his/her own effort).

Internet (and telephone) usage in class is harmful in the vast majority of cases.

[Tom 13]

Re: The mentioned Pentium4 systems

Best computer for learning programming at that age?

I'd stand by the venerable Radio Shack/Tandy TRS-80 Model III or IV, except of course they are out of business. I'm sure many of you would prefer the venerable Sinclair.

It came up to the basic programming prompt on a b&w screen. You had to type in the program yourself, debug it, and get it to run right. Simple things like running a grocery tab. My foray into the depths of programming was inspired by more aforementioned Probability and Statistics teacher's favorite bar bet: How many people do you need in a bar before you have a better than 50% chance they were born on the same day of the year (month and day)? It's a hell of a lot lower than most people think, so it can be an easy way to make money if you can get people to take the bet. So I wanted to run a statistical sample to see how high I could get before you got two. (I don't think I ever got above 40.) Then it changed into a variation on playing craps where re-rolled numbers didn't count and you were looking to see how many rolls it took to reach an end condition. That in turn morphed into writing a black jack program (which I never quite got working right because of a problem working splits, but the edge cases [3 or 4 splits in one hand] were so rare it didn't really affect playability).

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: The mentioned Pentium4 systems

It came up to the basic programming prompt on a b&w screen.

Really, I think, what you want is a fairly minimalist interactive UI. Minimize distractions and provide immediate feedback. That could be an '80s-style BASIC interpreter,¹ or LISP's REPL (or that of any other language that provides one),² or even a graphical drag-and-drop programming environment like the Logo variant that comes with the Sugar OS. Don't overwhelm neophytes with options and don't let them be easily distracted or tempted to search for solutions without understanding the problem.

I think something like Scratch has a lot of potential. It should do a good job of providing peer incentives - kids can make things that will impress their friends - which is why, for example, we see a lot of kids creating stuff in Minecraft. But it seems like a bit much for a young child who's never done any programming.

¹Here, as was not infrequently the case, Djikstra is entertaining but wrong. BASIC may be a horrible programming language for several reasons, but it doesn't prevent anyone from learning other languages and better habits.

²You could call the classic BASIC interpreter a REPL, but arguably it isn't really one, because there's a fairly stark modal difference between immediately evaluated expressions and ones that are bound to line numbers for later evaluation.

[Steven Roper]

You don't need new computers

If you're simply using them to access information, type up documents and perform basic graphics functions, an old Pentium running XP will do the job as well as anything else. Using a multi-core processor with gigabytes of RAM to run a web browser and word processor is akin to using a mining dragline to dig your backyard veggie patch.

Schools would be much better off investing in better teachers and teaching methods, than needlessly upgrading technology that does nothing more than what they have already.

[DropBear]

Re: You don't need new computers

...and using anything with a single core to interact with someone - yes, absolutely, even on an XP - is akin to using a nail file to cut through the bars of a prison window: you'll get there eventually, if you don't die of old age first. Software, even open source - especially open source - relies universally on all sorts of let's just say less than efficiently coded bloated libs these days and hogs a single core like there's no tomorrow. Nothing is written to be usable without multiple cores anymore. And the fact that single-core machines are quite likely to not be able to play HD video (not even 720p, let alone full HD) acceptably - which is kinda important in a lot of educational videos these days (they fully expect you to be able to read code on screen-casts for instance) - makes single-core machines a really poor choice for anything other than a server in a closet these days. I'm typing this on a single-core XP so believe me I have the full experience...

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: You don't need new computers

No downvote, but I must say I disagree with pretty much any and all points in your comment (and I teach HPC). Anyone who cannot program efficiently for single core system should not program at all. I am aware that this opinion is not very popular.

[Tom 13]

Re: this opinion is not very popular.

Correct ones so rarely are.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: You don't need new computers

I dispute that it is not possible to use single-core computers for real work. But I accept that Pentium 4's and earlier systems should be retired, mainly because this processor only delivered it's promised performance on code written specially for it.

I recently stopped using a Pentium-M single core laptop as my main personal machine. It still performed fine for web browsing, media playing, word processing, spreadsheet etc under Ubuntu 14.04 with Gnome Failback. Still perfectly acceptable performance, and would run XP in VirtualBox at an acceptable speed as well.

I stopped using it because it only supported IDE disks, and the disk was failing. Tried buying a largish (100GB+) 2.5" IDE drive recently? Even second hand, one would have cost me more than the machine I replaced it with!

But there's lots of ex-corporate Core-2 Duo and i3 systems knocking around in the second-user market at very reasonable cost. The biggest problem is the supposed non-transferable Windows license, even though most of them were delivered with a license, but were immediately imaged with a corporate volume license by the purchasing company. Often, the license on the bottom of the machine was never activated!

[DropBear]

Re: You don't need new computers

"I dispute that it is not possible to use single-core computers for real work."

Oh, I know it can be - that's exactly what I use it for, eight hours every day; and it burrrrrrns! Oh, the humanity! Recently I had to start up a virtual machine on it for work - it made me start looking around for available hibernation capsules...

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: You don't need new computers

Nothing is written to be usable without multiple cores anymore

The OLPC XO used a single-core Geode LX700, and did its job - which, mirabile dictu, included the very thing this article is about - just fine.

[Fraggle850]

The three R's

I have previously worked in the education sector in a non-teaching role and came to a similar conclusion. There's little point trying to teach anything unless a child has attained a certain level in the basics. There are a significant number who don't have this when they start secondary education at age 11: these pupils will fall by the wayside. As also alluded to in the article these will tend to be pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

There's no point in learning to use a word processor if you can't read or write and no point in learning about spreadsheets if you can't do sums long hand.

[Tom 13]

Re: The three R's

I had a similar though about El Reg's headline. If you haven't taught them the basics by 15, they're already lost.

That's about the age I was when I WAS introduced to my first real computer. Having the basics allowed me to use it to explore new ideas. Sometimes a better PC was cool. One of my friends had an Apple IIe with a good graphics display. We used it to run the actual plots of the Sin Theta/Theta curve. Cool. Because of that I have this vivid image in my mind and I know it goes to 1 even if I couldn't always recall the proof.

[Fraggle850]

Re: The three R's

I was first exposed to computers at the age of 13, we had a Commodore Pet at school, shortly thereafter I saved my paper round money and got a second hand ZX81, followed by a Spectrum a year or so later. Once I had the speccy's 'advanced' graphics capabilities I also used to plot mathematical functions for fun. Wouldn't have done that if I hadn't had the maths in place beforehand.

We used to have a ten question maths test first thing in the morning in my final year of primary school. I wonder how common that is these days?

[Mark 85]

All these studies over the years about this have the same result. See icon for appropriate response.

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed the boat

The current application teaching is almost a complete waste of time. The way forward is to bring back the BBC micro and the fantastic software we had then.

It taught co-operation, communication (between pupils) problem solving, lateral thinking, group problem solving and many more highly desirable things.

This will never happen again, even at the time, many people did not 'get it'.

Children learnt to read and comprehend what they read without effort. They developed mathematical skills with ease. (Some children, not all of course)

Usually this was achieved with one or two computers in the classroom with a small group working together on the computer, labs were a waste of time.

I remember sitting in a primary classroom seeing a group of children doing research and publishing a multimedia report using an Archimedes . Move forward to the Apple/PC application focused approach in a secondary school (may have been the same pupils) and I was in a classroom where a pupil spent 45 minutes choosing a bit of clip art for his one page word document.

[DropBear]

Re: Missed the boat

I remember grouping up around the 2-3 PCs in the classroom too. What happened without fail every single time is the resident nerd got pushed forward into the hot seat to do his thing while the rest either watched (careful not to distract him if possible) or just chatted obliviously. Oh, and that boat sailed indeed, for good. Much like how ham radio suddenly sounds a lot less interesting when you can call absolutely anyone in the world with something that fits in the palm of your hand, not even a nicely done bubble sort has the same appeal these days as it did back when DOS FoxPro was the epitome of computing...

[Chika]

Re: Missed the boat

In a way, I agree. The various Acorn machines were a bit expensive but they did what they were supposed to do and were pretty solid beasts too. None of that "I must upgrade every three years" nonsense (I still have two RiscPCs under the desk and a BBC Micro elsewhere in the house!)

The thing was that the various Acorns from the Beeb onwards were pretty much designed for education. Lest we forget, much of the kit was designed around an education series.

It meant that a lot of the kit was designed not just for learning how to use office products or programming but to learn all sorts of things. The Microsoft based kit was never really designed that way, but the various governors and such decided to yank (sic) all of the Acorn kit out and replace it with Windows stuff because they believed the Microsoft/Intel bull and didn't take notice of those that had to actually use the damn things in the classroom.

It's the reason why I now totally support the whole Raspberry Pi thing, partly because it can handle things like RISC OS (though the Raspbian version of Linux is a good substitute) and all that it was capable of but mostly because it is a versatile, cheap and capable system that was designed for educational use.

[Potemkine]

ADD

So there's no magic pill after all to solve all of our problems? We really have to think to find a solution working in the real world? How cruel... let's play candy crush on our smartphones, it's much more fun.

[Robert Grant]

This conclusion is massively unsurprising

It's because education policy is undoubtedly designed by people (and influenced by parents) who think that technology is learning how to use Word.

Pretty much everything that's been invented so far has been invented by people who didn't use a tablet at a young age, or a computer in school (except for producing nice-looking reports and presentations). Teaching them to use products is not worth it, as those products probably won't be around in 15 years' time.

[Necronomnomnomicon]

They're also missing the obvious - children taught with computers to hand are then tested in rooms without computers, so can only use stuff they've committed to their actual memory. That's not how most people in the modern workplace are going to behave. If you can remember how to do calculus or getting the volume of a sphere after a quick google search, you're going to be only marginally less effective as someone who learned it by rote unless you're trapped somewhere you can't do a quick google search. And you can do that from the International Space Station.

Unless they're going on to do any more maths-based subject, what's the point of trying to get kids to memorise it perfectly when familiarity with the concepts is all that they need?

[DropBear]

That has always bugged me too - except you can completely drop "computers" and nothing changes: just replace with "books". So why exactly do we have traditions of centuries of demanding people to blindly memorize things they well know they can find in a book?!? Yes, it will take slightly longer initially, but we all know most of us use a quite narrow set of knowledge on a day-by-day basis, which would quickly become entrenched as experience even for someone using books... why the hell do we do this - why do we insist testing them deprived of access to the books they learned from...?

[A Non e-mouse]

Let's go one step further. Why do we now only teach kids how to pass exams? Why can't we teach kids to think (critically) for themselves? That's a much more valuable skill to have in life.

[Michael Wojcik]

Why do we now only teach kids how to pass exams?

In the US, it's because exams offer a sham of accountability, which means politicians can use them to 1) coddle up to parents and 2) browbeat teachers.

More generally, bureaucrats love metrics, even if they don't measure anything useful.

[The Mole]

Which of course is why the teaching pendulum swung to preferring course work and analytical type questions rather than memory recall (particularly in subjects like history). However then 'everybody' started complaining that it made getting the qualifications too easy as the students could copy from each other, plagiarize (or is that research?) and produce good work, also they no longer could recall key dates, so the pendulum has now swung back to concentrating on final exams benefiting the quick writers with good memories. Give it another 5 years and it will rebound back again...

[Glenturret Single Malt]

Most of us may indeed use a narrow set of knowledge in our daily activities but everyone has their own different narrow set. When a teacher is confronted with, say, 30 pupils in a class, that teacher has no idea what specific knowledge each pupil is going to need in the future. Most of the pupils will have no idea what they plan to do in later life and part of the work of teachers is to present a range, some of which may attract the interest and enthusiasm of just one individual. The entire class therefore has to be taught a broad range of ideas. I am also sufficiently old-fashioned enough (and retired!) to think that the ability to learn facts is a skill that can be learned and that pupils may actually be assisted by being made to learn something that has little use in future. In my case, French vocabulary.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only recount experience from exams at university. The Engineering bods had observed that's it's silly to test someone's ability to memorise stuff that's better looked up as needed from reference books. To that end, it was officially allowed (and in fact expected) that students would take a specific reference book into exams. That book was specifically written by three of the tutors to include all the common formulas and data that an engineer at our level would need - not a complete encyclopaedia of information, but a compilation of all the key information we might need (across all the branches of engineering).

I still have my "HLT" on the shelf.

Going further back, the debate when I was at school was whether to allow calculators. I think it was around the time that they were becoming common enough to decide that they should be included as PART of a students toolbox. They should only be allowed after learning the underlying maths, and part of using them should be to have instructions in how to use them. That latter bit is important and not as daft as it sounds - how many times have we seem obviously wrong results from people who have thrown garbage in and not known enough about the process to recognise the garbage coming out ?

[GrumpenKraut]

Memorization is quite unpopular, I know. As a bit of perspective, if you know the concepts good enough you do not need to memorize as you can deduce facts in your head (how unpopular is THAT?). I have yet to see one highly achieving individual who has to web-search basic facts of his/her own field. IMHO a web-search is an indication that there is a gap of knowledge.

The above is true for students, possibly less for pupils.

For an extreme example, students copy & paste the full text of a programming assignment into a search engine. This happens all the bloody time.

[dogged]

Derren Brown advocates the teaching of mnemonics as a classroom skill (and having done his audiobook on the subject, I'm inclined to agree).

A trained memory is an incredibly useful tool. I think those above advocating that we forget our own hardware are misguided

[Tom 13]

Re: marginally less effective as someone who learned it by rote

Nope. The guy who learned it by rote is always going to be more effective for precisely the reason that he understands what he is doing as opposed to using the magic "abracadabera" word to get things done.

In point of fact a friend who was over for gaming night proved you wrong this past weekend. He was reviewing some code were the original programmers did some quick Google lookups then wrote the program. My friend is a math major. He couldn't tell WTF they wrote, so he derived the equations himself. His code required about 20 fewer operations to generate the answer. Given a typical process run starts with 10 or 20 gigs of data and generates 10 times that in output, and the whole process will ingest a petabyte of data, this is a significant improvement.

[Anonymous Coward]

finally

"Let's go one step further. Why do we now only teach kids how to pass exams? Why can't we teach kids to think (critically) for themselves? That's a much more valuable skill to have in life."

Because school funding is based on the number of students who pass the tests.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: finally

Unfortunately, that's the flaw in my idealized plan. How do you measure a student's ability to think for themselves?

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: finally

By a test that requires the ability to think for yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

These Feel Good provisions sought by Telcos

These feel good provisions sought by Telcos to gain monopoly rights in communities are always a joke.

Governments give them more loopholes and taxbreaks in addition to monopoly rights in return for a pittance of bandwidth to libraries and schools, along with the government making grant funding available so inept social institution managers can look good by simply signing off on a boatload of computers they know zip about. This is like giving free pencils to village children in remote areas, leaving, and calling that education.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems with maths teaching, in particular

As a parent of older teens, I noticed their maths teaching was awful. The teachers weren't, but they were constrained by the curriculum. There was an enormous emphasis on remembering rules, rather than understanding what you were doing. One of my sons had a huge lightbulb moment when he asked me the formula for the volume of a triangular prism and he realised how, even though I didn't have it off the top of my head, I could work it out. (They had been given a huge list of prism volume formulae and been asked to memorise them without anyone pointing out it's just the area of the face times 'h'. Doing it this way makes maths boring and ineffective).

Secondly you have the 'I'll never need to find x" problem. For some reason there's a culture of maths having to have a purpose, and (some) kids react by saying "when will I ever need to know Pythagoras' theorem?" I have two answers: (1) it's just a matter of not being ignorant - do you really need to know the dates of the Second World War? Who wrote Great Expectations? And knowing stuff is fun. Even kids who don't seem to have any interest in anything can't help laughing at a caricature of the Pythagoreans banging their heads on the wall trying to wrap their minds round the fact that their lovely little theorem led to irrational numbers like sqrt(2). My second answer, however, is that you really don't know when you might find a use for it: my eminently practical neighbour was building a shed and used it to confirm that the foundations had right angles.

TL;DR: Uses are a bonus - knowledge for the sake of knowledge is the key. The problem with almost all (politician-directed) education is that it starts with uses, and treats knowledge as just an inconvenient necessity.

[DropBear]

Re: The problems with maths teaching, in particular

I'm all for children being introduced to all sorts of knowledge; what I'm absolutely not okay with is demanding full memorization of said knowledge "...or else!" style - there isn't really any way to have anyone learn something in a lasting manner unless a) they have an active interest in the subject (which is why showing it to them is indeed important - but make no mistake, only a vanishingly small percent of them will ever acquire actual interest and there's nothing more anyone can do to change that) or b) they end up using said knowledge daily within their profession. Ideally, it would be a) and b), not or, but that's not how the world works most of the time.

And the reason I'm saying all that is that indeed neither I nor anyone else I know did end up using more than maybe 2% of what they attempted to teach us in school - nor do we remember much any of it. 98% of what I did actually end up using I learned tinkering alone at home with transistors and later computers; none of that came from school, as best evidenced by the big fat nothing all those others learned there who had no particular interest and didn't do this sort of thing at home. They all got the degree though so I suppose everything is just peachy.

And it works much the same about general stuff - I know apparently disparate and obscure tid-bits of information about a rather large number of (not necessarily technical) things; yet I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be able to pass any general quiz exam, nor could I answer most questions you would happen to ask me. I simply have no interest in most of it. And that's "knowledge" I prefer to keep in a book - or better yet, in a searchable computer database - instead of trying to forcefully cram it into unwilling neurons that will barf it back out without a trace of ever having possessed it as soon as the exams are over... so sorry - as far as I'm concerned, use (or better yet, if possible - interest) is actually paramount.

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: The problems with maths teaching, in particular

I agree with you, though your opinion of the school system is even more negative than mine.

Here is what I tell students: "Only 10 per cent of what you learn here will be useful to you. But you do not know which 10 per cent that will be.".

Slight disagreement with your "none of that came from school, ...": the ability to read and write was most certainly useful for you! (but I do get the drift).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The problems with maths teaching, in particular

"I'm all for children being introduced to all sorts of knowledge; what I'm absolutely not okay with is demanding full memorization of said knowledge "...or else!" style" -- DropBear

I may not have been clear; perhaps 'learning' would have been a better word than knowledge because I entirely agree with you. What I meant to say is that it is the pleasure of learning and knowing in itself that needs to be encouraged, having to memorize lists of things is useless (it wasn't much good in the past, but these days, when you are rarely 1m away from an internet search engine, it is even worse).

[Ben Norris]

headline jumps to wrong conclusion

Writing pads don't magically make children smarter either, but they are equally vital to have.

This report is more about quashing false expectations, it absolutely does not say that computers are unnecessary in education.

[Selden]

Recently, I have been involved as a volunteer with teaching refugees (many barely literate in their own languages) how to work with computers, and it has been an eye opening experience. I am also a Top Contributor in Google's Chromebook forum, and see questions from people who can't even figure out how to copy a file (or in at least two cases, find the enter key, even though it's labeled "enter."

The reality of our 21st century world is that it's nearly impossible to function without exposure to these devices, so they need to be in schools. At least in the USA, many children do not have computers (or internet access) at home, and school or the public library (if they even have one) is the only place they are going to get such contact. Using a keyboard, mouse, and operating system are fundamental skills needed to survive in contemporary society. More and more employers require job applications by computer, so lacking these skills immediately shuts people out of the workplace.

A more serious problem may be that many teachers are ignorant of the technology that they are expecting their students to use. Computers are tools; how students use them depends largely on those who teach.

[hoola]

Shiny Computers

There are several points that are missed here:

1:

The monoliths that push tech into the schools at an "advantageous" price (Apple, Microsoft, RM, Capita etc) for their own gain.

Why the hell do you need a £300 iPad to display a web page that uses flash?

2:

The parents that expect the schools to have the same or better tech than the little darlings have at home. All too often parents judge the school on swanky kit rather than the quality of teaching. The school can never afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest every year just because it is new. For the last 5 years, there have been very few real gains in compute that would benefit most schools.

3:

The ridiculous purchasing requirements that tie the schools into buying completely inappropriate hardware at inflated prices. This final one is simply criminal as resellers, intermediaries and account managers all take a cut making mediocre hardware so expensive they cannot afford what is needed.

4:

And finally the completely out of control little darlings that will break, steal and or render non-working any piece of tech they can. The school is powerless to do anything about it because the same parents in point two never take any responsibility for their children's actions.

[Keven E]

Fundamental choices

Selden, you are describing a perspective/world view where you've already submitted to technology driving humanity. That's not how it's supposed to work. You've already succumbed to fear... or perhaps keep-up-with-the-jones-ism.

"The reality of our 21st century world is that it's nearly impossible to function without exposure to these devices, so they need to be in schools."... "...and more and more employers..."

Wrong. There is no logical inference there... at all. I reject your reality and substitute my own.

"Function without exposure"? "...these devices..."? Hilarity in word choice!

Fundamental skills (even computer ones) *should be learned at home from parents... or at least by/thru the 3rd/4th grade in US schools... instead of learning half the crap that students are tested on.. or expected to *memorize for a day.

The rest is capitalist/supply side economics bullshit.

[tjaich]

Not really

This article pretty much assumes the goal of purchasing technology for a school is to use them to magically raise test scores. That's not the case at all. At least on paper, school districts buy technology to help prepare students for a work force where they will have to use it. Not all of them will need to code, but many will need basic technology skills. Moreover, many students enjoy working with technology to do projects and lessons. Does that mean they could not learn without computers? Of course not, but if it is more enjoyable, why is that a bad thing?

As for politicians, the main driving force for supporting technology funding is the reverse of what this article claims. They don't want computers in schools to raise test scores. They want to use the computers for testing. Nowadays, kids take several tests per year on the computers. In some schools, that has become the main function of computer labs. They don't do this in hopes that scores will be higher. It's simply for the convenience of grading them electronically and maybe saving paper.