back to article Parents blame brats' slipping school grades on crap internet speeds

Without the distraction of pissing around online, you'd think kids might stand a better chance of doing their homework. But it seems some parents blame their darlings' performance at school on crap broadband speeds. One in seven think sub-par internet speeds are negatively impacting their child's education, according to a …

  1. BebopWeBop
    Facepalm

    Well they have to have someone else to blame.

    And Openreach is an open target. Anything but themselves.

    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      One in seven...

      "One in seven think sub-par internet speeds are negatively impacting their child's education, according to a survey of 1,000 respondents by price comparison site uSwitch."

      I have to wonder how much of this is ginned up by all the commercials Verizon ran in the US showing kids in class reading reports they wrote with stuff like "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth buffering... buffering... buffering... buffering..."

      Seemed Verizon's idea of education is plagiarizing, and that faster internet speeds allows you to plagiarize "better".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: One in seven...

        Downvote for The Man Who simply because his post is totally unrelated to Bebops post. Using reply just to get your turdspurt at the top of the thread is Bad Form.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: One in seven...

        ...and therefore, according the the study, 6 out of 7 DO NOT see it as an issue.

        Majority rule. Do the math Little Darlings - that'll help your Mathematics grades.

        It's therefore a non sequitur. You may have to look that term i up, Little Darlings, in a paper book called a thesaurus - and that'll help your English grades.

        win/win

    2. John Lilburne

      Until the last 18mths I had internet speeds of approx 4Mbit. At times it could be 1.5Mb and at good times 5Mbit. This was plenty enough for accessing credibility impaired sites like wikipedia and you could listen to some YT video, it might take you a long, long time to download some ripped blu-ray film but they shouldn't be doing that anyway.

  2. JakeMS

    Mobile phones and Games Consoles, yeah that's educational.

    I guess if your kid is using Assassin's Creed for history class it's no surprise their falling behind!

    Video games are not entirely accurate....

    Mobile will probably be mobile games or facebook.. so again not educational

    Laptops and Tablets, fair enough you can do some work on those.

    Youtube? Well sometimes yes if you only watch educational feeds and not say music videos.

    But alas, I cannot judge I spent my teenage years doing coding and looking at, eh, stuff.

    Technology can be educational if used correctly. But not for example video games consoles!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wiki

      Seems to run on 56k fine when I was a kid.

      1. MrDamage Silver badge

        Re: Wiki

        > "Seems to run on 56k fine when I was a kid."

        56k? Luxury!

        When I were a lad, we had to send our bits at 300 baud, uphill both ways, while hoping the dogs wagging tail didn't bash into the telephone stand and knock the phone off the hook.

        1. MrT

          Re: Wiki

          300 baud? Ha! We could never wave t'flags that fast. One o' me pals tried to reach 10 baud but kept liftin' off t'floor - 'is solution wer to use smaller flags, but that limited range somewhat, except in t'lah-de-dah areas were they 'ad early roll-out of 'igh-powered optics from t'local Jessops store...

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Wiki

            @MrDamage & MrT

            May I remind the Hon Gentlemen https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/13/adsl_signal_passed_through_wet_string/

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Mobile phones

      Actually, looking at what has been pulled out from Amazon onto his Kindle junior clocks about the same on his mobile phone as on his tablet and proper Kindle combined. So mobile phone I can sort-a accept it - for example he was doing his GCSE Macbeth revision on it in the car yesterday.

      Ditto for wikipedia as a starting point (but not a definitive reference).

      Now games console... Gootube... Forget it.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      I guess if your kid is using Assassin's Creed for history class it's no surprise their falling behind!

      Assassin's Creed Origins does have a discovery mode, believe it or not. YouTube link, because it's educational, innit?

    4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Don't forget all that time wasted

      on social media by children today.

      Cut that out and you will get an improvement in grades.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I guess if your kid is using Assassin's Creed for history class it's no surprise their falling behind!

      Well, they did learn to sneak around, steal homework answers, enter room from the window, and dodge flying chalk. Those count as something, right?

  3. Richard Rae

    It's the new 'dog'

    I was at a loss for this, and realise that it's the new 'my dog ate it' excuse

    This also explains the lack of rural complaints... they actually still have the dog to provide the service!

  4. adnim

    There was no Internet

    when I was doing 'O' and 'A' levels. And we were taught the actual subject.

    I get the impressions that today's school children are taught how to pass exams.

    I used to love the peace and tranquillity of the school and local municipal libraries.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: There was no Internet

      I get the impressions that today's school children are taught how to pass exams.

      Schools are under huge pressure to get good exam results. That's all they care about. Helping children in the real world isn't important.

      It's just like the NHS: As soon as league tables were introduced, administrators/managers looked to see what they could do to get the best results for the least effort.

      1. tip pc Silver badge

        Re: There was no Internet

        @A Non e-mouse

        don't forget schools & hospitals get more attention (staff or/and money) when they're circling the drain too.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: There was no Internet

      "we were taught the actual subject.

      I get the impressions that today's school children are taught how to pass exams."

      We were taught both. What you learn to pass exams, stuff like reading the question carefully and thinking about what the examiner wants you to do are transferable skills. Reading academic papers, contracts, statements of requirements etc are all things that demand those reading and analytic skills.

      But plus 1 for libraries. If I ever came across a set of light oak card cabinets like those that were in QUB Science library I'd be tempted to buy them despite having no practical use for them now.

    3. Chris Parsons

      Re: There was no Internet

      Ditto...in A level years, I did over 3 hours a night, not a week.

  5. Simon 4

    I know from my nephew’s school that the teachers are thicker than thick.

    And I know from my sister that many parents (her included) are just f’ing lazy at parenting. My 9 year old niece doesn’t know her 4 times tables (or higher). It’s totally her parents’ fault, specifically my sister - her mum. Too lazy to go through them on the daily journeys to/from school. No, you don’t need a bloody app. Just learn your damn times tables.

    And parents like to blame every other factor except themselves to explain why their little darling is underperforming.

    Internet and iPad are the new babysitters. “Oh you’re doing homework? Ok then.” Stupid, lazy, gullible parents who don’t supervise their kids online.

    So basically, this story is total bollocks, backed up by “statistics”.

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge
      Pint

      To quote Susan Sto Helit:

      “Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.”

      Icon: for Sir pTerry

    2. LucreLout
      Joke

      Internet and iPad are the new babysitters.

      Am I now supposed to try to feel up the iPad while giving it a lift home?

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
        Trollface

        @LucreLout

        You are obviously new to this site:

        https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/27/slab_fondling_becomes_xrated/

    3. Simon 4

      This is the same family where mum vowed son would have a Nokia dumb-phone. He’s 11.

      But he’s smarter than his parents. He watched an iPhone 5c on eBay and the idiot dad bought it. My suggestion that it be IMMEDIATELY sold on eBay was well received, but not acted upon.

      Like I said, they’re lazy. They don’t want confrontation with the kids - except for all the times they totally lose their shit and abuse their kids.

      So the uncle is the only family member with any God damn common sense, and is constantly undermined by everyone else who don’t understand why the kids have no boundaries.

      Today, parents are incredibly stupid.

      11 year old may be smarter than his parents but still dumb as a box o rocks.

      I refurbed an all-in-one ex-customer PC for him with a brand new HDD and Win7 install for his birthday. Thicko decided to install Windows 10 “because it was offered”. Never asked his uncle, with nearly 30 years of experience. He didn’t understand why his PC was “running slow”.

      The day I ask my nephew for technical support is the day I kill myself. Sometimes he tries to offer his analysis or advice and assistance. I haven’t harmed him yet.

      1. Simon 4

        So getting back to the original story....

        Parents are idiots. They’re lazy. They’re gullible morons.

        And, according to this news story, 1 in 7 will blame “t’internet” - or lack of speedy thereof - as the reason the psychopath they’re raising (badly) didn’t pass his geometry class.

        Because that’s what it really says. 1 in 7 RESPONDENTS TO THIS SURVEY are thick enough to blame slow internet as the reason they’re breeding and raising under-achievers with a victim mentality.

        It’s only 1 in 7, but then there’s Jeremy Corbyn. The fact that he even has a job tells you we’re all doomed. Common sense is not in fashion.

        Yes. People are dumb. And they’re having children.

  6. Oddlegs

    All depends on how the original question was phrased.

    "If you had a faster internet connection could your child do more online research to aid with homework?"

    I don't think anyone could disagree with that. If only you'd bothered to link to the original article we could see.

    1. Nick Kew

      Indeed. The article seems to be more about sneering than informing. WTF is wrong with kids using wikipedia? We don't all have luxuries like physical libraries, or even textbooks. Well, maybe that last one has changed since my day, but I can't imagine they have textbooks that'll actually satisfy the curiosity of any but the dullest kid in a subject that interests them.

      Besides, a slow internet connection is something specific. No connection, you don't waste time on it. Fast connection, you don't waste time unless by choice. But a poor connection can waste an awful lot of time.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Childcatcher

        "a poor connection can waste an awful lot of time."

        poor connections work fine for PLAIN TEXT and 3 or 4 pages of search engine results (it's all done server-side after all). Waiting for CAT (read: pr0n) videos on youtube to buffer, while claiming "I'm studying", not so much.

        article: "Surely we're not expecting the little dears to read books instead?"

        YES. And it PROBABLY requires going to and knowledge of a library to do THAT. With any luck they WALK to the library, getting some sunshine and exercise. All good!

        icon, because I _AM_ thinking of the children. I'm just not a flaming bleeding heart brainless liberal.

        When _I_ was a kid, I had to walk to school, uphill, both ways, in the bad weather, carrying a buttload of books so I could do 4 hours of homework every night. Kids these days got it WAY too easy! They need to get their ritalin-filled heads out of their collective asses and stop whining on social media, texting each other instead of talking, and playing video games all the time. Kids these days...

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        But the original article is also highly misleading.

        Article text:

        “a decent home broadband connection ...

        For some time now, teachers have been warning of a nationwide risk that children could fall behind if broadband speeds are not up to par[11]"

        So from the tone of the article we are lead to believe that Teachers support the uSwitch contention that what is needed is a "decent home broadband connection. Yet if we look up note 11:

        "Source: cable.co.uk, January 2016, available at – https://www.cable.co.uk/news/revealed-how-inadequate-expensive-school-broadband-is-holding-our-children-back-700001240/"

        We see straight away (and if you bother looking up the URL it does back up the headline claim made in the URL) that Teachers were referring to School Internet connections and thus in-school usage of Internet resources not home Internet connections, and according the cable.co.uk article the main cause of inadequate school broadband is government funding.

      3. Roland6 Silver badge

        Another misleading "fact" from the survey:

        "Less than one in 10 (7%) parents say their child doesn’t utilise online resources. However, 40% say their child uses YouTube, which offers educational content such as the Crash Course channel and The Brain Scoop, 38% say they use Wikipedia and 32% turn onto BBC Bitesize[8]."

        And that all important note:

        "Respondents, whose children do homework, were asked ‘In terms of accessing the internet for homework and educational content, which online resources does your child[ren] use your home internet connection for?’ – 7% said that ‘My child doesn’t use online resources’, 40% said ‘Youtube’, 38% said ‘Wikipedia’ and 32% said ‘BBC Bitesize’."

        So the context is homework, ie. work set by the school. What is fascinating here is the total omission of 'real' educational websites such as school portals and subject specific sites.

        1. MrZoolook

          "Respondents, whose children do homework, were asked ‘In terms of accessing the internet for homework and educational content'"

          Context is key.

          These surveys might as well say that 100% of non-educational Internet usage is non educational, so the Internet isn't educational.

          Or that, 100% of educational use of YouTube is educational, with the inference that YouTube is an important educational tool. Obviously that's ignoring the fact that 99.9% of YouTube is non-educational, which flies in the face of it being useful for education.

          On the whole, these types of surveys are set to prove something the survey setter believes, with wording used to come to a specific goal.

          I mean, they asked people whose children used the Internet for study, and only wanted answers relevant to educational use. Completely ignorant of children who don't use the Internet educationally, and those who don't use the Internet at all.

          Frankly, I'm surprised such a massive number of respondents said their kids didn't study on the Internet, when a prerequisite seemed to be that your kid DID study online.

  7. Commswonk

    Whaaat...

    On average, parents say their child does 3.9 hours of homework a week

    Although the article makes no mention of it I assume that we are talking about primary school age children here. Even so 3.9 hours per week seems modest indeed.

    And the sample size isn't all that great either. How were they selected?

    1. billium

      Re: Whaaat...

      I can't see why primary school pupils require homework. I don't remember doing any. My primary school was rural , four pupils in my class. (I am an electronics engineering graduate).

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Whaaat...

        I don't remember doing any. My primary school was rural , four pupils...

        Yikes, what century did you grow up in?

        I was slow at math in primary, homework was seemingly hours and hours and hours as the sun set and I wasn't getting released to play...

        1. Orv Silver badge

          Re: Whaaat...

          I was slow at math in primary, homework was seemingly hours and hours and hours as the sun set and I wasn't getting released to play...

          I was good at math, and actually enjoyed it, but had issues staying focused and motivating myself. I would sit at my desk and do basically everything but the homework in front of me. I remember listening to a local AM station I liked switch to low power as the sun went down, while I sat there with my homework in front of me.

          It wouldn't be until adulthood that I'd be diagnosed with inattentive-type ADD, but looking back that's clearly what was going on.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Whaaat...

        "I can't see why primary school pupils require homework....My primary school was rural , four pupils in my class."

        My primary school wasn't much bigger than yours. My grandchildrens' primary school, only a couple of miles away, is probably at least the same size as a whole year (four classes) was at my grammar school. Rural schools are bigger, and maybe a bit less rural than they were. And they do have homework.

    2. Nick Kew

      Re: Whaaat...

      3.9 hours probably mixes young kids (no homework) and older kids (with homework). An example of the meaninglessness of statistics with insufficient context. As is indeed the whole of this article.

      Maybe it's just something like 3.9 hours of homework online? Excluding offline homework, and excluding online non-homework. A figure like that coming from just asking parents would tell more about the parents perceptions than the kids, but if it came from logging in to a schools' IT system it could actually mean something.

      1. Mr Humbug

        The uSwitch press release is here:

        https://www.uswitch.com/media-centre/2018/03/digital-poverty-line-poor-broadband-services-see-1-2-million-children-falling-behind/

        "Switch.com surveyed a sample of 1,000 UK parents of children aged 5-18 from the 5th to the 8th of March. Results have been weighted to nationally representative criteria. 952 respondents identified themselves as parents of children who do homework."

        So the 3.9 hours is the avereage of children aged 5 who bring home one reading book each week to children aged 18 who are expected to do homework and revise for three or possibly four A-levels. I think the conclusion is whatever you would like it to be.

        1. Keven E

          Surveying is the new whatever

          "So the 3.9 hours is the avereage of children aged 5 who bring home one reading book each week to children aged 18 who are expected to do homework and revise for three or possibly four A-levels. I think the conclusion is whatever you would like it to be."

          Yep. There are just too many variables. The difference between expected learning between 5yr olds and 18yr olds just isn't worth even taking the time to sort out, and certainly not any valuable insight gained from that age range spread over 985 respondents. WTF uswitch? Deadline creep?

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          I think the conclusion is whatever youSwitch would like it to be.

          FTFY

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Mark 85

      Re: Whaaat...

      Gee.. 3.9 hours a week? Really? I remember usually was 2-3 hours per night. But then, we didn't have an Internet to speed things up. <sigh> <wanders off mumbling grumpily>

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe your schools are stuck in the 15th century in that London town...

    ....but both my kids, primary and middle (yes we still use the better system), have much of their homework via the schools online portal.

    This may come as a surprise, but times have moved on from chalk boards.

    The access they have to resources shames that of our mulit-million Pound company. No need for crappy plugins, runs on Apple, Android, Windows, Linux and Chromebooks.

    From their they get access to much of the work they have done in the classroom, library books and other resources. The work they do is far more engaging than a tatty torn book with half the pages missing.

    Yes, i'm sure some parents are blaming internet speeds (but of course we don't know how loaded the questions were) and YouTube can be a source of education (lost count how many times I've used it to fix everything from a machine machine to a complex bit of IT kit).

    And maybe, in rural areas, their schools rely less on the IT infrastructure.....

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Welcome to modern society

    ... where it's always someone elses fault.

    Darn you El Reg, me typing this message is obviously your fault so now you owe me a new keyboard :P

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Welcome to modern society

      Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (*)

      It has always been someone else's fault. Society as such has not changed at all. We do the same thing in different ways. Who, in all honesty, wants to take responsibility? It is, and always has been, easier to blame someone else. As Douglas Adams quite succinctly put it: SEP.

      That is to say, my personal SEP-field is *very* strong.

      (*) Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)

  10. saundby

    Online Test/Homework Systems Make This a Thing

    There are a lot of online systems used for testing and homework here that are notoriously heavy on the network, the client, and presumably the crap servers as well. Since homework assignments are now only given as 'log in to see what you've got' on systems that drop users like a leaf-shedding maple in fall, it wasn't unusual here to spend the entire family's evening trying to post results by midnight for automated grading.

    Being rural didn't help--anything better than smoke signals or tty is 'broadband' out here.

    1. Simon 4

      Re: Online Test/Homework Systems Make This a Thing

      Online tests and homework systems are not a substitute for actually teaching children.

      Unfortunately, the schools don’t agree.

  11. Sureo

    Youtube

    Wonderful teaching resource, shows you how to turn a pop bottle into a ballistic missile.

  12. Halfmad

    As a parent (and therefor the go-to expert on this)

    I'd blame it on one of these factors:

    1. Not reading to kids at bed time, or getting them to read to you - instead letting them play their tablet for 10 minutes whilst chilling out on your phone.

    2. Too much Roblox and Minecraft, too little homework and practical skills like painting, writing and mathematics.

    3. ...

    Actually just lazy parents. I say this as one who's guilty of this on occasion myself. It's got bugger all to do with internet speeds.. as 99.9%* of reasonable people will agree.

    *Statistics made up, but so is the reason for the drop in school performance.

    1. Orv Silver badge

      Re: As a parent (and therefor the go-to expert on this)

      Given some of the impressive projects I've seen people build in Minecraft, I suspect it's at least as creative as painting. My generation's version was Lego, but that was more expensive and carried far more of a risk of stepping on something sharp in the middle of the night.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does the internet and overuse impact your child's education?

    Does a slow internet impact your child's education?

    Seems the answer to both these questions is yes without the obvious explanation that it is the parents job to parent.

    It would be nice if you could correlate this study with pupils current grades because I bet the 1 in 7 are at the bottom.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unless their speeds are slower than mine (half a Megabit), they don't get to complain.

  15. John H Woods Silver badge

    Homework

    I get the feeling that less is sometimes more --- when i was at school, I had time to do electronics, and later computer programming that was *nothing* to do with school. I read books that were nothing to do with school, too. I had friends who learned musical instruments to a high standard and others who did dance, martial arts, athletics or sport in all their spare time.

    Nowadays there seems to be a culture that if you kid misses a single day of school or a single hour of homework it will negatively impact the entire rest of their lives. And yet, my purely anecdotal observation seems to indicate that academic achievement doesn't really seem to have improved all that much.

    1. Loyal1

      Re: Homework

      <<Nowadays there seems to be a culture that if you kid misses a single day of school or a single hour of homework it will negatively impact the entire rest of their lives. >>

      ....yet oddly the teachers at my kids schools routinely 'take' 5-6 extra teaching term time days for 'in service', whatever that means.

  16. Rich 11

    Clearly the minister has not thought through the potential educational impact of such a move.

    Thus continuing in the fine tradition of government education policy since 1988. At least 1988.

  17. sisk

    To be fair any school project that relies upon research is going to also rely pretty heavily on the Internet these days. Sure, going to the library is going to be an option still, but it's been a few years since libraries have seen it as worthwhile to keep up-to-date research resources in book form as a priority. Yes, they still buy new books that, yes, can be used for research, but these days the Internet is the go-to reference source. Even when using books and science periodicals people normally use the Internet to figure out which ones they should be looking for.

    On top of that savvy students are well aware that if they're not getting a concept from their own teacher - which happens because not all teachers teach the same way and not all students learn the same way - they have free access to dozens or hundreds of teachers online teaching the same concept who might explain it in a different way. You can even see entire course lecture series from some of the best teachers in the world. As an example, a few years back I watched the entire lecture series from a class on black hole mechanics taught at MIT just because I thought it was interesting. I retained little more of it than I would from a Discovery Channel documentary (I was, after all, only interested and not actually studying the subject) but can you imagine how useful that sort of resource would be to a student studying astrophysics?

    I don't actually think a good student would see their grades fall due to slow Internet, but I could definitely see a good student raising their grades with good Internet.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      >I don't actually think a good student would see their grades fall due to slow Internet, but I could definitely see a good student raising their grades with good Internet.

      Not so sure about raising grades, but certainly the good student will improve their chances of getting onto a higher education course or apprentice scheme because they would be able to talk beyond the curriculum and thus demonstrate both their interest in the subject and their ability to "go and find out stuff".

  18. CertMan
    Flame

    Speed impacted my children's education

    Download your homework from the portal (Virtual Learning Environment) - mostly posted as PowerPoint slides, taking up to 1/2 hour per subject.

    Upload your answers in the PowerPoint slides at around a tenth of the speed. Obviously it doesn't add up, and the teachers are so IT-illiterate that they don't know how to minimize the file sizes, or accept the answers in anything other than the original format.

    I had many arguments with the school when the teachers refused to accept the answers on a USB memory stick, before the school finally agreed that the children could upload from stick to the VLE before school the next morning.

    There are many videos on the VLE, or linked sources that the children are expected to view as an essential broadening of knowledge on the subject. We had links so slow (often 256KBps) that even watching the videos was impossible.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Speed impacted my children's education

      USB sticks are the invention of the evil one. I can imagine they did not want to touch them.

      Maybe we are slowly getting to a stage where connectivity is required for education. It does not surprise me.

    2. Loyal1

      Re: Speed impacted my children's education

      Demand paper content. Problem solved.

      ...and isn't, after all, problem-solving at the very heart of what our kids education should be all about?

  19. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Nothing to do with term-time - yes I got fined but I'd do it again - holidays>?

  20. Cynic_999

    Cut-off time?

    "

    Earlier this month, digital minister Matt Hancock said he wants social media sites to enforce a cut-off for youngsters on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and the like.

    "

    I would like to inform the "digital minister" that 99.9% of households are already fitted with at least one device capable of enforcing a cut-off for youngsters. It's called a "parent". Too bad that so many of them don't work. In all senses of the word.

  21. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "a survey of 1,000 respondents by price comparison site uSwitch."

    I'm reminded of Bernard being congratulated on being a perfect balanced sample.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Suspiciously, the top resource named was that well-known educational tool YouTube (40 per cent), followed by credible reference site Wikipedia (38 per cent) and then the somewhat more reputable BBC Bitesize (32 per cent). ... My maths may be a bit creaky (thanks, no doubt, to having to learn without the Internet,,,) but doesn't this add up to 110%?

    1. Mr Humbug

      > doesn't this add up to 110%?

      Maybe some respondents named more than one resource

  23. onefang

    Games consoles, phones, and tablets work fine for education. Videos not so much.

    I own a PlayStation 3 that was sold with a proper Linux pre installed on it. I've managed to avoid the firmware update from Sony that removed the ability to use that. So nothing wrong with using a games console for homework, if you run a real operating system on it.

    I have stored on my Android phone a large subset of WikiPedia, and several other educational resources of varying reliability, including some written for children. These apps would work just as well on a tablet, I just don't own one. No Internet needed to read them.

    The last time the government tried to get me to do some bullshit online course that wasn't gonna teach me anything, all the course material was half hour videos, instead of text that I could read in five minutes, that wouldn't eat into my expensive and limited bandwidth quota like useless videos. Not to mention requiring me to spend money I didn't have on a copy of Microsoft Office. After I complained, the government backed off and tried something else. FFS I have taught that subject to others, professionally and otherwise.

    I prefer to read than watch a video, even if I had the bandwidth to spare. So YouTube isn't something I'd watch to learn stuff. I read faster than any video could impart information, easily skip bits that are not relevant, and you can copy and paste stuff from a text document better than you can from a YouTube video trying to teach you how to install Linux on an electric toothbrush.

    1. Tim Seventh

      Games consoles, phones, and tablets work fine for education. Videos depend on the content.

      Games consoles, phones, and tablets work fine for education. Videos not so much. depend on the content.

      Some simple information are better as text, like a command, a part of a code, some facts, etc.

      But it gets terrible at explaining multiple and/or abstracted process, like showing how to dissemble a motherboard, showing how to draw a cat, showing how to open a bottle with a cucumber, etc. These are things that are difficult to be explained in words, and better shown as images or videos.

  24. disgruntled yank

    Just one question

    Where was this excuse when I needed it?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wisdom vs Knowledge

    While it is debatable whether or not having access to the internet might increase one's knowledge...

    Avoiding the world wide web altogether would be a sure sign of wisdom in light of recent revelations.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Parents blame brats' slipping school grades on crap internet speeds

    I don't know about slipping school grades but slow internet speeds sure put a hamper on my sex life.

    (I think my ISP is throttling my Pornhub feed)

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