- social media
- chromebooks in school
- smartphones
- the attention economy
- llms
- etc
None of these were inevitable, and in principle all are reversible. But, we're all trapped by the tyranny of the majority. It feels like it will continue to get worse.
Inb4 "I grew up gaming all day and I'm fine" millenials: the social fabric of your life didn't depend on the games, they were games. Social media is vastly different. (also you arguably could have done better with better activities)
There are certainly conveniences - world changing improvements - but I dont think the majority ever defined or was asked what they were willing to trade. I dont think EULAs and buried opt-outs or binding arbitration across a product portfolio was what they had in mind.
I don't disagree that fine motor skills are important, but I don't know for sure if they are still needed like they used to be.
Skills needed for daily life change as culture develops.
I think this is true the value of extracurricular activities like sports and art. There's no way to shortcut those skills. The struggle is part of the experience. Every violin player will sound like a dying cat their first year. Every would-be baseball pitcher will make awful throws when playing catch with their dad. But they get better with time, and in the process internalize that they're capable of doing so.
So are the skills themselves important? Not per se, but they represent “meta skills” that we want kids to develop when they are most apt to learn.
Ultimately, I think it’s a big TBD - a child’s mind innately wants to learn, it’s just unclear what kids are learning when exposed to so much tech early on and that’s what has teachers worried. I bet the kids will turn out fine, but we as a society won’t really know until the kids are old enough to tell us firsthand.
It's a teaching prop that (imho) tells people to look at things as if they are wrong- rather than assume they're right.
I've never seen somebody propose it as a formal debate concept- but rather a perspective in which to enter the debate.
I think you have that exactly backwards. Meaning... the "prop" would be to assume the fence-builder was right, not wrong, and you need to find the why before you can remove the obviously-dumb-thing-with-visible-no-purpose.
It's clouded here because the article knows why the fence is there. Specifically - the fence (scissors, drawing, coloring) are tools we use in primary school to strengthen the childrens' hands and strengthen their fine motor skills.
When they're older and attempting to write a long essay they don't get muscle cramps and break their concentration. Instead, they... simply write. We don't hand-write anymore but we also no longer have the
don't remove the fence until you know why it was built is a simple, useful thought experiment. but it doesn't mean "don't remove the fence until you know about every single side effect that it could possibly have had since it was built, including things the builder could never have possibly imagined, and fully accounted for the consequences of each of those effects."
if you sell the bull in chesterton's field, then you can tear down chesterton's fence. whether or not that lets the coyotes access the neighbour's chickens isn't part of the metaphor.
In this case I happen to agree with the author’s premise: it seems clear that kids have a developmental need to interact with the world physically. But I’m not comfortable with a made-up blockquote that slightly twists the meaning of the original parable.
ETA: I’m not accusing the author of the Medium article of fabricating their quote; their source may have changed in the interim. I’m just saying someone made up this story, there’s no apparent source for it, and it’s not a good representation of the principle it purportedly explains.
The first thing I was told in an educational psychology lecture was to never cite any research more than ten years old. (If you break this rule, you'll see the same ideas being reinvented over and over again.) When I was teaching, half of all teachers left the profession within their first five years; I've heard anecdotally that it's 80% now. It's not the clever ones who stay. There's a strong push (often enforced by professional teaching standards) to constantly implement the latest research, which means every teacher has to do the new thing, and is discouraged from thinking about whether it's all bullshit.
One of the most enduring ideas in educational psychology is the stage-based theory of Jean Piaget[0]. Computer use belongs very much in 'formal operations', the last stage of the theory, because everything that happens in the computer is just an abstract representation of what happens in the physical world. Progress between stages varies from child to child, but from Piaget's observations, it usually happens around the age of 11, which is when children transition from primary school to secondary school in the Australian and British school systems. This is why children struggle to learn, say, algebra, in primary school. If you introduce these ideas before children are ready for them, they internalise them as social rules in the same way as 'raise your hand before speaking in the classroom'. So not only does introducing computing too early harm the development of other skills, it also teaches a suboptimal approach to computing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive...
I would suppose if you didn't break the rule the same ideas would be reinvented over and over again, but you wouldn't see it
The real-world experience came first, of course (a whirlwind house hunt that taught me a lot about style and layouts; an intense interest in the series; an early mastery of the piano, respectively). But, "You're too young," would have represented a frustrating impediment to our curiosity and industry. I faced that anyway, later on ("We can't afford that," to multiple attempts at breaking into CGI), but I know at least the latter friend is a prolific musical artist and virtuoso on several instruments. And I imagine quite a lot of software wouldn't exist, or would be/perform much worse, if the people who made it hadn't had early encounters with - in fact, were shaped by - computing.
There was a great paper I read from the 1950s, where the researcher simply observed a teacher reading a story and asking comprehension questions of the class, who were six years old or so. When the teacher asked a question, all the children raised their hands, but when a child was nominated to answer the question, the children frequently didn't have an answer. They were just raising their hands because it was the socially desirable thing to do; they just wanted to please the teacher. As children grow older, they become more skilled in feigning understanding, and even when teachers do see through the illusion, they often don't have the time in the classroom environment to provide the individual support needed to fix the problem.
When I read this sort of thing it reminds me of how some adults didn't seem to take children seriously. My recollection of K-1 is that kids in the class often paid close attention to what was being said by the teacher(s), and were very literal.
If you raised your hand in my kindergarten or first grade classes, it usually meant you had something to say. IIRC kids were pretty good at answering questions as well.
I think, if anything, the key might be in the expertise educators have with the given instrument. Most music instructors are talented musicians or vocalists themselves, and I imagine most have a keen sense for how to encourage proper care of both the student and their tool. Maybe it'e changed, but most of the teachers I had growing up that were involved with computer use were largely trained in library sciences. I don't know that there even IS any effective deep training wrt computer use. It's not just that the technology is new, but also that most experts are going to be coming from a tech industry whose modus operandi is purposely cultivating unhealthy relationship with their products.
Just to confirm, did you really mean to say MORE than ten years old or did you mean LESS?
Bear in mind approximately none of his claims have been experimentally validated, and my experience (and I suspect that of many other HN users) is the opposite.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/well/live/surgeons-hobbie...
This sort of thing is one argument for why northern European countries still have Sloyd woodworking in schools:
https://rainfordrestorations.com/category/woodworking-techni...
>Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others.
Similarly, Maria Montessori's instruction method still seems valid --- interestingly, the blocks were described by one woodworker I knew as quite challenging to make because of the solid/density requirement and the overall size of the largest block.
That said, why not extend touchscreens into the real world as was done with early versions of Logo?
https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/histor...
They also teach cursive. The head of curriculum talks about how it unlocks different neural pathways. There was recent research that confirmed this.
I have never studied why it was considered superior, only that it was.
Doesn’t all learning? This sounds like bullshit.
Just 2x2" wood stock, cut into 2x2x2 and 2x2x4 cubes and sanded down.
They became houses, roads, furniture and whatever. Some got painted.
Parents _think_ kids need a bunch of fancy toys, but they really don't. They just need (literally) the building blocks of toys. Wood blocks, Lego (the old kind with square bricks, not the new ones where every piece is different).
I think Lego has cut back on strange almost unusable bricks lately? Or atleast those Bionicle type sets get less store space where I live.
Poster child for this would be the Space Shuttle/747 kit (which I kind of wish had gone back to the drawing board for a few more revisions.... but I'll probably get it anyway).
If you have a kid who hasn't yet learned how to tie their shoelaces, you might find this video helpful: https://youtu.be/JaBmehtalAY
It shows a method called the 'Ian Knot', which:
- results in the same type of knot as the common method, and
- is faster because it requires fewer hand movements, and
- is as easy to learn as the common method (for kids learning from scratch)
When adults encounter it, they usually think it seems hard, but that's just because they're used to the method they've used thousands of times. It's not really harder to learn!
BTW I'm pretty sure I learned about the Ian Knot here on HN. It's been posted a bunch of times. The first few times I saw it, I just bookmarked it for later. But when it was time to teach my son, I figured I should use the best method.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I tried it just now, and it's indeed very secure.
I almost always wear sneakers, and don't have any problem with laces getting untied, so I'll stick with the Ian Knot.
I will suggest this secure knot to my son, though.
"They have little badges, like they have their password on them, and they just wave it in front of the Chrome Chromebook [so] they don’t have to memorize all that early on."
!!!
Learning how to use a screwdriver helps even when the electric is out, the internet is offline, etc. etc. Learning cursive may not be as immediately helpful but we have all come to accept that developing more neural pathways is important and "smooth brain" is bad
I think about this often with my own kid. He was behind on speech milestones. I looked up outcomes for kids behind on speech milestones. Data shows that early intervention seems to help speech/reading skills into early elementary school. But there was very little data on the longer term outcomes. Does speech therapy when you're 2 or 3 years old really impact your career or lifetime earnings? Seems like it might for kids with true developmental/learning disabilities. But everyone else?
As our pediatrician often says "[Outside of severe disability] Nobody goes off to college needing their mommy to sleep, or being unable to use a fork".
General Motors runs new hires through basic training for an assembly line, with a dummy assembly line and wooden car mockups.[1]
The panics are definitely overblown, if not entirely wrong... soon, there won't be (m)any children to worry about, and then the human race becomes extinct (or maybe just feral). A glorious future awaits.
When my kids went into first grade around ten years ago, they couldn't tie their own shoes, but if they had been able to, they would have been about the only kids in their grade who could. Also, very few kids nowadays can whistle compared to when I was a kid. My kids didn't have as much access to screens as a lot of kids do, but they and their peers were fairly proficient with tablets, etc.
I'm really curious what people mean when they say that. I didn't grow up with smart screens, but I've never felt particularly encumbered by them, and I wouldn't even consider using them a skill. What does the difference between a "bad iPad user" and a "good iPad user" really amount to? Is swiping Tiktok and watching Youtube really something you can become proficient in?
Back in the day even a 12 year old needed to at least sometimes poke around autoexec.bat so some understanding as to why things are happening was necessary.
Tablets seem to have a low skill floor and low skill ceiling by design. There's no file system, they can't run unsigned code, they can't write code, and are essentially just internet media players.
A PC has a somewhat low skill floor as well (as any mass consumer product should), but the skill ceiling is very very high. A confident user can also easily break something essential.
His need of this skill is lower than mine.
Another example is bike riding. I was all over my neighborhood by first grade and BMX was a dominant hobby. My son has practically zero interest in even learning how to ride. There’s no FOMO of his friends leaving him in the dust like when I was a kid.
"Experts say [difficulties using scissors and pencils, and social-emotional capabilities, such as following instructions and sharing] is likely in part a function of the upheaval caused by the pandemic—and that even students who weren’t in grade school during the height of school closures are still experiencing the lingering effects."
So the first piece of "evidence" cited actually discusses a whole range of behavioral issues -- not just the inability to use scissors and stack blocks or whatever -- and that these issues were triggered by the pandemic and its continued aftershocks -- not tOo mUcH TOuCHscEEnZ 'n tEchNoLoGee
Respect to the medium author's academic credentials and achievements but their post is a classic "first subscribe to my thinly justified POV then buy into my cult I mean product line" sales pitch that can only make correct decent arguments by accidental alignment to convenient data points.
When the internet was yet fairly new, I was assigned to teach basic computer use to a class of Saudi Arabian soldiers. Many of these guys were fresh out of the desert, some even still adjusting to the idea of wearing shoes. They had no idea what to do when placed in front of a computer. Imagine if your dog got up on its hind legs, rested its paws on the keyboard, and poked its nose at the screen. To cut the story short, I led them through this and that and by the end of a month, they certainly couldn't touch-type, but they were designing their own web pages. They were so enthusiastic that they were sneaking into the lab after hours (evidently to search online for pics of naked ladies).
My point is that computer interfaces are designed to be simple and intuitive, so you don't need an early start to practice like you do with a highly complex task like playing a musical instrument. There is really no developmental benefit to early screen use.
Her biggest blocker is that she's terrified of making a mistake and breaking something. She would never dare explore a settings menu and tweak things just to find out what is or is not possible. So she calls her relatives to help her with the most basic of task ... and this has been going on for 40-50 years of her life.
I wonder if she had been introduced to computers younger in life if that fear of breaking things could have been overcome and replaced by a curiosity and enthusiasm to explore the digital space.
I'm also open the possibility that this fear is a personality trait and impacts her in other areas of life as well. We are just trading anecdotes after all ;)
To add context: she was a public school educator. Began as a teacher, was actually my school Principal in grade one. So she had a need for computers in her professional life and continued to use them in her personal despite tons of evidence that she has no idea how lol
It's a mindset thing. My grandfather was a tinkerer by nature and he was the type to wander into C:\Windows and just start deleting crap "because it took up so much space" :D
He was used to opening things and fixing them if they broke, but kinda lacked the mental model to fix a computer.
Taught me a lot, when I was the one who had to fix his adventures =)
Proofread0592•6mo ago
Whenever I see quotes about "kids these days can't do X", I'm always skeptical.
You remember the kids in your class that were just absolutely, indefensibly stupid? These quotes are probably talking about those specific kids. I seriously doubt out of a class of 30 kids, all 30 of them couldn't stack the blocks. It was probably the 5 kids in the class that are just stupid, and every class throughout the history of time has had those stupid kids, and always will.
ViktorRay•6mo ago
I don’t know if that’s true or not but it is worth thinking about.
Especially since apparently Big Tech executives and top engineers are very strict regarding technology use in their children. And very strict regarding screen time.
Reminiscent of how tobacco executives would not let their kids smoke while suppressing data regarding lung cancer.
jakubmazanec•6mo ago
Maybe they weren't stupid, they just need more time to learn. And current technology could make this time longer.
somat•6mo ago
Isn't that the definition of stupid, someone who needs more time than average to learn. While smart would be someone who needs less time than average to learn.
Terr_•6mo ago
1. (Overall rate) From the same starting-point, this child will always require 2x the time/effort to learn than expected.
2. (Overall offset) This child's thresholds for becoming able to learn many skills at the normal rate tends to be 6 months later than expected.
3. (Specific rates) For a particular task this child learned slowly no matter how old they were.
4. (Specific offsets) For a particular task this child learned slowly, but when stopped trying and revisited it X months later they had no problems.
Of those, it sounds like you're assuming the harshest, first version.
I'm no child developmental psychologist, but I'd wager that versions 2,3,4 are more frequent than most people would assume, since they take more work to distinguish and the universe tends to be messy.
dguest•6mo ago
> 77 percent of educators reported young students having greater difficulties handling pencils, pens, and scissors. In comparison, 69 percent noted increased struggles with tying shoes compared to five years ago.
But I'm also skeptical of drawing any conclusions from questions phrased this way. In my experience, the fraction of people who think everything is worse than 5 years ago has remained unchanged in the last 30 years.
That said, I wouldn't doubt the claim, only the methodology.
drdec•6mo ago
Oh no, there are for sure more people now who think things are worse vs 5 years ago than there were 5 years ago.
crooked-v•6mo ago
jeffbee•6mo ago