12/11/2004 09:08:16 AM|||Brian Fending|||

My friend Tim (clinkclinkmytwocents.blogspot.com) posted a bit on his blog about computers countering math and language literacy. As one might expect, I have some opinions on this. Read his blog entry, link above, first.

PLAGIARISM: There are nice "comparison engines" out there to help in this, but the real way to prevent is to enforce the writing of better papers. One way this is being done is via the Primary Source Document movement, wherein students HAVE TO RESEARCH a topic and PROVIDE A COPY OF THE PRIMARY SOURCES used in the writing of the paper. It's really, really effective. Libraries, incidentally, are inundated with such students every few weeks. The days of Googling a paper and handing it in are, I hope, numbered because of these preventative and proactive measures.

PROGRAMS THAT "READ YOUR STUFF" AND RUN IT THROUGH A COMPARISON ENGINE: Shiver. I hope Microsoft never, ever has this ability, good intentions or not.

COMPUTERS & LANGUAGE: Okay, so I've had a computer since I was ten. Maybe I don't fit the model, but even if that's the case, here's why: the computer never REPLACED anything for me. Spellcheck is rampantly ruining the integrity of CORPORATE-CREATED documents. Why? Because they aren't proof-read, they were spell- and grammar-checked. The point is, a technology inferior to actual thought processes replaced the latter. I wrote papers with a typewriter & white out, too. Then I wrote them on an Adam with a dot matrix printer. "Check" applets didn't exist. One easy way around it to go old-school: DISABLE THE FEATURES.

COMPUTERS & MATH: The research way be a bit specious here. Who's to say that the correlation between *using* a computer and the older paradigm that computer use meant *programming*? The latter is CERTAINLY what I had growing up. Programs in Basic/Fortran (no "C" or "C++" yet!) taught logic skills that nothing else in my education touched until Trig in high school. I was better at proofs because of those logic skills, I've no doubt. So putting a kid in front of a computer with FrontPage and saying "make a website" is NOT THE SAME as "make this program create a series of random numbers, repeat three times, and quit after drawing a circle and producing the first 100 digits of pi." The latter is closer to an application of computer science, the former is akin to babysitting with Legos. (Which I also loved, but that's another rant.)

MORE: There is, I would hazard, more that parents - especially those that have a great deal of computer access at home - can do to prevent their child from slumping into plagiarism and using spreadsheet formulas to perform calculus functions. For one: TURN IT OFF. I have to make MYSELF do that and pick up a book. I have a stack of Wired magazines to my left right now which I'll need to devour before the year's out. (Or else my self-inflicted guilt will eat me alive.) Instilling a sense of lifelong learning is not "done" when a child is bought a computer.

COURSE LOAD: Teachers are expected to crank through more packaged coursework than ever before. The delivery method, I've heard, has been trending away from textbook-only and toward client/seat licenses for content. That means access to all sorts of disparate material that once required a bit of browsing - with some valuable contextualization - to learn. This is the dumbing-down of learning, not its acceleration.

LASTLY: If computers make you dumb, what does cable do??? :)

|||110277427139520514|||The dumbing down of American education (or: "Computers make us dumb?")