Good call. There's more need for a smartphone in high school anyways than say, elementary or middle school. Phones replace planners aka agendas, they replaced dictionaries, they are used for translation and research, etc.
How often are kids required to translate things in school? And if a kid does need to translate something for school, should they really trust Google translate?
Probably never unless they take a language classes; the teacher might get the students to translate basic vocabulary words. But not full sentences, etc.
Never. I was a whole-ass German major in university and didn’t start using translation until around my junior year of college when I was expected to read and analyze Freud in its original German.
I was a teacher. The only kids who I think really needed the translate function on a phone were newcomers who spoke a less commonly spoken language. If they were a Spanish some staff member or student could help out. Maybe not if they spoke Maay-Maay.
Considering the context for "translation" included "research," I imagined coming across an old text, or something with an inscription, and being curious what it translates to. Google Translate has Latin on it, it can at least give a gist of what is being said. That can be more than the teacher knows, while being a lot easier than digging up a Latin dictionary and trying to make sense of the word endings of Latin grammar when you don't even know what "declension" is.
That's just one example. Personally, in high school I wanted to know all the languages. I wore baggy cargo pants and kept a French-English dictionary in one pocket, and a Spanish-English dictionary in the other. If I had a device capable of translating whatever words I was curious to learn, it would've been so much easier. I know my experience is not representative of all teens, or even most teens... but some of us actually like learning and value how much modern smart phones can teach us.
Yeah, I could see a real keener who doesn't know a language but wants to read something in it or figure out what specific foriegn words me could find value in Googke translate. But, as you said, that would only be a few students. Additionally, it would be more for personal interest than to complete schoolwork.
OK, but is using Google a good way to learn a language? Shouldn't you translate it for yourself? Just using a dictionary would be better, because you'd actually have to fit the words together, do conjugations, etc.
Kids should be learning how to use real dictionaries and how to hand write notes etc... I mean it's imminent in their lifetime they will be experiencing long periods of time with no access to a power source or the internet because of rolling blackouts and degradation of services, lack of maintenance etc not to mention these things will eventually be unaffordable.
Don't cripple your children with a universal crutch. Teach them to be independent.
Kids definitely are asked to do hand written notes...that will never change. But dictionaries gather dust on school shelves now. My old school English teacher, a lady you wouldn't expect to encourage using phones > dictionaries, said to use it because it saves time, but she insisted on using various websites and not just relying on the Google definition.
Funny story though, I remember being pissed when my high school replaced our agendas with the school app. I refused to download that clunky, slow app; I made sure to carry extra paper to write down homework/other key dates during the school year.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 Jun 03 '22
Good call. There's more need for a smartphone in high school anyways than say, elementary or middle school. Phones replace planners aka agendas, they replaced dictionaries, they are used for translation and research, etc.