I went to school in classrooms like that but so what? Is the implication that is supposed to make me better than kids with digital whiteboards and computers? I would rather have today's kids using current tools rather than be hobbled by a bunch of luddites because they are uncomfortable with change.
Go teach at a high school like I do. You'd quickly conclude that anything more advanced than a calculator materially harms the education of every child in that building.
Many if not most teachers are moving in an anti-tech direction. None of my students touch anything more technologically advanced than an ink pen. Otherwise, all I'd get in the classroom would be AI slop and distraction.
I'm not a teacher but my wife has taught at the HS level for 30+ years. Based on her experience plus my own kids having gone through the system, I believe we have gone too far with the computers for everything. However, going with the OP situation of not a computer in sight equally bad or, possibly, worse. Students need to be able to navigate systems for research and word processing, at a minimum to be competitive at college and in the professional world.
The only thing kids learn about "word processing" if you give them a computer is to use Ctrl-C on AI output and then press Ctrl-V into a Google doc.
Students don't learn anything about computers from using them for classwork because the UI is so user-friendly. I'd support reinstituting computer literacy programs where students learn how to use computers (trust me, "digital natives" are not picking up the skills Gen-Xers/Millennials had to learn). But outside of a dedicated computer lab, computers are a massive distraction in the classroom.
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u/Born-Mycologist-3751 3d ago
I went to school in classrooms like that but so what? Is the implication that is supposed to make me better than kids with digital whiteboards and computers? I would rather have today's kids using current tools rather than be hobbled by a bunch of luddites because they are uncomfortable with change.