Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers
snownyte@kbin.socialbanned from community to 
reuters.com
Teenagers' mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards.
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Controversial take: go back to pencil and paper and less screen time.
Before anyone thinks I hate computers, I’ve a BSCpE and am an active sr developer.
Controversial take: Pay people what they're worth so only 1 adult in the house needs to work 1 job for 40 hours to provide for the family. This will free up that parent (in a single parent household) or free up 1 parent (in a dual parent household); to help with schooling.
Controversial take: keep the populace ignorant so they don’t get ideas.
And position dumbasses as role models... the willfully ignorant and screechingly loud kind.
That's the Utah way. Now book banning has gone so far as to remove anything that doesn't include religious or Mormon texts from our kids' schools. It's much easier to herd sheep who don't ever develop the ability (or desire) to think for themselves.
Controversial take: unga bunga, bunga unga
A lot of people don't think it bungas like it ungas, bungas ungas.
It is absolutely true that increasing income can improve parenting and by extension the outcomes of kids, but there is also evidence that using computers too much can be detrimental for their education.
Really it's no different than how these things affect us adults: We all know that social media is trying to monopolize our attention, and that it's affecting our attention spans and mental health. Although arguably for kids it's even worse since their brains are still in development.
I was thinking of this (how computer use affects the brain) recently and wondered if there is any evidence on how driving affects the brain. Like, humans have only been able to go faster than a horse for like the last ten minutes of our existence; is the brain even wired to make sense of such accessible travel without piquing our subconscious fight or fight response? Like do we get a dose of adrenaline and cortisol every time we get on the highway? Maybe that's all farvagnugen is.
Controversial maybe, but true. Less screen time would benefit all of us and really I don't think kids NEED phones on them in school.
Of course I'm a Boomer and I'm on my soapbox, and here we go again with "back in my day..." we didn't have cell phones and it was actually nice to feel independent of having to check in with other people throughout the day. I still don't see the attraction, but I know that prying kids from their cell phones will be a Herculean task.
The problem is that a lot of (admittedly overstretched) parents use the phone as a pacifier and don't monitor use much if at all.
Tommy's being a little shit? Give him the phone so he's distracted.
Of course, if little Tommy's never learnt to deal with being bored, keeping quiet for half an hour, and never learnt to concentrate for longer than the length of a tiktok video, he's going to have trouble adapting to education.
I agree with this. However, I was more talking about the use of computers for everything. Reading, math, etc are done in computers now. Students retain more information when they have to write it out on paper.
Also I think writing things out is a great way to just improve your basic writing skills. And also, it sometimes can help clarify your feelings about something. Like once I was writing a letter (just for fun) to complain about a product I bought and when writing it, it became apparent it wasn't the product I was mad at but myself for making a snap purchase without thinking it through. But, I like writing, and I realize it isn't everyone's favorite way to pass the time.
I think we should go back to abacuses and sundials.
You might not always have paper and pencil.