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... : "Nearly 700,000 15-year-olds tested in 81 countries; 1 out of 4 were low performers in maths, reading and science"

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[–]HiddenFox 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

They are banning smart phones in schools in New Zeeland. They are hoping it will help with their students poor performance. There are others including the USA that are looking to follow suit.

At the very least it will help the children's mental health. I hope they are not just banned in class but banned on school grounds from 9-3. (Or whatever freaking time classes start and finish there. On a fun note, in PEI class would run from 8:50 until 3:11. Don't know why it was just the way it was when I was in school. "See you at the flag pole at 3:12!")

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Needs to be balanced but the balance is hard to maintain. Letting kids fuff off on smartphones in class is clearly a problem. But if you go too far in the anti-technology direction that also creates problems. Depends on how that tech is used.

I'd say anymore it's actually pretty critical to teach media literacy as it relates to the internet and social media. But that's such a hard topic to breach and so controversial in it's scope I fear schools will just go the full ban route.

I do think society does have a decision to make about how we use social media and how we introduce our kids to it (we should mostly ignore it as a society, and we shouldn't let out kids use it unsupervised).

[–]IMissPorn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Stupid as fuck. But NZ does love censorship, so this makes sense. Can't have kids accessing wrongthink or anything, huh?

[–]GuyWhite 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, but they know more important stuff now, like how to be a troon and how to ass fuck.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

COVID school closures pushed all the kids online 24/7. I mean a bunch of them already were online 24/7 and the school closures definitely weren't good for their education, but the 24/7 online social media existence without any real life input to balance it was probably worse than the "school closure" itself even though they are closely related.

Why bother learning math reading or science when the internet will just tell you the answer? Serious question? I don't bother learning complex math anymore I just make my phone do it. I don't bother to memorize the Chinese alphabet, I let my phone do it. It's a tool, it's a crutch, used with intention I think it's good, without it can be bad.

Let's have the internet translate shit for us? Great honestly makes it easier to get information you'd otherwise not ever be able to get, but can you really trust that translation? What happens when people get so used to it they just trust it to work and people use it for important things. It's great that you can type 一個の怪物がヨーロッパを徘徊してゐる。すなはち共產主義の怪物である。 Into the internet and get the translation. But even for such a famous quote you can see it's a bit off from the real one. For things you have no context for. Can you say if it is accurate or not?

[–]SoCo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Kids are too messed up from hormone disrupting pollution to focus on school.