Technology vs Pen & Paper

     I came across this article--posted by a friend--on my news feed on facebook. Even though I might be interested in a subject or something posted by a friend I'm prone to skipping the long stuff and forgetting about it. I guess something about the title caught my eye enough to read the long-ish article.

     Here it is..I hope you take the time, it'll be worth it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

     My summary of this would probably be that even though high-tech professionals may work for places like Google or Microsoft that doesn't mean that using computers and all the technology available is the best way to teach their kids.

     The school advocates the "old fashioned" way of learning (hands on, fun, group activities) rather than kids solitarily hunched over keyboards typing away. They even go so far as to not allow computers into classrooms until children have matured enough to use them, like in the high school grades.

     At the end of the article this quote is inserted:
“You can look back and see how sloppy your handwriting was in first grade. You can’t do that with computers ’cause all the letters are the same,” Finn said. “Besides, if you learn to write on paper, you can still write if water spills on the computer or the power goes out.”
A large chunk of how kids learn is by developing skills. If first graders never learn to write the letters themselves, and always have a computer shoved in front of them, then they won't know how to make the letter A or G or K or M themselves. 


     Sometimes, when we're cleaning the basement at our house, we'll run across old boxes of stuff we kids have made, usually consisting of artwork, little stories, single sentences etc. etc. from when we were little. When I was five, and writing a paragraph for the first time (forming my letters, spacing correctly, using punctuation,) a pathetically written description of "how tu rid a biake" made sense in my mind. When I was ten and came across that same crinkled piece of paper I could see clearly how I had developed since then. Computers prohibit that learning process. Everything is done almost automatically. Kids hardly even have to learn how to spell because Spell Check takes care of that with nice little, red lines under things; they "right click" on it and there ya go! All fixed. 

     If schools would get back to the basics and do what they were really designed to do, and stop messing around with the newest technology, and using the kids are guinea pigs, then kids might be able to learn what they are supposed to be learning: fundamental skills necessary for the rest of their lives. Computer skills can come later.