5 ms·

Children learn best when engaged in the living world, not on screens

140 points by acconrad 8y ago

Diaznash 8y ago
That title can make a good pitch for AR/VR.
cheschire 8y ago
It's obvious that a balance is appropriate. Meatspace engagements will provide one level of training, but kids can't be exposed to everything. My kids will never have the experience of running a farm, but I can give them a shadow of the real thing by allowing them to play farm simulator.
- oconnore 8y ago
  That’s not obvious. You are saying that “shadows of the real thing” have more value than other ways they could spend that energy, which seems unlikely. If you want to let your kids play video games, fine, but the hand waving to support your personal intuition is blatant here.
  - SaltyMaia 8y ago
    It's obvious because it's clearly a false dichotomy... not everything maps 1 to 1 from real world to digital world, and things you learn in one may not be learnable in the other. Equating farm visitation to playing farming simulator is absurd, literally no one would support that the digital counterpart is more absolutely valuable, whatever that means (the onus of figuring that out is on you) But sure, I'll go with an easy cookie cutter example just to fit your argument - letting a kid play flight simulator is much easier, faster, and affordable than enrolling them in a flight school. Maybe you're too poor to even consider a real school, but playing a video game is still a valid way to see if flight might be a genuine interest. Is it then a worthless endeavour? Non-wasy examples would have you try to come up with direct alternatives to abstact thinking ( "obviously me making some weird DIY things will be better than playing a puzzle game" - absurd) Attacking the digital medium is absolutely not the way we'll figure out how to move forward.
    - oconnore 8y ago
      > not everything maps 1 to 1 from real world to digital world We are in violent agreement. The point is not that digital learning is bad. It's that people are making hand wavy assumptions about it being good without much evidence, without considering alternatives, and without considering tertiary effects (e.g. socialization). Like, I don't even think I've seen a study comparing CS grads who either just got a solid math education up until 18 versus kids who did their first python app at 11. Yet lots of people are totally convinced that early access to computers is associated with later success in the software industry. Is it? I don't think either of us know. And if we don't even know that, does anyone know what they're doing with iPad apps?
jorjordandan 8y ago
The fairly standard elementary school my daughter attends has little to no screen time. I'm more likely to play with 3d modelling software or Minecraft with my daughter at home - in addition to time we spend exploring tidal pools or petting farms or at ballet classes. My younger daughter is reading and writing simple words a full year before Kindergarten, thanks to engaging educational apps. This story seems long on nostalgia but short on data. The same concerns have been raised since Socrates (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_touch_that_dial.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...), and yet generation after generation learns to function. It's such a time honoured cliche that even this response is a time honoured cliche.
- oconnore 8y ago
  Smart kids reading and writing a year before kindergarten is not a new phenomenon since the development of education apps. It’s wonderful that she’s doing that, though!
- crazynick4 8y ago
  I was spelling basic words and reading by the time I was four. So was my mom around that age, and from talking to her I wasn't exactly exceptional, many kids did back then (this was 1990 for me, in Russia, regular people didn't have computers at all).
  - jsilence 8y ago
    I had my struggles with written language througout my whole school carreer, (but not dylectic level struggles). Yet I went from engineering into academics with 20 years of software development in between, where I am researching and teaching now with the firm belief that I have a much more concise grasp on language and being able to express complex thoughts much better than any student. Let children be children. Let them play freely. Don't push anything onto them. If they love learning reading, ok. If they don't, that's ok too and practically meaningless for their future prospect.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
diogenescynic 8y ago
Finland is like this— they allow kids to come to school and sort of pick their interests and follow those interests to develop skills by actually working on that craft/trade/subject in great detail. I think people would pursue knowledge if it was more customizable to allow kids to follow their passion.
- kohanz 8y ago
  Perhaps not the same, but reminds me of the Waldorf education philosophy [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education
  - diogenescynic 8y ago
    I looked it up and it’s actually Finland I was taking about. Michael Moore did a good piece on it: https://youtu.be/XQ_agxK6fLs https://youtu.be/XQ_agxK6fLs
- aqsalose 8y ago
  While there no doubt has been great deal of changes in our schools since I was a kid (00s) and teachers have a great deal of freedom when it comes to planning how they teach, I'm fairly certain this kind utopian student freedom is not ... what happens. For example, Ministry of Education [1] provides a pdf of distribution of lesson hours (and if you are curious about the details, you can buy a digital version of the national curricula, which is a bit silly: such documents should be publicly distributed). Whatever the kids' true passion is, 6 lesson hours in a week are allocated for mathematics in grades 1-2. edit. There's a drought of suitable official documents available in English, but see this [2] helpful document by City of Helsinki Education Department from 2014. It describes the picture about the daily life in schools the Education Department wanted to present to foreigners. Granted, things may have changed in 4 years, and such official documents should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm inclined to believe that mandatory classes in Swedish still include grammar lessons about possessive pronouns. [1] https://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basic_education https://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basi... [2] http://www.hel.fi/static/opev/virasto/opevsivuten/koulututuksi-en.pdf http://www.hel.fi/static/opev/virasto/opevsivuten/koulututuk...
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I absolutely believe that there should be physical elements to a child's development, and that the world holds a lot to experience, and I get that touching a cow is going to leave more of a lasting impact on a child than being forced to learn what an adjective is, I just don't know a better way to teach an adjective than rote memorization or a screen.
al_ramich 8y ago
depends on what is defined by a screen. For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. Smells and feel will also be simulated. From an education perspective will it be much different. Depends on how good AR/VR get... but also think of all the possibilities that kids and students will get that they couldn't in the real world e.g. as quoted in the article... kids will be able to go on virtual field trips, as well as traveling back in time for history lessons or meeting Albert Einstein https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtual-reality/ https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtua...
- ska 8y ago
  For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. You can imagine that, but not really for anyone who is a school age kid now. Maybe their kids.
  - al_ramich 8y ago
    You are right, not today's kids but much sooner than their kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQbMP3I5Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQbMP3I5Sk
    - ska 8y ago
      Maybe. These things often take longer that it looks like they will.
- hjek 8y ago
  > For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. I agree. We do really need to teach children farming is like, and VR can be a great tool for that. iAnimal[0] has apparently been a bit of an eye-opener for many people. [0]: https://vrscout.com/projects/ianimal-360-vr-film/ https://vrscout.com/projects/ianimal-360-vr-film/
pnathan 8y ago
> The gestalt of a farm transcends what pixels and speakers can convey. Humanity has historically fled from working on farms (note the % of farm workers over the last 300 years). Maybe before writing this sentence, question your pastoralist presumptions. I will also remark, without proof, that retreating from the contemporary world gives your children a tailwind that they will need to overcome. The notion of teaching computers to children is a notion, at its core, of guiding children into engagement with the contemporary, preparing them to deliver their full potential within the world we live in. Assumptions that "nature is better", or "sweaty work is more moral than brain work", or "face to face is better than distance" are founded upon certain assumptions about the world that are not per se true. Just because one might feel better, or feel more trusting, in certain environments does not make what you feel to be rational or correct. Much like "wellness", juice cleanses, or antivaxxing. And, as counterpoint to the inevitable - it's also true that f2p mobile games and video short video recommendation systems are finely tuned addiction engines that prey upon children - the mental & physical health issues are not to be ignored. The author isn't going into those issues. And, limiting screen time is a very common practice in recognition of that reality.
- jdhendrickson 8y ago
  I'm replying to you as someone whose children attend coder dojo twice a week, and they both have gtx 1070s despite being 7 and 9 respectively, this is relevant as evidence that I truly believe giving my children the best leg up in our society, requires them to have a a deep understanding of computers from a young age. Face to face is better than distance. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance requires you to physically be in the same room with someone. We are creatures who can transmit a tremendous amount of information in everything from subtle facial expression to smell. All of that goes out the window over remote work. Nature is not better, but it is important. I spent every waking moment from the time I got a computer at 19 until I turned 40 doing nothing but learning about computers, be it networking, programming, or system administration and the devops mutation that really just encapsulates a lot of what the grey beard sys admins were already doing. It consumed my life. I've taken time off thanks to my wife and her patience, and the boot strapped company we started. Having gone camping now on state and federal lands, there is something there that we need. I realize this is anecdata but I think the reason these fallacious ideas have such appeal is a tiny kernel of truth. Sweaty work is not more moral, but many times for me it's been more satisfying, there is a reason I have a wood and metal working shop setup. The moment when something I programmed works is absolutely euphoric, I've woken my wife more than once with a war shout of victory at 4 am. It's ephemeral though, there is always another problem nothing is ever truly done. When I walk into my shop and see the work bench I made, it fills me with deep satisfaction. A level of satisfaction I always found missing from my work no matter how elegant or satisfying the design. Apologies for the maudlin, meandering discourse, I'm on the ++ side of the Balmer curve today.
loourr 8y ago
This feels equally true of classrooms as screens
madrox 8y ago
In my childhood, it was television that should be avoided. I arguably learned more about nature by watching Lorne Greene's New Wilderness than I did in my semi-rural home town. Argumentum ad antiquitatem is a real thing. I've heard arguments like this my whole life. Not once has it turned out to be true for me. That either means I'm an anomaly or this topic is widely subjective.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > I've heard arguments like this my whole life. Not once has it turned out to be true for me. I'm with you, and I'm surprised by the downvotes given the explicit caveat "for me". I wouldn't have thought that many HN folks would think of this as universal dogma.
- guessthejuice 8y ago
  I've heard it my entire life too and have come to the same conclusion as you. But I don't think it is argumentum ad antiquitatem though. I think it's the media's version of "publish or perish". Journalists have to constantly publish something and fear sells. Whether it is tv, radio, books, social media, pools, halloween candy, etc, there is something we have to be worried about.
jupp0r 8y ago
The whole article seems like a straw man. Nobody is proposing to replace real-world experience by technology. People are proposing to replace * going to a library and not finding a book by wikipedia * learning glaciology not by reading about it in an outdated school book, but by increasing snowfall in a simulation and seeing the glacier grow * not learning a huge amount of useless facts, but being able to look them up like the rest of society does
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  Those unfortunate children would be robbed or the valuable skill set based on learning how to learn, how to seek knowledge when it’s not just a Google search away. Learning facts may seem useless, but again, it teaches you how to learn, how to study and synthesize new ideas then show you’ve learned them. I like the glaciology bit though, and they should learn how to use Wikipedia and a library. Just don’t pithe your kids based on some wrongheaded notion of expediency or everyone else doing it.
- ska 8y ago
  The funny thing about this is I think I get where you are coming from, but also think all of your examples are at best problematic. Wikipedia is a reasonable replacement for an encyclopedia - which remains a terrible replacement for a library. Simulations are never a replacement for what they simulate. At best this can be a great supplement to more concrete learning - at worst they replace it with facile misunderstanding. Finally - while students absolutely should be able to leverage the vast amount of information we have available, a lot of it is misleading or just intentionally wrong. We should be working hard now on figuring out how to give kids tools to evaluate and analyse this. Raw information is easier than ever to put your hands on, but that's never been particularly useful by itself. So absolutely, let's leverage technology But lets not pretend that we have viable replacements (yet?) for what we don't. A vital skill to teach these days is the ability to sanity check whatever you are reading on line against reality and multiple sources. If you don't become somewhat sophisticated about navigating this sea o f information, you will be taken advantage of. That is one thing we should be concentrating on teaching - real skills, not parroting the first thing you find on Wikipedia. Nobody learns those on screens alone. The facts you came away from an education with have never been the point. The point is to learn how to learn, how to test new ideas, how to verify information, etc.

140 points by acconrad 8y ago

That title can make a good pitch for AR/VR.

It's obvious that a balance is appropriate. Meatspace engagements will provide one level of training, but kids can't be exposed to everything. My kids will never have the experience of running a farm, but I can give them a shadow of the real thing by allowing them to play farm simulator.

oconnore 8y ago
That’s not obvious. You are saying that “shadows of the real thing” have more value than other ways they could spend that energy, which seems unlikely. If you want to let your kids play video games, fine, but the hand waving to support your personal intuition is blatant here.
- SaltyMaia 8y ago
  It's obvious because it's clearly a false dichotomy... not everything maps 1 to 1 from real world to digital world, and things you learn in one may not be learnable in the other. Equating farm visitation to playing farming simulator is absurd, literally no one would support that the digital counterpart is more absolutely valuable, whatever that means (the onus of figuring that out is on you) But sure, I'll go with an easy cookie cutter example just to fit your argument - letting a kid play flight simulator is much easier, faster, and affordable than enrolling them in a flight school. Maybe you're too poor to even consider a real school, but playing a video game is still a valid way to see if flight might be a genuine interest. Is it then a worthless endeavour? Non-wasy examples would have you try to come up with direct alternatives to abstact thinking ( "obviously me making some weird DIY things will be better than playing a puzzle game" - absurd) Attacking the digital medium is absolutely not the way we'll figure out how to move forward.
  - oconnore 8y ago
    > not everything maps 1 to 1 from real world to digital world We are in violent agreement. The point is not that digital learning is bad. It's that people are making hand wavy assumptions about it being good without much evidence, without considering alternatives, and without considering tertiary effects (e.g. socialization). Like, I don't even think I've seen a study comparing CS grads who either just got a solid math education up until 18 versus kids who did their first python app at 11. Yet lots of people are totally convinced that early access to computers is associated with later success in the software industry. Is it? I don't think either of us know. And if we don't even know that, does anyone know what they're doing with iPad apps?

jorjordandan 8y ago

The fairly standard elementary school my daughter attends has little to no screen time. I'm more likely to play with 3d modelling software or Minecraft with my daughter at home - in addition to time we spend exploring tidal pools or petting farms or at ballet classes. My younger daughter is reading and writing simple words a full year before Kindergarten, thanks to engaging educational apps. This story seems long on nostalgia but short on data. The same concerns have been raised since Socrates (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_touch_that_dial.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...), and yet generation after generation learns to function. It's such a time honoured cliche that even this response is a time honoured cliche.

oconnore 8y ago
Smart kids reading and writing a year before kindergarten is not a new phenomenon since the development of education apps. It’s wonderful that she’s doing that, though!
crazynick4 8y ago
I was spelling basic words and reading by the time I was four. So was my mom around that age, and from talking to her I wasn't exactly exceptional, many kids did back then (this was 1990 for me, in Russia, regular people didn't have computers at all).
- jsilence 8y ago
  I had my struggles with written language througout my whole school carreer, (but not dylectic level struggles). Yet I went from engineering into academics with 20 years of software development in between, where I am researching and teaching now with the firm belief that I have a much more concise grasp on language and being able to express complex thoughts much better than any student. Let children be children. Let them play freely. Don't push anything onto them. If they love learning reading, ok. If they don't, that's ok too and practically meaningless for their future prospect.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

diogenescynic 8y ago

Finland is like this— they allow kids to come to school and sort of pick their interests and follow those interests to develop skills by actually working on that craft/trade/subject in great detail. I think people would pursue knowledge if it was more customizable to allow kids to follow their passion.

kohanz 8y ago
Perhaps not the same, but reminds me of the Waldorf education philosophy [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education
- diogenescynic 8y ago
  I looked it up and it’s actually Finland I was taking about. Michael Moore did a good piece on it: https://youtu.be/XQ_agxK6fLs https://youtu.be/XQ_agxK6fLs
aqsalose 8y ago
While there no doubt has been great deal of changes in our schools since I was a kid (00s) and teachers have a great deal of freedom when it comes to planning how they teach, I'm fairly certain this kind utopian student freedom is not ... what happens. For example, Ministry of Education [1] provides a pdf of distribution of lesson hours (and if you are curious about the details, you can buy a digital version of the national curricula, which is a bit silly: such documents should be publicly distributed). Whatever the kids' true passion is, 6 lesson hours in a week are allocated for mathematics in grades 1-2. edit. There's a drought of suitable official documents available in English, but see this [2] helpful document by City of Helsinki Education Department from 2014. It describes the picture about the daily life in schools the Education Department wanted to present to foreigners. Granted, things may have changed in 4 years, and such official documents should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm inclined to believe that mandatory classes in Swedish still include grammar lessons about possessive pronouns. [1] https://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basic_education https://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basi... [2] http://www.hel.fi/static/opev/virasto/opevsivuten/koulututuksi-en.pdf http://www.hel.fi/static/opev/virasto/opevsivuten/koulututuk...

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I absolutely believe that there should be physical elements to a child's development, and that the world holds a lot to experience, and I get that touching a cow is going to leave more of a lasting impact on a child than being forced to learn what an adjective is, I just don't know a better way to teach an adjective than rote memorization or a screen.

al_ramich 8y ago

depends on what is defined by a screen. For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. Smells and feel will also be simulated. From an education perspective will it be much different. Depends on how good AR/VR get... but also think of all the possibilities that kids and students will get that they couldn't in the real world e.g. as quoted in the article... kids will be able to go on virtual field trips, as well as traveling back in time for history lessons or meeting Albert Einstein https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtual-reality/ https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-the-future-of-virtua...

ska 8y ago
For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. You can imagine that, but not really for anyone who is a school age kid now. Maybe their kids.
- al_ramich 8y ago
  You are right, not today's kids but much sooner than their kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQbMP3I5Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQbMP3I5Sk
  - ska 8y ago
    Maybe. These things often take longer that it looks like they will.
hjek 8y ago
> For example, you can imagine that kids in school will be able to fully immerse themselves into education scenarios (like being on a farm) through virtual or augmented tech. I agree. We do really need to teach children farming is like, and VR can be a great tool for that. iAnimal[0] has apparently been a bit of an eye-opener for many people. [0]: https://vrscout.com/projects/ianimal-360-vr-film/ https://vrscout.com/projects/ianimal-360-vr-film/

pnathan 8y ago

> The gestalt of a farm transcends what pixels and speakers can convey. Humanity has historically fled from working on farms (note the % of farm workers over the last 300 years). Maybe before writing this sentence, question your pastoralist presumptions. I will also remark, without proof, that retreating from the contemporary world gives your children a tailwind that they will need to overcome. The notion of teaching computers to children is a notion, at its core, of guiding children into engagement with the contemporary, preparing them to deliver their full potential within the world we live in. Assumptions that "nature is better", or "sweaty work is more moral than brain work", or "face to face is better than distance" are founded upon certain assumptions about the world that are not per se true. Just because one might feel better, or feel more trusting, in certain environments does not make what you feel to be rational or correct. Much like "wellness", juice cleanses, or antivaxxing. And, as counterpoint to the inevitable - it's also true that f2p mobile games and video short video recommendation systems are finely tuned addiction engines that prey upon children - the mental & physical health issues are not to be ignored. The author isn't going into those issues. And, limiting screen time is a very common practice in recognition of that reality.

jdhendrickson 8y ago
I'm replying to you as someone whose children attend coder dojo twice a week, and they both have gtx 1070s despite being 7 and 9 respectively, this is relevant as evidence that I truly believe giving my children the best leg up in our society, requires them to have a a deep understanding of computers from a young age. Face to face is better than distance. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance requires you to physically be in the same room with someone. We are creatures who can transmit a tremendous amount of information in everything from subtle facial expression to smell. All of that goes out the window over remote work. Nature is not better, but it is important. I spent every waking moment from the time I got a computer at 19 until I turned 40 doing nothing but learning about computers, be it networking, programming, or system administration and the devops mutation that really just encapsulates a lot of what the grey beard sys admins were already doing. It consumed my life. I've taken time off thanks to my wife and her patience, and the boot strapped company we started. Having gone camping now on state and federal lands, there is something there that we need. I realize this is anecdata but I think the reason these fallacious ideas have such appeal is a tiny kernel of truth. Sweaty work is not more moral, but many times for me it's been more satisfying, there is a reason I have a wood and metal working shop setup. The moment when something I programmed works is absolutely euphoric, I've woken my wife more than once with a war shout of victory at 4 am. It's ephemeral though, there is always another problem nothing is ever truly done. When I walk into my shop and see the work bench I made, it fills me with deep satisfaction. A level of satisfaction I always found missing from my work no matter how elegant or satisfying the design. Apologies for the maudlin, meandering discourse, I'm on the ++ side of the Balmer curve today.

loourr 8y ago

This feels equally true of classrooms as screens

madrox 8y ago

In my childhood, it was television that should be avoided. I arguably learned more about nature by watching Lorne Greene's New Wilderness than I did in my semi-rural home town. Argumentum ad antiquitatem is a real thing. I've heard arguments like this my whole life. Not once has it turned out to be true for me. That either means I'm an anomaly or this topic is widely subjective.

CharlesW 8y ago
> I've heard arguments like this my whole life. Not once has it turned out to be true for me. I'm with you, and I'm surprised by the downvotes given the explicit caveat "for me". I wouldn't have thought that many HN folks would think of this as universal dogma.
guessthejuice 8y ago
I've heard it my entire life too and have come to the same conclusion as you. But I don't think it is argumentum ad antiquitatem though. I think it's the media's version of "publish or perish". Journalists have to constantly publish something and fear sells. Whether it is tv, radio, books, social media, pools, halloween candy, etc, there is something we have to be worried about.

jupp0r 8y ago

The whole article seems like a straw man. Nobody is proposing to replace real-world experience by technology. People are proposing to replace * going to a library and not finding a book by wikipedia * learning glaciology not by reading about it in an outdated school book, but by increasing snowfall in a simulation and seeing the glacier grow * not learning a huge amount of useless facts, but being able to look them up like the rest of society does

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
Those unfortunate children would be robbed or the valuable skill set based on learning how to learn, how to seek knowledge when it’s not just a Google search away. Learning facts may seem useless, but again, it teaches you how to learn, how to study and synthesize new ideas then show you’ve learned them. I like the glaciology bit though, and they should learn how to use Wikipedia and a library. Just don’t pithe your kids based on some wrongheaded notion of expediency or everyone else doing it.
ska 8y ago
The funny thing about this is I think I get where you are coming from, but also think all of your examples are at best problematic. Wikipedia is a reasonable replacement for an encyclopedia - which remains a terrible replacement for a library. Simulations are never a replacement for what they simulate. At best this can be a great supplement to more concrete learning - at worst they replace it with facile misunderstanding. Finally - while students absolutely should be able to leverage the vast amount of information we have available, a lot of it is misleading or just intentionally wrong. We should be working hard now on figuring out how to give kids tools to evaluate and analyse this. Raw information is easier than ever to put your hands on, but that's never been particularly useful by itself. So absolutely, let's leverage technology But lets not pretend that we have viable replacements (yet?) for what we don't. A vital skill to teach these days is the ability to sanity check whatever you are reading on line against reality and multiple sources. If you don't become somewhat sophisticated about navigating this sea o f information, you will be taken advantage of. That is one thing we should be concentrating on teaching - real skills, not parroting the first thing you find on Wikipedia. Nobody learns those on screens alone. The facts you came away from an education with have never been the point. The point is to learn how to learn, how to test new ideas, how to verify information, etc.