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I am gravely concerned about using too much tech in early education, as this will assuredly hinder the development of critical fine motor skills such as handwri

I am gravely concerned about using too much tech in early education, as this will assuredly hinder the development of critical fine motor skills such as handwriting, drawing, painting, sculpting, among many other skills, all of which I learned as a child. Not to mention all of the physical play we had. As a child I remember having to invent games, stories, and adventures. In other words, we were forced to use our imagination, for everything. Perhaps I’m just a cynical and aging critic, but I feel like the overuse of technology in general will make future generations of children lazier, and therefore less creative. I already feel that my own life has been impacted in this way. Case in point: The widespread use of Grammarly is dumbing down everyone. Why actually learn proper grammar, spelling, common idioms, and syntax, if AI can basically do it for you? What as a society do we gain from such things? I can’t help but imagine that at some point our understanding of language will become so simplified that we’ll need a proxy language to express “real” phrases so that all we have to do is bang out basic ideas on some kind of modified keyboard which will translate it to real language.

js8 7y ago
Young people just use their motor skills differently, for example for computer games or juggling (pen spinning, cardistry). These skills are now much more available thanks to YT and Internet in general. I think there is a good case to be made that kids actually learn much faster than ever, thanks to things like YT and Wikipedia. Before the Internet, it was very difficult to connect to really skillful people in the world, there were pockets of talent but really disconnected. If you were outside the pocket, you were pretty much screwed. Today it's not the case. Of course you can question usefulness of the skills learned, but that is a separate question, I think. Fashion in these skills is probably faster than in the past, for better or worse.

js8 7y ago

Young people just use their motor skills differently, for example for computer games or juggling (pen spinning, cardistry). These skills are now much more available thanks to YT and Internet in general. I think there is a good case to be made that kids actually learn much faster than ever, thanks to things like YT and Wikipedia. Before the Internet, it was very difficult to connect to really skillful people in the world, there were pockets of talent but really disconnected. If you were outside the pocket, you were pretty much screwed. Today it's not the case. Of course you can question usefulness of the skills learned, but that is a separate question, I think. Fashion in these skills is probably faster than in the past, for better or worse.