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Getting Chromebooks to schools is the single most horrific act we could have done to our education system. This act undermines the very future of our nations. A

Getting Chromebooks to schools is the single most horrific act we could have done to our education system. This act undermines the very future of our nations. A big proportion of all the classwork and homework is now done on the screen. There is plenty of evidence that handwriting boosts cognitive processes - thinking on paper is something that the next generation will mostly lack. Rich and powerful are all aware of that, so they deliberately put their own kids into private schools where screen exposure is more limited. Not only that. We are promoting to our kids a fully proprietary system that increasingly becomes a walled garden, run by an aggressive imperialist company with abysmal technical support, with a complete failure in parental control practices. It is, at least with our school, completely impossible to implement parental controls on enrolled Chromebooks, so you have to trust the school's policy which is, in many cases, inadequate. The school's solution - well, take the Chromebook away at home. Good luck with that. Chromebook pushes the agenda of Google cloud and Google apps on the user. Millions of people are grown into this world assuming the only option for them to perform functions or access their own data is to be online and use the cloud. This is as close to a digital dystopia as I can imagine. I don't like what Google has become and I would never buy a Google Chromebook. Forcing this in schools so early (11-years old here in the UK) is a crime we're all committing. We all are going to pay for it.

stuaxo 4y ago
My 4 year old came back with a Windows laptop during Covid, but over the last year they have stopped using them, they only use the desktops they have in ICT.
mschuster91 4y ago
> It is, at least with our school, completely impossible to implement parental controls on enrolled Chromebooks, so you have to trust the school's policy which is, in many cases, inadequate. Parental control is bullcrap anyway - and at least for parents of my age, complete hypocrisy to boot. We turned out generally fine despite having active trade networks at school for everything... warez, games, movies no matter their rating, copious amounts of porn, shocker sites, whatnot. I remember the debates about how shooter games would turn us all into killers after Columbine (in the US) and Erfurt (2002)/Emsdetten (2006)/Winnenden (2009) in Germany, and yet... at least German kids grew up perfectly normal, and amok incidents remain a rarity [1] in Germany. The only ones pushing for "parental control" are religious fundamentalist parents not realizing just how backwards they are. And for the Americans: ffs instead of blaming shooter games for mass shootings, maybe invest into mental health services, bullying prevention and actual gun control. Your society has a massive problem with violence, but shooter games are not a part of it at all. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_Bildungseinrichtungen#21._Jahrhundert https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_B...
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > We turned out generally fine despite having active trade networks at school for everything... warez, games, movies no matter their rating, copious amounts of porn, shocker sites, whatnot. Since then, though, multi-hundred-billion dollar corporations have arisen that employ vast quantities of employees (including psychologists) tasked with obtaining and keeping your attention on their content and the surrounding advertising empires. It's not quite the same setup we had to deal with.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Yeah but "parental control" crap doesn't deal with any of that. It's all about preventing porn and LGBT content.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Modern "parental control" is highly customizable. We use it in our household to limit things like Reddit during homework time, set per-game limits so no one's sitting on Bejeweled for eight hours, etc. Not one of our restrictions covers LBGTQ+ content.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Time spent on screens is strongly correlated with worse mental health. So limiting access is investing in mental health.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Citation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/ > After 1 h/day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks.
Retric 4y ago
School should be preparing people for the “real world” after graduation. Learning to think on the computer is a useful skill and 6th graders US (11 year olds are year 7 in UK) have had half a decade of paper instruction. So making the jump at 11 is perfectly reasonable. Chromebook is simply cheap to buy and manage. The point of these is a simple tool, little different than a calculator. If Google offends you feel free to sell Linux laptops, just understand schools don’t want to spend anything managing computers.
- blackhaz 4y ago
  I think we all had no problem growing up being ready for IT, and my parents can do taxes online. Forcing kids to do everything online in school and at home is what's fundamentally new and wrong here. There is no option of paper. Of course, unless by "real world" we mean an army of zombies training somebody's else AI and consuming reprocessed digital matter... I wish Chromebook was only a calculator at school, but kids do research, write essays, projects, solve puzzles - pretty much the whole homework process is now moving online. Instead of really thinking and planning, you're clicking buttons, writing WYSIWYG and drag'n'dropping things around. That's not how we've learnt, and research says there is evidence that inhibits cognitive development. Folks really on top in SV are perfectly aware of that, of course. What's horrific, also, is that all this is heavily subsidized by vendors like Google. They know they're investing into raising a user base, so open solutions have no chance of competing, not to mention being ready for the task. This is radically different from microcomputers, the Apple IIs, ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64s that boosted our generation.
  - michaelmior 4y ago
    > Instead of really thinking and planning, you're clicking buttons, writing WYSIWYG and drag'n'dropping things around. This suggest that really thinking and planning can't happen while doing these things. I understand the concern, but I'm not entirely convinced that's true.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    It might lead to a good thing, internet access as a right. I hope this becomes the norm at some point, much like the right to have a bank account in the EU.
moron4hire 4y ago
11 years old? Lucky you. My kid got the thing foisted on him at FIVE. And even if all of those issues could be resolved, like somehow making a Linux tablet with handwriting recognition and only open-source software (or whatever, I don't actually think it would be anywhere close to sufficient)... The educational software is just garbage. Math and reading games that allow way too much guessing. "Science" games that basically amount to a skinned version of Super Mario Bros, literally still just collecting coins, so you can then buy pictures of animals in the game. But it's got that Wild Kratz licensing! Don't forget to purchase the books! And it's the same thing, over and over again.
dr-detroit 4y ago
[dead]
kzrdude 4y ago
I think you'll need to apply Hanlon's razor to your conjecture. Plenty of misinformed "good will" to go around that no malice is required to explain it.
gillesjacobs 4y ago
A problem with handwriting Vs pc-note taking studies is that obviously computer-based teaching has not been fully adopted and integrated. Maybe the problem is not the computer but the broader cultural and technological maturity. I bet with teaching methods directed at information technology (multimodal, interactive text books) and proper learning and attention management skills on the student's end, we could see an increase in learning capacity. Agree 100% on the detriment of using proprietary, closed source software. As an educator you have a responsibility to not vendor-lock your students and strengthen monopolies. Proprietary software should be outlawed when FOSS alternatives are available. You should be teaching skills and concepts not specific tools anyway.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
31337Logic 4y ago
Thank you for this.
PascLeRasc 4y ago
I think between school shootings and failing to do anything about Covid there's worse things happening to kids.
jefftk 4y ago
> Rich and powerful are all aware of that, so they deliberately put their own kids into private schools where screen exposure is more limited. I bet both of these go the other way: * While some rich and powerful people are anti-screen, I expect it's more common for them to want their kids using computers in school so they're better prepared. * Private schools are more likely to have laptops and other tech, because they can afford it. While you get the occasional story about a fancy school that is trying to minimize tech, "poor school has no laptops because they're too expensive" doesn't make the news.
ricardobayes 4y ago
It mostly prepares young people for another walled garden later on, the Mac ecosystem.
- px43 4y ago
  First off, Google is in no way a walled garden. Every Google product makes their data easily exportable to a variety of open source and commercial alternatives. Second, how does the Google system primarily prepare people for the Apple ecosystem? That makes zero sense. When I grew up in the 90s, every school was dominated by Apple computers, and Apple's walled garden made it so if you didn't have an Apple computer at home to work on homework, you were basically fucked if you wanted to work on or print anything at school. Switching to Chromebooks is exactly what let kids escape from walled gardens, so then they could work on homework using any computer with a web browser.
fatnoah 4y ago
> A big proportion of all the classwork and homework is now done on the screen. There is plenty of evidence that handwriting boosts cognitive processes - thinking on paper is something that the next generation will mostly lack. It's a dual-edged sword, IMHO. I fully agree that writing by hand feels very different both in terms of the ability to take notes while paying attention to someone else AND seems to promote better thought and recall. Devices can have a benefit, though. My 15 year old w/ADHD has constantly struggled with note taking and test preparation. What he's recently found that works well is to create online quizzes based on study materials. It keeps him engaged since it's more active, plus the act of creating the quizzes themselves runs the information through his brain. All that said, I agree on the dangers of the walled garden and that technical, privacy, or other issues will certainly lead to cases where the technology becomes a distraction, even when used as intended.
jay-barronville 4y ago
Thank you for this discussion. I’m generally in agreement with your sentiment. This is something my wife and I have been discussing. We’re planning on homeschooling our children, which means we’ll get to dictate how much screen exposure they’ll get. I’m convinced that these devices are only making us dumber — sure, on one hand, we (most folks in society today) can be more efficient, but on the other hand, we struggle with retaining even some of the most basic information due to our strong dependence on technology. As a computer nerd, my home is obviously filled with computers and related devices, but I don’t want my children growing up in an environment where everyone around them is dependent on technology to survive.
sebzim4500 4y ago
I am dyslexic, so I was allowed to use a laptop for class and exams while others had to handwrite on paper. It gave me an enormous advantage in both. I would do better than kids who were objectively better at the subject, simply because I could type so much faster and more accurately than they could write. Also typing requires way less focus, so you can devote your attention to the actual task. I don't see why you would want to sabotage the next generation by denying them access to the tools which would be available to them in the workplace.
npteljes 4y ago
>Not only that. We are promoting to our kids a fully proprietary system that increasingly becomes a walled garden, run by an aggressive imperialist company with abysmal technical support, with a complete failure in parental control practices. Yeah, we really exchanged one for the other. Previously it was all Microsoft Windows and Office, as a lonely IT enthusiast in a smaller city, I haven't even known about Linux or any other alternatives right until university. I wish free software was the standard, in education and government alike.

stuaxo 4y ago

My 4 year old came back with a Windows laptop during Covid, but over the last year they have stopped using them, they only use the desktops they have in ICT.

mschuster91 4y ago

> It is, at least with our school, completely impossible to implement parental controls on enrolled Chromebooks, so you have to trust the school's policy which is, in many cases, inadequate. Parental control is bullcrap anyway - and at least for parents of my age, complete hypocrisy to boot. We turned out generally fine despite having active trade networks at school for everything... warez, games, movies no matter their rating, copious amounts of porn, shocker sites, whatnot. I remember the debates about how shooter games would turn us all into killers after Columbine (in the US) and Erfurt (2002)/Emsdetten (2006)/Winnenden (2009) in Germany, and yet... at least German kids grew up perfectly normal, and amok incidents remain a rarity [1] in Germany. The only ones pushing for "parental control" are religious fundamentalist parents not realizing just how backwards they are. And for the Americans: ffs instead of blaming shooter games for mass shootings, maybe invest into mental health services, bullying prevention and actual gun control. Your society has a massive problem with violence, but shooter games are not a part of it at all. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_Bildungseinrichtungen#21._Jahrhundert https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Amokl%C3%A4ufen_an_B...

ceejayoz 4y ago
> We turned out generally fine despite having active trade networks at school for everything... warez, games, movies no matter their rating, copious amounts of porn, shocker sites, whatnot. Since then, though, multi-hundred-billion dollar corporations have arisen that employ vast quantities of employees (including psychologists) tasked with obtaining and keeping your attention on their content and the surrounding advertising empires. It's not quite the same setup we had to deal with.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Yeah but "parental control" crap doesn't deal with any of that. It's all about preventing porn and LGBT content.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Modern "parental control" is highly customizable. We use it in our household to limit things like Reddit during homework time, set per-game limits so no one's sitting on Bejeweled for eight hours, etc. Not one of our restrictions covers LBGTQ+ content.
jimbokun 4y ago
Time spent on screens is strongly correlated with worse mental health. So limiting access is investing in mental health.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Citation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/ > After 1 h/day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks.

Retric 4y ago

School should be preparing people for the “real world” after graduation. Learning to think on the computer is a useful skill and 6th graders US (11 year olds are year 7 in UK) have had half a decade of paper instruction. So making the jump at 11 is perfectly reasonable. Chromebook is simply cheap to buy and manage. The point of these is a simple tool, little different than a calculator. If Google offends you feel free to sell Linux laptops, just understand schools don’t want to spend anything managing computers.

blackhaz 4y ago
I think we all had no problem growing up being ready for IT, and my parents can do taxes online. Forcing kids to do everything online in school and at home is what's fundamentally new and wrong here. There is no option of paper. Of course, unless by "real world" we mean an army of zombies training somebody's else AI and consuming reprocessed digital matter... I wish Chromebook was only a calculator at school, but kids do research, write essays, projects, solve puzzles - pretty much the whole homework process is now moving online. Instead of really thinking and planning, you're clicking buttons, writing WYSIWYG and drag'n'dropping things around. That's not how we've learnt, and research says there is evidence that inhibits cognitive development. Folks really on top in SV are perfectly aware of that, of course. What's horrific, also, is that all this is heavily subsidized by vendors like Google. They know they're investing into raising a user base, so open solutions have no chance of competing, not to mention being ready for the task. This is radically different from microcomputers, the Apple IIs, ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64s that boosted our generation.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  > Instead of really thinking and planning, you're clicking buttons, writing WYSIWYG and drag'n'dropping things around. This suggest that really thinking and planning can't happen while doing these things. I understand the concern, but I'm not entirely convinced that's true.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  It might lead to a good thing, internet access as a right. I hope this becomes the norm at some point, much like the right to have a bank account in the EU.

moron4hire 4y ago

11 years old? Lucky you. My kid got the thing foisted on him at FIVE. And even if all of those issues could be resolved, like somehow making a Linux tablet with handwriting recognition and only open-source software (or whatever, I don't actually think it would be anywhere close to sufficient)... The educational software is just garbage. Math and reading games that allow way too much guessing. "Science" games that basically amount to a skinned version of Super Mario Bros, literally still just collecting coins, so you can then buy pictures of animals in the game. But it's got that Wild Kratz licensing! Don't forget to purchase the books! And it's the same thing, over and over again.

dr-detroit 4y ago

[dead]

kzrdude 4y ago

I think you'll need to apply Hanlon's razor to your conjecture. Plenty of misinformed "good will" to go around that no malice is required to explain it.

gillesjacobs 4y ago

A problem with handwriting Vs pc-note taking studies is that obviously computer-based teaching has not been fully adopted and integrated. Maybe the problem is not the computer but the broader cultural and technological maturity. I bet with teaching methods directed at information technology (multimodal, interactive text books) and proper learning and attention management skills on the student's end, we could see an increase in learning capacity. Agree 100% on the detriment of using proprietary, closed source software. As an educator you have a responsibility to not vendor-lock your students and strengthen monopolies. Proprietary software should be outlawed when FOSS alternatives are available. You should be teaching skills and concepts not specific tools anyway.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

31337Logic 4y ago

Thank you for this.

PascLeRasc 4y ago

I think between school shootings and failing to do anything about Covid there's worse things happening to kids.

jefftk 4y ago

> Rich and powerful are all aware of that, so they deliberately put their own kids into private schools where screen exposure is more limited. I bet both of these go the other way: * While some rich and powerful people are anti-screen, I expect it's more common for them to want their kids using computers in school so they're better prepared. * Private schools are more likely to have laptops and other tech, because they can afford it. While you get the occasional story about a fancy school that is trying to minimize tech, "poor school has no laptops because they're too expensive" doesn't make the news.

ricardobayes 4y ago

It mostly prepares young people for another walled garden later on, the Mac ecosystem.

px43 4y ago
First off, Google is in no way a walled garden. Every Google product makes their data easily exportable to a variety of open source and commercial alternatives. Second, how does the Google system primarily prepare people for the Apple ecosystem? That makes zero sense. When I grew up in the 90s, every school was dominated by Apple computers, and Apple's walled garden made it so if you didn't have an Apple computer at home to work on homework, you were basically fucked if you wanted to work on or print anything at school. Switching to Chromebooks is exactly what let kids escape from walled gardens, so then they could work on homework using any computer with a web browser.

fatnoah 4y ago

> A big proportion of all the classwork and homework is now done on the screen. There is plenty of evidence that handwriting boosts cognitive processes - thinking on paper is something that the next generation will mostly lack. It's a dual-edged sword, IMHO. I fully agree that writing by hand feels very different both in terms of the ability to take notes while paying attention to someone else AND seems to promote better thought and recall. Devices can have a benefit, though. My 15 year old w/ADHD has constantly struggled with note taking and test preparation. What he's recently found that works well is to create online quizzes based on study materials. It keeps him engaged since it's more active, plus the act of creating the quizzes themselves runs the information through his brain. All that said, I agree on the dangers of the walled garden and that technical, privacy, or other issues will certainly lead to cases where the technology becomes a distraction, even when used as intended.

jay-barronville 4y ago

Thank you for this discussion. I’m generally in agreement with your sentiment. This is something my wife and I have been discussing. We’re planning on homeschooling our children, which means we’ll get to dictate how much screen exposure they’ll get. I’m convinced that these devices are only making us dumber — sure, on one hand, we (most folks in society today) can be more efficient, but on the other hand, we struggle with retaining even some of the most basic information due to our strong dependence on technology. As a computer nerd, my home is obviously filled with computers and related devices, but I don’t want my children growing up in an environment where everyone around them is dependent on technology to survive.

sebzim4500 4y ago

I am dyslexic, so I was allowed to use a laptop for class and exams while others had to handwrite on paper. It gave me an enormous advantage in both. I would do better than kids who were objectively better at the subject, simply because I could type so much faster and more accurately than they could write. Also typing requires way less focus, so you can devote your attention to the actual task. I don't see why you would want to sabotage the next generation by denying them access to the tools which would be available to them in the workplace.

npteljes 4y ago

>Not only that. We are promoting to our kids a fully proprietary system that increasingly becomes a walled garden, run by an aggressive imperialist company with abysmal technical support, with a complete failure in parental control practices. Yeah, we really exchanged one for the other. Previously it was all Microsoft Windows and Office, as a lonely IT enthusiast in a smaller city, I haven't even known about Linux or any other alternatives right until university. I wish free software was the standard, in education and government alike.