Comments on: New dinosaurs: Spelling, conversation skills
As digital tech becomes a household fixture, it's time for parents and kids to bid some old-school skills adieu.
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First off parents are often incompetent and woefully inadequate in the ability to guide a childs education nevermind decide what is important. Many parents can't even do their childrens elementary school work. Should these people be making any decisions with regards to what their children should be learning? I thought not.
Let me ask you this... ever asked a child with poor spelling to do a google search or type a url into the address bar? Yeah its like watching a person with concrete feet swim.
Would you want this person programming your OS (maybe they already do :P), or perhaps writing a prescription for you?
Spelling is not a useless skill anyways. It helps one decipher new words and is linked strongly to functional literacy.
Map skills? Ever asked a kid to negotiate to places they've never been before? Map skills are vital to a good sense of direction and guess what gps fan boys... power and batteries run out.
I'm not saying some good old skills dont become antiquated... like algorithms to calculate roots for example, but a worthwhile education requires a strong foundation and the same people who say spelling is a dinosaur probably wonder why their kid is bad at math (no its not that hes dumb... its that he hasn't memorized his arithmatic tables.)
Hiya!
If the kids do not have the basic skills, how would they differentiate the above polar opposites? Rely on others to spoon-feed them on the answers? Reminds me of "1984".
We will then become the slaves of technology that others created...
--GIF
The way we spell things may warp and adapt based on the new words created by technology,
but as long as we have search engines we will need spelling.
and as long as people have friends they will need to know how to talk to them!
I remember I flunked typing, (on a manual typewriter, no less), in
eighth grade. I could see absolutely no applicability to real life.
My parents didn't fight it. Now, I couldn't function without
excellent typing skills.
So, how do we know what skills adn knowledge will be necessary
in the future?
The other thing that really amazes me is kids doing research on
the Internet. In the "good old days," Encyclopedia Britannica had
a reputation to uphold, so they spent a lot of time making sure
that their facts were right. The other day, I saw a front page
newspaper story that quoted Wikipedia as it's primary source. I
wanted to go to the editor and ask him if he realized that anyone
can post anything they want to post on Wikipedia. It's not
necessarily accurate, yet the editor let his reporter treat it as his
primary source. Whenever I see websites quoted as primary
and/or the only source, I cringe. Just because it is easy, doesn't
mean it is right...
Most editors are stuffy conservatives(which may be why papers are losing to the Internet) and I cant imagine an editor allowing a reporter to use only an Internet source for their article.
coz u may miss
The Rise of the New Illiterati
whose heads is rapt in illumin-num
oo erupt as one
no thwarts goes in, no thwarts goes out
megaflops notwithstandin
a finger pulls a trigger
a bird flies into a mirror
... or because more adults can AFFORD an expensive console. Its a myth that gaming is for kids... its for everyone.
Then, (at least) a quarter of parents are idiots and their children are likely to suffer because of it.
The basic skills of reading, writing, and, general math are as important today as ever before.
Those that fail to learn the basics are likely to be the ones handing you fries and a burger the next time you are in the drive through lane.
Spelling and arithmetic still have some value, however, new skills are becoming more valuable. Less teaching time should be devoted to things a computer can do for you, and more should be spent on more advanced skills.
One problem I see is that most teachers do not have the skills themselves that students will need in the next decades. Less spelling and arithmetic, more composition and math.
You dont need spelling to work at Wal-Mart. You certainly dont need expensive, advanced "edukayshun".
That?s right, they can consume but have no clue how to produce!
That?s right, they can consume but have no clue how to produce!
Therefore the study is extremely FLAWED!
However, even at that, there is absolutely no such thing as a substitute for the axiom which includes "good 'old-fashioned' reading, writing and arithmatic". Without a fundimental understanding of the rudimentary basics, how can one understand or even correctly use current or future technology to it's fullest?
I agree with the poster that stated that this "study" proved that 25% of parents are IDIOTS!
"U won fryz wi dat?" Indeed!
"U won fryz wi dat?" Indeed!
But remember - it is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
I would argue that mathematics on paper isn't as important as it once was. As technology becomes more pervasive, we should be able to embrace it and utilize it.
What's missing, though, is education that focuses on *why* math works. So even if you use a calculator to figure it out, you understand what you're putting in, roughly what you should expect to get when you hit the equal key and why. So that in crunch time, you can use pencil and paper, or at least make a reasonable estimate that will hold until you have access to the calculator.
But this has been something that's been overlooked since the beginning of time... teaching children how to think and reason and deduce. We're too busy teaching them how to do long division without teaching them how to analyze, correlate, deduct, summarize, hypothesize, debate, research, formulate and on and on and on.
But the fact that so many parents don't place a value on such skills might be telling of an educational system that was broken long before now.
right, and his daughter seems to have figured it out too (if a
little late). It would seem that a sense of entitlement to all the
toys and perks that technology offers is fairly prevalent these
days, and in younger and younger kids. My wife is a teacher,
and she finds it interesting that some kids can't write a simple
sentence, but are incredibly competent on x-box, ps2,
gamecube etc. Part of this is because many of their parents
were the leading edge of the present wave of "self absorbed"
types who feel that they shouldn't have to let mundane
employment get in the way of the important things in life. The
really scary thing is contemplating the kind of society we will
have in ten years. It only took twenty for pc's and cell phones to
put us at the lofty heights of enlightenment we now enjoy...
"Dude! I gotta call ya later, I just ran over a pedestrian (guy
walking).lol.
- Spelling IS important
- by bob donut January 28, 2007 8:31 PM PST
- First off, knowing how to spell is important to knowing how to read. There's more to read now than ever, and unless you plan to have a life as a passive consumer, you'll have to write something at some point, spell checks notwithstanding.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(33 Comments)Map reading also matters. Sorry, but sometimes MapQuest is wrong, and it's easier to read a picture on a map than it is to remember a sequence of verbal directions.
This may be a sensational headline, but all it really does is show that people are getting more and more stupid. Just because they may think that these skills are not important does not mean that they aren't.