It's limited to "younger students", and keeping younger students away from computers also isn't a bad idea IMO.

Keeping younger students away from computers is dumb, but we do need to go back to the basic computer literacy classes of the early/mid 2000s, e.g. typing, basics of desktop operating systems like the filesystem, using word, powerpoint etc. It's appalling how lacking high schoolers seem to be in these kinds of skills.

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esalman 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Keeping younger students away from computers is dumb

No. There's proven research that shows reading a book or writing with a pen or pencil is much more stimulating and beneficial compared to looking at a screen or tapping/typing on it.

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hgoel 2 days ago | parent [-]

But they also need to have computer skills if they're going to survive in this world... it's too late to teach them once they're old enough to have the safeguards removed.

	▲	esalman 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you let them develop critical thinking skills, it'll actually be easier to reach them.

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anonymars 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think young exposure to real computers (where you create, and have to figure things out; not consumption machines) provides access to a level of fluency that is otherwise difficult or impossible to achieve, just like many other skills (language, music...)

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orwin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm pretty sure we ran these experiments in France in the late 80s/early 90s, it was pretty clear that exposure to real computers was useless in elementary school, and even in middle school technology teachers weren't a big fans of teaching computer skills before 14 (basically around the same time as they taught tin soldering).

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protimewaster 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that can be done without having them sit in front of a computer or even really using a computer, though. Lots of kids have stories about wandering over to a college campus when they were in middle school, wandering into a room with the keypunch machines, and learning about computers that way. Very few of those kids directly used a computer, but they learned it anyway.

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anonymars 2 days ago | parent [-]

How prevalent do you think are children that live within wandering distance of a college that lets random children enter and use their computers?

	▲	protimewaster 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Colleges with key punches? Probably pretty close to zero. My point was more that, I think it's incorrect to assert that it's necessary for kids to directly use a computer in order to effectively learn about them. We have tons of concrete evidence of kids learning to be excellent at programming and understanding computers without directly using one. It happened with the kids I described.

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SoftTalker 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So give your kid an Apple-II or TRS-80 then?