Too Big to Fail: To a very large extent, yes, I wish kids were required to learn how to use slide rules instead of calculators. I want kids to experience life and learning without the intermediary of a screen. It's just begging the question to say "X is available, so we should teach kids to use it."

For everyone thinking about the Surgeon General and social media content warnings, on the podcast today we have Candice Odgers, one of the leading researchers on teen mental health, talking about the actual science on this question: www.techdirt.com/2024/06/18/t...

Techdirt Podcast Episode 395: What An Actual Expert Thinks About Kids & Social Mediawww.techdirt.com In the conversation about keeping kids safe online, the actual experts with the most to offer are all too often treated as outsiders and interlopers. One such expert is Candice Odgers, Professor of…

Out of respect for your knowledge on this subject, I listened to this whole podcast episode, and it finally clicked for me why I have a fundamental disagreement with you on it. When Professor Odgers said that the test subjects were their own control group, I thought - but that's absurd! The...

... control group needs to be people who never use social media at all; who've never heard of social media. Amish kids; old test responses from the 80's. And that's when I realized that you're defining terms differently than I am. When I was a kid, the internet didn't exist. There was ARPANET...

... but I certainly didn't know anybody who used it. I read paper books to gain information; for social interaction, I had to physically leave the building I was in and find a different physical location where other people are. My kids are 4 and 5 years old; I want them to read paper books. I...

...want them to socially interact with people in person. Go walking in the woods, go swimming at the beach, go hang out in a pool hall when they're older. You're asking whether someone feels subjectively more depressed on a day they use a computer for 3 hours instead of 1 hour; the real question...

...for me is, are they out playing in the grass with their friends, or are they looking at a screen? Interacting with people through a screen rather than in person IS the harm; that's the thing you're trying to avoid, the same way you want to avoid them watching a TV show instead of reading a book.

Professors talk about how few students today can actually read a book. Kids my kids' age have issues socializing because of COVID isolation. I want them to be able to sit down and read a 600 page novel; to be able to be captivating conversationalists at a pub. Does using social media instead of...

...doing those things as an 8 year old lead to problems doing them as a 25 year old? That's the fundamental question to me, and the reason I'm hesitant to ever let them learn to use a computer or a smart phone.

"Ever"? My kids use computers. They also read way more books than I did as a kid (and I read a ton). Give kids guidance, but outright bans on stuff never work. Teach kids how to use stuff responsibly.

I mean, I didn't use a computer until I was in high school. I didn't use a smartphone until I was in my 30's. Not sure why it needs to be different for kids in the 2020s and 2030s than it was for kids in the 1980s and 1990s.

Did you walk uphill in the snow both ways to school too? Are you sad that kids also use calculators instead of slide rules? The world moves on. Best to teach kids how to actually use the tools of modern life properly, rather than pretending they don't exist.

To a very large extent, yes, I wish kids were required to learn how to use slide rules instead of calculators. I want kids to experience life and learning without the intermediary of a screen. It's just begging the question to say "X is available, so we should teach kids to use it."

I prefer that society prepare kids for modern life. Not life half a century ago, such that they are ill-prepared when they go out in the real world.

my main gripe is that we have let computer class become "learn how to use Word badly" and not "here's how a computer works, here is how you program it to do what you want"

100% agreed; computer classes should start with handing kids a stack of blank punch cards and work forward from there.

I literally did this. Grade 12 computer class. 1983. Punch cards, anachronistic even then. Mainframe BASIC run somewhere downtown. It was torture. And a colossal waste of time. What you're pining for taught nothing. Those aren't rose-tinted glasses you're wearing; that's a Matel Viewmaster.

After hearing this person say kids should be using punchcards and flowchart templates it’s pretty clear they’re either trolling or just plain cuckoo.

I know virtually nothing about how computers work (I am extremely skeptical of technology in general), but I am a huge proponent of teaching history, without which you can't really have a perspective on anything.

Same here. 11th grade was Pascal (what the AP CS test used back then) with a (woot!) screen editor and super-quick compilation. Excellent for experimenting and learning. 12th grade was FORTRAN and (ugh!) COBOL, both using (double-ugh) punchcards. What an incredible waste of time.

I was thinking more age-appropriate stuff, like python. Also remember LOGO? that ruled. would be great to introduce to elementary kids

Elementary tech teacher here: my kids design video games in Scratch, websites in HTML, green homes in Sketchup, art in Tinkercad (that we 3D print), and more… and yes, they also learn how a computer works plus digital citizenship.

I don't know what any of those things are (except HTML). When I was in elementary school, we had mimeographs. Seems insane to be dragging kids to the computer lab every day instead of teaching them on paper.

I do think the major problems of the 21st c do not include designing new video games, so any education should equip them to tackle, among other things, climate change on the humanistic and scientific level. Otherwise we are failing the next generation.

Conceptually, but not that specific language. But HTML for example, is more practical, and not much more complex (at a basic level). There are age appropriate "games" that let kids build the logic graphically that are just as useful as a logo program, but keep the attention of the kid.

But what concepts can HTML teach beyond hierarchical data? LOGO also has functions and recursion, and is really a kid-friendly Lisp (the original A.I. language).

Throughout this thread you are coming off as someone who wants to be mean for the sake of being mean. Limiting and controlling and keeping people ignorant…the kids I knew raised like that did not cope well. If that’s not your intent you should reconsider how you’re engaging.

If I'm coming across that way, that's absolutely a problem with my communication style, and my fault. I'm certainly not intending to. I'm coming from a place of: the internet is bad and was a mistake; what can we do help future generations avoid it so they don't suffer the way we have?

Still sounds like the homeschooling parents who want to control how kids interact with society. There’s a small minority who are doing it to expand their kids’ options and interactions. Most seem to be trying to constrain them. Families of origin probably cause more suffering than the internet.

Screw you. Binary logic with a breadboard or it didn’t happen.

Hold up, they'll need to make some flow charts and fill out some coding sheets before they sit down at the card punch.

Now that's the stuff

Punchcards are just a worse alternative to typing. If you want to smother enthusiasm for programming all the while imparting useless knowledge for outdated programming languages and practices*, then this is a great way to do it. * There's a reason we don't teach some of this stuff anymore.

bsky.app/profile/ouij...

as someone that has been a somewhat unwilling passenger on this thread I think maybe the most elegant explanation is that this was a "walked uphill in the snow to school both ways" quip that has been taken too far and too earnestly.

Well, the AP CSP and AP CS classes do still do the latter. But yeah, it would be nice for non-AP classes to do so as well.

Where does knowing the difference between a fedora and a trilby fit in?

There was a study ages ago that computer science students who were regularly tested with pen and paper learned programming better than those provided a keyboard and IDE. I feel the same way about calculators: fine tools once the basics are understood, but not before.

The biggest impact, IMO, of learning to use a slide rule is that you have to be able to reasonably estimate the general area of your result before using it. That skill is a lot harder to teach on a calculator, and is extremely useful in modern life

Friend do you go on vacation in a Conestoga wagon? Do you use an ice house to preserve your salted meats?

I'm not sure about slide rules, but I do want my kids to directly experience, screenless, the 7-segment BOOBS.

Slide rules are not better or more “pure” for learning math or performing computations. You’re veering into unjustified Ludditery.

I wish I had read this first.

After hearing this person say kids should be using punchcards and flowchart templates it’s pretty clear they’re either trolling or just plain cuckoo.

They are better at getting people to understand significant digits and making order of magnitude estimation by virtue of the very nature of slide rules. Still no reason to use them in this say and age, though, as those things can and should be taught as part of any science class.

Yeah, I agree with both those benefits, and if you want to train your brain to think in terms of logarithms, they’re a great tool. But (and here again I think we agree) versus solid theory or hand calculation, I think they should be really low priority in a curriculum.

Yea, this is a bad idea. Do it in your head, or do it on a computer - but using tech that is 50 years out of date isn't helping anyone.

Knowing how to use a slide rule seems like a pretty darn useful skill to me. Can't rely on electricity always being available.

As someone who learned how to use one, it really isn't.

I’m not sure I even know what a slide ruler is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've actually never used one, although I used an abacus in middle school. They're analog computers that work on approximations.

Slide rule - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

I still have mine

I think I missed using them at school by only a few years, so I'm aware of them, but still have no idea how they work.

You have a valid point here. My dad and I both graduated undergrad in engineering. We were discussing the failed engineering, even getting into the specific formulas, of a bridge or building a couple of years ago. My nephew, also same engineering discipline...

had no idea how to apply the structure formulas. We asked how he planned to engineer and said he would just plug the data in the computer, and it would spit out the design. My first thought was, "I hope I don't drive on any of his bridges."

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