Senator Ted Cruz is trying to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolchildren
Senator Ted Cruz is trying to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolchildren
arstechnica.com
Senator Ted Cruz is trying to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolchildren
71 comments
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Not only do I completely agree with this, I am blown away that schools aren't actually using paper textbooks anymore. I only recently woke up to this lazy new way of teaching. I don't want my children even using devices at all for any purpose, let alone being required to use them for schoolwork. What the fuck kind of society are we creating?
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They should be using tablets. Wax tablets. It was good enough for my great-to-the-nth-grandfather, so it's good enough for kids today.
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Foolish comment. Wax tablets didn't have social media, three million notifications, tracking and spying features, countless distractions, updates, power, and connectivity requirements.
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Woooooooooosh
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You can't woosh the original woosher. The downvotes are hilarious.
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Are you even serious right now? God damn it. Who made these rules?
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It's not wrong to question whether any actual learning is taking place on "devices" regardless of whether they're ubiquitous. It's easy to pick up how to use a device after you know how to read and do math, much harder to learn the former when you're an expert at navigating menus on a device. Maybe this is why 4th grade math skills haven't returned to pre-pandemic levels...
Also don't woosh me. Are you going to skibidy next?
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Leftists substitute sound effects for argumentation and feel not the slightest twinge of self doubt in the process.
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Please. Paper is modern nonsense and I won't have our society polluted by it. Papyrus or stone tablets only.
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let alone being required to use them for schoolwork.
I was born in 1991. In elementary school I had assignments that required a computer. This is not new.
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Me too, they didn't require constant connectivity. I went to the library or computer lab. Lots of kids in my class didn't have a home computer. And even though my family did, it didn't give me an advantage on those assignments. We all had to manage doing them at school on a school computer. Thank God they didn't have Facebook.
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He is literally, outloud, complaining that the reason is because maybe kids who are unsupervised and have access to things are somehow going to have less access(??) to conservative viewpoints. The society he’s so afraid of creating is one where he cannot control children’s access to filtered, conservative-biased media, and since pretty much every conservative talking point is a lie, exaggeration, or manipulated perspective they desperately need to be in control of the flow of information. They’re literally banning paper books, bro.
Also this is about hotspot use being expanded outside of schools(“off-premises”), but if that comment is your take then maybe reading comprehension isn’t your thing. Guess those paper textbooks didn’t really do anything to help you, either.
(Literally in the first line it explains that the intention is to help kids without reliable internet get their homework done. He just hates poor people, big surprise.)
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As has been well documented time and again, Texas textbooks are not neutral sources of information (podcast for anyone interested). Taking real books out of the library, controlling the content of textbooks, getting rid of Internet access specifically because it could introduce thought to children... Home of the free, my friends. Free speech absolutism.
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His rationale is ridiculous, but my comment is meant to question why wifi is even necessary to do homework, not about the dangers of censorship. Of course the censorship is outrageous.
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First, you said “I completely agree with him”. If you do not understand how that might mean we think that means you agree with his rationale then writing your assignments by hand clearly didn’t help you that much.
But anyway:
Because sometimes you need to research things for homework? Because the kids with reliable internet will still be able to use it, will use it, and will have an unfair advantage over the kids who don’t have the same level of access(usually because their parents aren’t as well off, perpetuating the cycle of poverty). Even if we decided that every single piece of homework was to be 100% handwritten that wouldn’t make the internet go away and these problems would still persist.
It’s so much more nuanced than some weak take that doesn’t do much but expose your lack of understanding of the issue. Yes, there are some clear advantages to maybe scaling things back a little but this not the way to do it, not even a little bit.
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No, I said I completely agree with this, this being that the state should not be providing wifi hotspots to school children. I was surprised that I actually agreed with Cruz on this because I pretty much never agree with him and consider him, in the words of John Boehner, Lucifer in the flesh. And I'm sorry if some of you thought I meant that I completely agreed with him on what he startes as his justification (morality police, censorship, etc.) which isn't the case.
But instead all you trigger-ready comment warriors are ready to burn me at the stake for what's really a pretty sensible position.
Wifi hotspots aren't going to eliminate inequality. Students eith reliable Internet may have an unfair advantage, but teachers and administrators could minimize that by giving assignments that don't really require Internet access to complete.
Should all assignments be hand written, of course not. But do they need to be completed in a web browser? Nope. Good old word processor and spreadsheets work great.
Holy moly, everybody is on edge. Understandable...
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Then you followed it up with:
I don't want my children even using devices at all for any purpose
So the comment you're replying to wasn't taking some giant leap in logic.
Where are you going to draw the line on what kids should be allowed to use on homework? A slide rule for math? A four function calculator? Matlab? How about research papers? Is Wikipedia allowed or should their family be required to have a printed encyclopedia?
You said earlier that you had to go to the library or the computer lab when you were a kid. You know what they're going to do at the library? Sit in front of a computer and pull up Google. How is that any better/different than just giving them an access point to use from home other than now they don't need to find a ride to the library?
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In this context I am drawing the line with wifi and personally issued Internet connected devices, particularly where the student isn't really getting instruction from a live person.
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Technology is going to be a part of every kids future (if they have one...) and should be taught with the other things they need to learn to be functional and successful.
There are other ways to limit social media access, and wccessnto other unproductive media. Use school sanctioned devices for work. Hire proper IT folk to lock down the equipment. But that would require funding for schools to be adequate.
This is a complex issue. You are over simplifying it.
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Yeah! And what about these libraries? Lids are just able to go and find stuff on shelves and learn things that aren't filtered through my personal opinions?
What kind of society are we creating?
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Agreed. We can't run the risk that children might think on their own or develop an opinion on things.
They're here to take care of me when I'm old, and until I'm dead they're going to do exactly what I say, when I say, and how I say.
We don't need this kind of woke "thinking for yourself" nonsense.
(Very /s for the person out there that had a bad case of the woosh.)
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Children? You mean property? I brought you into the world I can take you out of the world
/s
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You completely missed my point, perhaps it is you who has the whoosh?
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I'm all for libraries. Cruz rationale is retarded, all I'm saying is that the government shouldn't be providing wifi hotspots to kids.
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Not sure if sarcastic, but if serious, this is a completely idiotic take. I have three kids of school age and I really can't see a reason for this.
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And that's how we end up with young adults entering the work force that can't
- type
- navigate the web safely
- save something to a specified directory
- transfer a file
- maintain backups
- recognize suspisous websites/news/ads
- navigate the constantly changing Microsoft UIs
- troubleshoot anything as simple as turning on the computer screen
The world is different than it was 30 years ago, if we don't prepare them for the internet age, then they will fail.
I do agree, physical books and learning off-screen is very important. Letting kids use the open web all day is not helpful, but bring them the computer lab to teach them the productive uses of a computer.
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Except the school prepares the children with none of that in its current state. Those chromebooks are incredibly locked to the point of being practically useless beyond searching stuff on google. We have still have textbooks at my school but most people prefer the pdf version. Most of the kids at my school are incredibly tech illiterate to the point of not knowing how the filesystem works. Most of them have used mobile devices as their primary computers and use laptops just as a glorified browser.
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I don't think any of this is actually a problem--meaning I don't agree that it is true, not that it wouldn't be a problem if it were true--except Microsoft's criminal UI changes and perpetual rebranding of the same old garbage.
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Ok boomer
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How do you expect them do assignments like papers, by typewriter? No, I suppose that's a device too, so hand-written only. Truly, this will equip them to be functioning adults!
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How do you expect them do assignments like papers, by typewriter? No, I suppose that’s a device too, so hand-written only. Truly, this will equip them to be functioning adults!
Recommendations state that children and adolescents should have screen time limited to 2 hours a day or less. If the average school day is 5-6 hours with an average of 2 hours of homework a night, and everything is done on screens, we are actively violating scientific health guidelines and damaging the students brains.
Reading books is also better for the brain than reading the same information from a screen as there is less stimuli being processed while reading the book allowing the brain to have more focus on the processing of information.
Writing by hand is a proven way to retain and better understand information. Learning and practicing writing in both block and cursive improves these outcomes further. Typing, even on a typewriter, does not have the same benefits.
So yes, making students write assignments out by hand using physical books for research will equip them to be more functional as adults.
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While I enjoyed having paper textbooks in school (until I got to college and they were $300+ each), when was the last time you seriously used a paper textbook to learn something new? In this day and age we have Google/Bing/Kagi and you’re going to search for the thing you need to know, pull up Wikipedia, read a few blog posts or the documentation from the project itself, and then apply what you learned.
We’re teaching children how better to survive in today’s world, not teaching them how to survive in our grandfathers world.
Now, my kid has read a few physical paperbacks for her high school English class, and reads plenty of physical books when she gets them from the library or buys them, but classwork is online, instruction is in person, and she seems to be doing just fine not carrying around 20lbs of paper every day. If anything I’d say her note taking has improved more than mine did when I assumed I could simply just open the book back up. This is the world we live in and she’s being taught how to survive in it.
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I am actually reading a paper book right now to learn about configuring advanced features of ZFS. Hard to believe but it's much easier to understand than the fragments of information on Stack Exchange. The man pages are nice to reference but they don't really teach the concepts or give good examples. And Perplexity gave me bad information. Even for very technical things, which you might think would be the first to be displaced, there's still a place for paper books. Yeah I could figure it out eventually but reading this book has probably been faster, more thorough, and more approachable.
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then GTFO the Internet and go parent your kids you dingbat extremist
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I hope you don't breed.
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don't judge children because of their parents. not everyone turns out like their parents. many people are very different because of their strict upbringing.
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Already did, that's why I care.
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Poor kids 🙁
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Back in my day, we just mix drinking water and waste water, we ain't got no medicine, you get infected you die. Pffff kids these days and their "technology"...
/s
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I agree to a certain extent; at least elementary school should and remain device free.
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Seeing how many people believe you are wrong, I am going to post the reasons why you are right so hopefully the people in disagreement understand:
Recommendations state that children and adolescents should have screen time limited to 2 hours a day or less, with emphasis on "less". If the average school day is 5-6 hours with an average of 2 hours of homework a night, and everything is done on screens, we are actively violating scientific health guidelines and damaging the students brains.
Reading books is better for the brain than reading the same information from a screen as there is less stimuli being processed while reading the book allowing the brain to have more focus on the processing of information.
Writing by hand is a proven way to retain and better understand information. Learning and practicing writing in both block and cursive improves these outcomes further. Typing, even on a typewriter, does not have the same benefits.
The fact that so many people do not understand these three very important things demonstrates a lot of ignorance and bias for technology. How many studies are needed before the "Regulations should be based in scientific study" crowd stop pushing against the recommendations of the scientific community?
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71 comments