CHILDREN"S EDUCATION

Children in a School in Scotland are being taught using IPads, the kids enjoy using them but is is questionable
whether it is the right way to educate children. Considering Britain is 18th in the Europe with children having basic education skills, this is another step backwards!!!!!

At my daughters school, they have all been given laptops (supplied by the government) but they only use them once a week, emphasis is still on the old type of learning.

I think that an important aspect of learning is bypassed when children use mainly digital media. Writing something down, rather than copying and pasting, which is very common now, involves the kinaesthetic modality and helps learning to take place.

When my Sons were young I could hardly understand their Homework, phonetic teaching of the alphabet, no
old fashioned Times table etc. Now we have calculators so you don"t have to learn how to add and subtract, a completely alien mobile phone and computer language , abbreviations for words etc. This results in Pupils not having to think or act for themselves, this is why we are 18th in child education in Europe.

Panda wrote:
When my Sons were young I could hardly understand their Homework, phonetic teaching of the alphabet, no
old fashioned Times table etc. Now we have calculators so you don"t have to learn how to add and subtract, a completely alien mobile phone and computer language , abbreviations for words etc. This results in Pupils not having to think or act for themselves, this is why we are 18th in child education in Europe.

I agree, Panda. I really don't think that children should be allowed to use calculators for tasks that can be worked out efficiently without them. Using calculators for what I consider to be things they need to be able to do without, like times tables and simple multiplication, means they often don't know the mechanics of the operations. I surprise kids a lot by doing things either in my head or on bits of paper more quickly than they can do them with a calculator.

They won't always have a calculator handy when they need to work something out or they would be sensible to work it out. For example, in a supermarket, I saw packs of tea bags offered at a certain price, and it was supposed to be a special offer, but I was able to work out that if I bought two smaller packs, I'd actually save money.

I can still add up in my Head, yet time and again when buying things in small shops without a modern Till
the assistant had to write every Item down. To my mind, they should never have abolished the 11 + because
comprehensive Education brings all children down to the same level and of course they are not. Not everyone
is a natural Academic and we had an Apprenticeship scheme in Industry for youngsters to learn a Trade. Sadly
that disappeared with the decline in Manufacturing but had the Goverment had the foresight, youngsters
leaving school could have been trained in Colleges as Tradesmen so we wouldn"t have to import Labour. It would also have kept them off the Streets getting up to mischief.