• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Computers Make You Stupid

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
In today’s edition of “computers make you stupid” we have a study conducted by a man that thinks information and communication technology should be a “core skill” and good computer skills are vital in today’s world. On the other side we have people claiming computers will make you teh s+00p1dz.

Critics said classes should focus on literacy and writing skills and teach dedicated subjects rather than “airy-fairy” combined lessons. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education which lobbies for higher standards, said: “When children’s basic standards of reading, writing and arithmetic are so low, it seems ridiculous for them to be spending more time on computers.”
Click to expand...

In other news, computer use also makes you “airy-fairy.”
 
Everyone knows that computers make people stupid. Look at me! I'm taking 20 credits at college, completed 82 credits there, and I have not even graduated from high school yet (I didn't drop out of high school)! Currently I'm taking 4th year calculus, 3rd year spanish, and some other high leveled classes.:D
I must be an idot because I want to be a computer engineer! :mad:Otherwise, these surveys are completely biased.:eek:
 
Also, lowering standards makes people stupid faster. Computers don't make people stupid, people make people stupid.
 
iirc (Ooops), there's an entire book out about that type of highly abbreviated texting and online communication. Personally I abhor it myself - every time I send a text message on my phone it's got caps where required, full words, punctuation, the whole ball of wax basically, and I usually will get the "OK CALL U LTR" kind of crap sent back - and that's from people I actually think are fairly intelligent.

I've been saying for decades now there's Intelligent and Stupid, and Smart and Dumb. Intelligent relates to Smart as Stupid relates to Dumb. You can be a highly Intelligent individual and yet do some incredibly stupid things; the converse being you can be really "street" Smart and still make some really Dumb choices at times...

Go figure.
 
Project_Nightmare said:
Everyone knows that computers make people stupid. Look at me! I'm taking 20 credits at college, completed 82 credits there, and I have not even graduated from high school yet (I didn't drop out of high school)! Currently I'm taking 4th year calculus, 3rd year spanish, and some other high leveled classes.:D
I must be an idot because I want to be a computer engineer! :mad:Otherwise, these surveys are completely biased.:eek:
Click to expand...

Remember that we are talking about primary school (grades 1-5 or 6). You are probably old enough that there weren't a lot of computers around when you were there.

Joke if you want Steve, but there are many teachers (including my mom), that agree with Seaton that the focus in the primary classroom needs to be put back to the 3 "R's" (reading, writing, and 'rithmetic). If kids don't have a firm grasp of the fundamental skills by the time they reach middle school, chances are they will never catch up.

Putting computers in every classroom just for appearances and so school districts can trumpet how modern and advanced they are, and before kids truly have the skills to use and appreciate them for the tools that they are, falls into the same category of other FotM curriculum espoused by administrators with too much time on their hands. These extra classroom activities only serve to distract student focus from developing the skills they truly need to succeed later on in life.

Also remember that we're not talking about your average [H]ardReader here. There are a horrendous number of kids that don't graduate high school, or that can't read or write (at all or very well) when they do. The illiteracy rate is higher than you think. Obviously the public school system is failing a lot of kids, and the solution is probably to go back to basics.
 
Stupidity has to do with the human breading process. Stupid people get drunk and make new stupid people at younger and faster rates.
 
That quote didn't really say that computers make people stupid - just that reducing reading/writing/math time to accommodate further computer classes makes kids stupid.

I agree.

Does anyone, about my age (21) remember the computer shit we had to put up with, grade after grade after grade. The same computer skills, over and over again, unchanged, just as difficult etc. etc.

You can cover ALL the basic computer skills in a single year, if the curriculum wasn't an "Oh shit! Computers are important now - we better do something about it!" type of thing.
 
I can see the point and for the most part I agree. Putting computers in a class just to have them in a classroom is (as someone put it nicely above) FOTM administrative work.

Of course there's exceptions. But who cares about exceptions? These "technology" classes are usually underfunded from the onset, thrown together in a rush, and distract more than they aid in teaching.

Anyways, in a culture that finds it so important to be always connected and in the "digital age", where will we teach children to survive unplugged if not in school? What I mean, with every other aspect being invaded by computers and technology, where is the other side presented in their lives? What's wrong with school providing that?
 
They dont even do handwriting courses in elementary anymore. I can see where the people who say computers will make people stupid or dumb by taking care of basic tasks for them to the point that people may actually forget how to do them themselves. Handwriting was only the beginning. English is on the decline now as well.
 
BoogerBomb said:
They dont even do handwriting courses in elementary anymore. I can see where the people who say computers will make people stupid or dumb by taking care of basic tasks for them to the point that people may actually forget how to do them themselves. Handwriting was only the beginning. English is on the decline now as well.
Click to expand...


I really, really agree with this. My grammar is great, but since the dawn of spellcheck, my spelling has been on constant decline.
 
Arcygenical said:
That quote didn't really say that computers make people stupid - just that reducing reading/writing/math time to accommodate further computer classes makes kids stupid.

I agree.

Does anyone, about my age (21) remember the computer shit we had to put up with, grade after grade after grade. The same computer skills, over and over again, unchanged, just as difficult etc. etc.

You can cover ALL the basic computer skills in a single year, if the curriculum wasn't an "Oh shit! Computers are important now - we better do something about it!" type of thing.
Click to expand...

I still find it hilarious that many schools have required "Computer" or "Technology" classes which really should be called "How to use MS Office 101. Oh, and that thing that displays text and pretty pictures is called a monitor, not a CPU (sic)". I still remember my 7th grade computer "instructor" scanning my floppy disk with Scandisk to check for viruses. :p
tardsk5.gif


What does bother me is how some educators are applying technology in subjects that have nothing to do with computer science and end up screwing over students at the end of the semester. At my former high school there was a particular teacher there that taught Algebra and Geometry... on the computer. Students that took his class had never applied their math skills, the computers did that for them. Quizzes, tests, homework; all of it was on the PC. And guess what? A majority of the students ended up retaking either one of those courses under a different teacher. How that guy keeps his job is a mystery to me. My cynical side says he's on tenure and just doesn't give a shit anymore-- and that's a pretty big side.

In relation to that story, I took a Calculus I course a couple of years ago at my university that made this similar approach. While the tests and quizzes were traditional and tangible the homework was done online; an idea that had very poor execution. First, the website was hard to navigate and looked like something designed as a side project from a CS major sophomore circa 1996. Second, it was usual for the homework to turn down some correct answers due to problems with recognizing formatting or just plain and utter stupidity on the coder's behalf. Lastly, it was too easy to look up answers on other sites and online calculators as no work had to be shown. While I and many people aced all the online homework we struggled on many exams and quizzes handed out in that class.

So I don't think technology is the one to blame here, but I do think how educators apply technology is the reason why we are being 'dumbed down'. There are many great applications in which computers and calculators make great tools for verification purposes or speed up number crunching when its not the focus of an assignment. Something like allowing calculators on a mental math test is not. Computers don't make you stupid; stupid (or strongly apathetic) educators make you stupid.
 
Arcygenical said:
I really, really agree with this. My grammar is great, but since the dawn of spellcheck, my spelling has been on constant decline.
Click to expand...

I can certainly agree with this, with spell check these days there is almost no need to worry about proper spelling, all you have to do is get something similar to the word and then the spell check will fix it for you, and for the grammar im sure that wont be going on much longer either considering they also have a grammar check - of course it might not be that great or effective right now, but im sure that in the future there wont be much of a need for proper punctuation by the user.

To GushpinBob, you'd be surprised how many people actually have problems with ms office. In my senior year of high school, 2 years ago, i was forced into taking a web page development course to fill my schedule. The first few days of the course were about computer terminology, like what does html stand for, after that they let us get onto the computers at which point they instructed us in the proper procedure for creating a table in microsoft word. The truly sad thing is, many people actually had trouble making a table.
 
Computer science being taught in grade school is airy fairy. I have yet to meet a grade school teacher that knew more about computers than the average 12 year old. So how they are going to teach this subject is beyond me. I absolutely agree that core subjects should be taught and computer science is something you can learn in your general environment and specialize in once you have completed your basic studies.

When I was in college I was asked by the California Board of Education to write a paper/make a speech to a panel about computers in the class room. I imagine the purpose was to show how young people thought computers were important and they would use this as a part of their request for more money. Instead, I took this seriously and evaluated all the education software at the time (circa 1996). My findings were less than favorable and I told them that rather than investing in computers they would be better off going back to a core curriculum using books. I advised them that I had taught myself everything regarding computers and that it was by and large a simple subject that someone with a solid understanding of math and science could quickly pick up. I got the impression they didn't like my paper, especially the part I added about computers and media (TV) being a crutch for poor curriculum.

Merging subjects in order to make room for computer education makes this an even worse proposal. I already see the majority of people around me thinking that New Delhi, is located at the newly built 7-11. I am appalled by the shockingly low education standards that are required to graduate from high school in the US. I taught evening community college courses for a while and I was horrified that they allowed these students to graduate 6th grade, let alone 12th. We need to improve the education level of our educators and compensate them accordingly rather then spend a fortune of electric toys. Once this is done, educators can competently pass on knowledge to their students. My baby brother had a big screen TV in every room of his high school, plus they had a computer for every student. You would think that they would be one of the highest ranked schools, rather than one of lowest. The problem with the school was they invested in all this tech but no one besides my brother knew how to operate it. They had a complete CISCO CCIE lab, but none of the teachers knew more than how to do a basic router config. My brother had a field day, because he had my library and a desire to learn. However, his knowledge of History, Geology and the soft sciences is still lacking, although he has filled a lot of that in on his own, through college and personal reading.
 
chaos68 said:
I can certainly agree with this, with spell check these days there is almost no need to worry about proper spelling, all you have to do is get something similar to the word and then the spell check will fix it for you, and for the grammar im sure that wont be going on much longer either considering they also have a grammar check - of course it might not be that great or effective right now, but im sure that in the future there wont be much of a need for proper punctuation by the user.
Click to expand...

I'm incredibly affluent - I won't have issue with grammar. I write as I would speak, and I speak very well :)

Creating ideas, and transcribing them from working memory accurately takes a lot more concentration than hammering long strings of letters out.
 
Arcygenical said:
I really, really agree with this. My grammar is great, but since the dawn of spellcheck, my spelling has been on constant decline.
Click to expand...

Guilty here:D

Even firefox and chrome comes with some form of spellcheck, which I use a lot while posting in forums.


Though of course I cannot blame computer for that. Its just a more convenient means of correcting spellings as compared to say, using a dictionary for example. Its my own fault that I do not take the time to pay attention to the correct spelling and remember them
 
Opera 10 has spellcheck built in now too.

Highlights the bad words with the red underline while you're typing.

Screwed me up big time the first time I seen it, I was like, wtf is that red line !

Then I was like, oh snap I spelled that wrong huh :) Stupid puter they make me dumbar yah.

Computers didn't create the texting language, cell phone texting did that. I recall many years of sitting in IRC chat rooms ages ago never to have seen a spilling of gutter text like you see today.

Maybe I'm just too old and I remember the Internet pre-www (damn you NCSA Mosaic!)
 
stevedave said:
Stupidity has to do with the human breading process. Stupid people get drunk and make new stupid people at younger and faster rates.
Click to expand...

So what you're saying is, stupid babies should be food instead of people?
 
My handwriting has been nearly illegible since kindergarten!

I'm a computer enthusiast with an English degree. Suck on that.
 
chaos68 said:
I can certainly agree with this, with spell check these days there is almost no need to worry about proper spelling, all you have to do is get something similar to the word and then the spell check will fix it for you, and for the grammar im sure that wont be going on much longer either considering they also have a grammar check...
Click to expand...

You know, at first it was like this for me, too. I noticed in my early college years that my spelling started to slowly get worse, when typing or writing by hand. I was going to spell check after anyways, and typing classes teach you that you slow your WPM down a lot of you stop and correct words as you go. Then, inline spell-checkers became more popular. First in Word, then in web browsers like firefox and safari. Nevertheless, my spelling abilities continued to decline.

Now, however, weird things are happening. When I'm writing by hand or typing in something that doesn't check inline spelling, I'll actually spell a word wrong, and see a little red line appear under it, and go back and change the word to the correct spelling. If I'm writing by hand I'll cross it out and rewrite or reshape the incorrect letter into a correct one, and while typing, I'll go back and automatically correct it myself. I'm not even kidding. I really see red lines appear when I misspell a word, and they bother me, hence my spelling is now somehow improving. I'm being totally serious. It's the weirdest thing...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top