In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
The problem isn’t “Tech” or “Laptops” or even “Tablets” ; but the addictive nonsense so-called “Tech-companies” spend all their efforts designing instead of trying to solve any actual problems…
…In the pile with the other disappointments.
tosses it on top of X-men after Fall of X
IMO, in the US
- Common core replaced a better curriculum. Courses seem dumbed down and doesn’t really prepare you anymore for college maths
- Grades were extremely inflated during covid because obviously students would not be motivated to study
- Grades are a lot lenient now. Most classes are passing people that would’ve previously been considered a fail
- AI was touted as a replacement for thinking and had repercussions when students started using it to just do all the work
- School is increasingly a for profit system now. Most colleges are increasing tuition without improving classes, and attracting enrollment by touting the hollywood college life experience.
- There’s a lot of negativity in the younger generation, especially as those who see their older siblings fail to find anything in the job market. What’s the point of college if it can’t land you a good job?
So you’re saying the lockdowns had long term negative effects… Interesting 🤔
Like with most things, there’s always a price to an action
Lockdowns are important to curb infection and protect vulnerable people. Did it have long term negative effects? Yes, that’s inevitable. Could we have handled both the lockdown and post lockdown better? Sure. But protecting people heavily outweighs the consequences.
As opposed to the massacre of an uncurbed pandemic
(Also, those effects don’t exist in a vacuum, and without much in the way of an attempt to mitigate them, the knock-on effects become more severe than they would have to.)
You can’t make such a statement about a whole generation without referring to a large cohort study.
For sure. I love my kids, he’s 15. He scores above average in the state/national tests (map ect). He can tell me the date, when the first bomb dropped in fallou 4, but has no fucking idea when the declaration of independence was signed, can’t figure out how to cook anything from a box, can’t name 10 countries in the world, and had zero idea how to do anything for himself.
The sad thing is I taught for 20 years in elementary level. All the have us teach is tests, ELA, Math, fuck science,art, geography,history. These kids are literally functionally mentally handicapped because they just want higher and higher test scores to jerk off to at the cost of kids who are functional.
first bomb dropped in fallout? what about ww2, japan? i have been hearing some people go through HS not knowing 1945 happened.
The history curriculum must be reworked as a FPS.
Unironically, I do think there is a great opportunity in education for video games.
Unfortunately, the historically inspired games I most prominently see are the likes of Assassin’s Creed whose creativity clearly runs just as freely as all the slaves they sweep under the rug and who use the names of historical events and figures as faithfully as a CEO uses those of ethical values.
If these are the games children learn from, no wonder their education is as fucked up as the past these games present should be, but isn’t.
the slaves they sweep under the rug
whilst I do agree that a game that touts itself as a historical simulator should try to be realistic, I can see how it might kill the enjoyability of the game or conversely lead to more perverse and sadistic actions from the player…
Yeah, but portraying Sparta as these noble heroes while tacitly omitting the fact that 80% of their populace was brutally enslaved is a bit irresponsible. Likewise, the Vikings politely killing guards but sparing civilians, taking only treasure neatly prepared in chests, without so much as an implication that the player character’s band is exceptional in that respect, just glosses over the rape, murder and the slave trade that was such a lucrative business for the Vikings.
In the case of AC, they already have mechanisms for discouraging violence against civilians (desynchronization). I’m sure other games could come up with some other solution. If you want to discourage sadistic actions, establish some in-universe reason why the PC diverges from the norm, make that divergence clear, use it as a source of conflict with less progressive fractions to contrast their brutality. Just don’t pretend it didn’t happen.
I’m down for fantastic stories, I appreciate that the battles in these games are chaotic for the of action gameplay fun, I’m happy to suspend disbelief for entertainment.
But the past can hold valuable lessons; corrupting them enables those who would use it deceptively to push some political agenda.
Oh that’s true, I forgot about the desync mechanic. That is a bit odd to just portray this 1 dimensional view of noble heroes. God of War has shown that the male power fantasy can still co-exist with the idea that the hero can do horrible things and still relate to the player, so I’m not sure why Ubisoft would prefer to bury their heads
Honestly, GoW 2018 was a really good commentary on the cycle of violence, processing trauma and self-loathing, emotional vulnerability… This is entirely tangential, but there’s one moment where Kratos and Atreus look out at some beautiful view opening up before them. Kratos tentatively reaches out to put his hand on Atreus’ shoulder, then hesitates, pulls it back. It broke my heart, breaks it over and over every time I think about it. The game undeniably is a power fantasy, but it hardly pulls punches in digging up Kratos’ issues and flaws, including calling out that tough macho persona.
Anyway, on topic: I think the portrayal of Sparta in particular goes back to a circular issue of pop media. When depicting something, the audience usually approaches in with expectations and preconceptions shaped by other works. These works in turn call back to previous ones, partially built on the writings of 19th century historians belonging to their respective elites and accordingly biased to let the Spartan elites look good, drawing on source material written by ancient Greek elites that will also have identified more with the Spartiates than the Helots.
If I make a game or movie about Sparta, most people will involuntarily form some association with 300. If I then (accurately) present their warrior-elite as cruel bastards that largely eschew the arts, don’t actually do much combat training, don’t value individual prowess so much as coherence in the phalanx, have a very average track record in war; if I show them marching to Athens and back several times because they had no siegecraft to actually take it; if I point out their selling out Greece to the Persians…
I don’t think players will enjoy it. That’s not a fun Sparta. It doesn’t stack up to the glorious expectations. There are no heroics, just disappointment.
Historians will love it, but critics will open with “if you’re looking for the heroes of 300, you won’t find them here” and players will close the tab.In that light, a publisher primarily interested in money won’t want to take the risk of honesty, if they care at all.
With the Vikings, the causes may differ (and I don’t know the historiography here), but the result is similar: we’ve ended up with an image of big tough heathen warriors, possibly shaped more by the impressions of English monks whose churches they were burning or those Vikings that ended up converting to Christianity, and less by the of slaves that were dragged away or people killed in the raids. Again, Ubisoft won’t want to risk kicking up a fuss by smearing that image.
Additionally, the factor you pointed out that you might not want to indulge player cruelty adds complexity to the question of how to frame those issues. Complexity requires more writing work, which costs money, and we’re back at “a publisher primarily interested in money”.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the games, despite being aware of those issues. My complaint is rather with a media landscape that has painted an image nobody dares disrupt because it’s not profitable. The education to enable such disruption would have to come from the outside, which leads to the initial problem: If games are the best way to convey that information, but the industry has backed itself into a corner where it can’t easily do so, we’re at a deadlock.
67 skibbidy dapper.
The above is probably why.
I’m willing to bet most of us laughed at E so I’m not saying a damn thing lol
badger badger badger badger mushroom
snaaaaaaaake snaaaaaaake
I don’t know about that, even with their digital lobotomy, gen z votes a lot smarter than older generations.
the older Gen z , the younger ones are pretty lacking, plus thier aspiration is to be influencers, at least some of them.
Stupid kids! Choose a more realistic career, like astronaut.
Younger gen z are incredibly dumb this really isn’t anything new or up for debate.
So is most people, myself included. Millennial btw
Millennial is like the only generation that comfortably says we’re all stupid.
This is what happens when you don’t grow up with Math Munchers and Brain Age.
And who designed the software and tools leading to this?
Google.
Which is run by their parents’ generation
I don’t think framing it generationally is useful. Your average mum and dad have little to nothing to do with it.
It’s run by techbros who live in a different reality then the rest of us.
Nice one, Millennials.
Aren’t gen-z the kids of gen-x? I’m a millennial and my parents are boomers, 2 gens before
I mean children are ideally raised by their grandparents but no, generations are successive, they don’t “skip a generation”. Greatest generation fought WW2, came home, and caused the Baby Boom. They raised Boomers who raised GenX who raised Millenials who raised GenZ who are presently raising Alpha. Of course there are millenials who raise millenials and genx who raised genz but that’s not the usual case.
So you literally show where it skipped a generation, because you completely left out the Silent Generation between the Greatest Generation and the Boomers.
Greatest Gen are generally the parents of Boomers. Silent Generation are the parents of GenX. Boomers are the parents of Millennials. Gen X are the parents of Gen Z. Millennials are the parents of Gen Alpha.
You gave a bunch of kids systems they’re completely locked out of modifying and garden walled to shit and then act shocked when they learn nothing from them.
Jesus
That’s not true, they learned something. It just wasn’t beneficial at all.
I honestly blame the software we use. It’s made to be profitable, not to educate. Every fucking article is full of bullshit “click here!” for profit.
Where is the global and universal app to learn fucking everything? That teaches you, lets you read unlimited textbooks (oh piracy!) or science papers, quizzes you, scores you, lets you compete with others, gives you a diploma that is worth something?
Why do we expect an internet that has been captured by capitalism and is algorithmically tuned to maximize profit and brainwashing to be good for intelligence? That is what advertising is brainwashing, and it ru(i)ns everything.
PS: Of course, I have no idea how good online learning resources of schools actually are. I’m just going to assume they are abyssal. Because why wouldn’t they be terrible.
Blame the parents that have abdicated their responsibility to raise their children and outsource that to screens.
My kids have grown up with screens since birth, but our going-into-fourth-grader has a 12th grade reading level and our going-into-second-grader has an 11th grade reading level because we make teaching them at home a priority.
They both score way above grade level in math and science as well. Their teachers constantly say they can tell which parents actually make their kids education a priority and which parents don’t give a shit and expect the teachers to do it all.
Let’s apply some critical thinking here. You’re saying your 7yr old has the reading comprehension of a 17yr old. I don’t buy that. I read voraciously as a child and in 7th grade I had an 11th grade reading level. I have a 7yr old who reads voraciously and they are nowhere near an 11th grade level. They rarely get screen time either. Education is a huge priority for us as well, but 11th grade reading level at 7? That ain’t real.
Probably this says more about this specific school district and what they expect of their students than about the reading comprehension a child compared to an adolescent.
I mean believe it or don’t. I don’t give a shit lol. It’s true. I was the same way as a kid, far ahead of all of my peers with a high school reading level in first grade, twice in school scored the highest in the state for standardized testing for my grade. I even got two little trophies from the state for it.
Their mom is an insane reader as well, and clocks 100+ books a year.
They got a great head start with genetics, but we’ve also put a ton of effort into fostering that.
Well done. Did you limit screen time and got them to read physical books and such? And yeah, it’s definitely impossible without parenting, but you also need the right “tools” or learning environment and software. I don’t think that exists, at least not as open source / non commercial.
Yeah they are limited on their screen time. They have to do an hour of reading before they can do any fun screen time, then they can do whatever until bed as long as homework is done.
At bedtime they have to be in bed, but can use their kindles to read until 10 when they automatically lock on them.
I learned a lot because there was friction in the tools. There’s a point where „accessible“ software (and I don’t mean accessible in the sense of making it usable with screen readers and other disability support) becomes detrimental. Like the complete abstraction that mobile devices have from a filesystem now - many younger people can’t use a hierarchical file explorer as a result.
Yeah that’s definitely true, IT systems becoming too easy to use. They should have given the students raspberry PIs and some wire and mechanical switches instead of McBooks, let them build their own laptops lol.
Nothing in USA rewards intelligence. Not education system, not employers, not government. Why develop a skill that isn’t in demand? Would you want to develop medieval brickmaking just because some researcher is measuring for it?
That poor child in the stock photo getting shown for an article on how children are getting dumber…
That being said, the reason why children are getting ‘dumber’ is probably because a) education is getting less money every year b) social media is destroying their attention span c) intelligence isn’t valued enough by society
At no point is getting a notebook part of the problem. Young people need to learn how to use technology.
Problem: we’re not spending enough on educators to teach kids
News Articles: we paid apple 10 billion dollars but the laptops made these kids dumber.
