[mlsu]

It’s definitely actively bad to involve a device in the vast majority of education. And, it’s a purely selfish thing by tech companies to insert themselves into education.

A student should not see a computer until college or vocational school unless they are taking e.g a high school programming or electronics class.

[account42]

Now that's just needlessly extreme in the other direction. Students will be seeing devices much earlier than that just because their peers will use them so it makes sense to educate them on their proper use and dangers much earlier than college. It just doesn't make sense to cram them into every subject because not using one is outdated.

[skydhash]

Students also see power drills and cars, and schools don’t use them as part of the curriculum. I have a lot of computing device and still believes in real books and pen or paper for learning anything. The mechanical actions and the physical presence really helps in retention of the materials. Even those TI calculators can be overkill. I’ve only used one in college, and it was for a few exams about polar coordinates and transmission lines, IIRC. For everything else, the simpler scientific calculators were enough. Multiplying matrices and graphing functions doesn’t take that much time at high school and undergraduate level.

[VortexLain]

> The mechanical actions and the physical presence really helps in retention of the materials. Although this is the case for many people, I personally struggle to process information and write it on paper at the same time. Thus, I strongly prefer digital note-taking and use Obsidian or just vim instead of paper.

[tracker1]

I'm not trying to be offensive, but I don't see how typing it into a computer is significantly different than writing it on paper.

Is there something stopping you, or anyone from writing it down and taking notes in class and then reviewing it later as needed? Not just process it in lecture time, but regurgitate it to physical form for later review.

Also, I would definitely constrain this into educational groups, where K-6 are much different from college (post mandatory) education.

[dmbche]

If I may, people write (with pens) slower than than can speak, and thus to take good notes you need to synthesize the material you are being explained. You need to understand what you're writing.

Many people can type as fast/faster than they talk, and when typing it is possible to try and type verbatim what is being said. In this case, there is no understanding. (If you've ever taken a class not all that is said is pertinent and not all that is pertinent is said)

I personally don't revisit my written notes their purpose is uniquely for me to remember/understand what I've written.

[wink]

I highly doubt this is unique. Some teachers (at least when I was in school) said stuff, repeated it, no problem writing it verbatim. Some others put it on the board for you to copy it verbatim, and later in uni.. most people definitely did not type fast enough to capture every word.

Writing down stuff has always been what you make of it.

[hunterpayne]

"Many people can type as fast/faster than they talk"

No they can't. An amazing typist is 120 wpm. A slow speaker might be 150 wpm and fast talkers over 300 wpm.

[mos_basik]

>I don't see how typing it into a computer is significantly different...

I haven't read up on it much myself, but any discussion along the lines of this subthread re: "handwriting > typing" is probably discussing research that's starting to be talked about more and more in the past 5 years or so (maybe the pandemic and online learning accelerated interest?)

here's a 5m clip of a neuroscientist presenting to the US Senate this year on correlation between dropping academic performance and use of tech in classrooms in many countries over many years, and asking for more research into mechanisms and causation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U

and here's a paper from a couple years ago describing differences in observed brain activity between handwriting and typewriting and some discussion of how this could be a mechanism of the kind the video was talking about https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

>Is there something stopping you from...

No, but I feel like it's not hard to argue that default are important.

[smcg]

shop class and drivers ed used to be offered by schools...

[tracker1]

But you didn't include them in your English or Math classes. They were optional courses, and for older students, not K-6.

[bix6]

I learned typing in 3rd grade iirc. That seems reasonable for a fundamental skill.

[doubled112]

My kids are in grade 3 and 6 and nobody ever taught them to type. They just handed them a Chromebook and assumed they know what they're doing.

It is a skill, but everybody seems to think it will just happen on its own.

[toast0]

The problem is everyone knows you learn to type when you get on IRC, but you can't put elementary school kids on IRC.

[doubled112]

Why not? I was in elementary school on IRC. ASL ;-) ?

[toast0]

I'm sure you turned out fine. But the school district can't put a bunch of kids on IRC, it'll look bad.

[breppp]

I wouldn't put any kids through some of the stuff I've seen on IRC

[mftrhu]

You don't necessarily need a computer for that. They built more than a billion typewriters, IIRC.

[bix6]

Sure let’s buy a bunch of typewriters instead of multi purpose computers

[ethbr1]

When's the last time you played DOOM on a typewriter?

[swiftcoder]

> A student should not see a computer until college or vocational school unless they are taking e.g a high school programming or electronics class.

Are you really trying to put the genie back in the bottle to the extent of making high schoolers write all their coursework by hand? Or maybe we should bring back the typewriter for distraction-free essay writing...

[ekidd]

As someone who hates handwriting in bluebooks, and who types constantly, yes: I think we should bring back in-class writing by hand, we should lock up cellphones for the school day, and we should proctor exams. If you're not doing this, your students will be stuck to a screen all day, pay no attention to class, and use ChatGPT under the desk to cheat.

[ethbr1]

This is literally what most grade level school systems are doing, with good results.

The teenage brain is not prepared for addiction of digital magnitude.

[delta_p_delta_x]

> making high schoolers write all their coursework by hand

You make this sound like it is some long-gone practice. I was writing maths by hand as recently as 2020 in university, for my CS-associated maths courses (linear algebra, calculus, physics for computer graphics, etc).

In pre-university essentially all coursework was done by hand, and the national exams are all still handwritten.

[vrighter]

I chose a hybrid method (I don't study anymore, this is just for personal stuff).

I bought a cheap graphics tablet, and still handwrite my math, but on a digital whiteboard on my PC so I can save and take backups of it, and waste less paper. But I still get the tactility, and its associated benefits (the act of handwriting something helps you remember it better)

[wink]

Writing it down by hand and then doing OCR on a high quality photo is a completely different ball game than writing it down and... not having it in digital form though.

I'm not disagreeing at all here, I tried live latexing my math courses and it was hard. I wish I had had access to a cellphone + good digitization back then. (just scanning it in was kinda pointless and I graduated about the time Android came out)

[delta_p_delta_x]

> I tried live latexing my math courses

This was by far the biggest time sink in my maths courses, and frankly, a giant waste of time. Sure, the end result looked beautiful but I think I understood less of it than if I'd just written it all down on A4 ruled paper in gel pen.

[curt15]

In the age of chatbots for outsourcing thinking at one's fingertips, absolutely!

The invasion of tech into the classroom has not produced more capable graduates. There's a lot of empirical evidence to the contrary.

The mind is a muscle, and developing that muscle is the education system's main purpose.

[mlsu]

Yes, I really am. For the purpose of learning, internalizing and organizing information, hand writing is superior to typing in every case. It's physiological.

[gizmo686]

Back when I was in middle school, we had "digital typewriters" that worked fine, and was brought out far more often than the laptop cart or computer lab.

[solumunus]

Genuinely, why not? Seems obvious to me that this would produce better outcomes.

[justsomehnguy]

This is how you get people who can't comperhend why they can't open Thesis.LNK from a thumbdrive.

[hgoel]

I can already tell that you would've been the equivalent of the adults that made life hell for me as a teen with their awful heavy handed opinions and interjections.

[nradov]

You've got to be kidding. Writing longhand was always a miserable experience for me no matter what technique or pen I used. Typing on a keyboard is so much faster and more fluent.

[buellerbueller]

>Typing on a keyboard is so much faster and more fluent.

...and studies show, inferior for recall:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-ha...

[joveian]

Interesting article, although it does raise a few questions for me. I can see handwriting being uniquely important when learning to read but beyond that it would seem to just be suggesting that directly translating the same note taking to using a direct-mapped keyboard is a bad idea. But what about more complex input methods like for Chinese or a chording stenograph? Is there a distinct point where brain activity pops to wider activity? Do other computer based activities like correcting typos or non-computer activities like wiggling your finger to draw the shape of the first letter of each word engage more activity similar to handwriting? If needing a summary is the main difference, that seems like an easy thing to incorporate into digital note taking.

Learning to read I can see that handwriting directly relates but beyond that it seems like there must be more effective ways to engage with the material than just making the writing method more complex. I'd say the same about lectures; interacting with someone who understands the material can be quite valuable but spending a lot of time listening to the same thing that could be read can't be the most effective way to learn even if the complexity of the transmission does help some with memory. I hope this type of research goes beyond basic handwriting vs typing and looks into the effectiveness of additional ways of engaging with information.

For example, I like "don't guess" as a major principle of learning (per B.F. Skinner) to cultivate awareness of how reliable your memory is and avoid remembering incorrect answers as much as possible. The process of determining and looking up things that you aren't fairly certain about seems like something that could also engage wider brain activity and do so in a way that is more directly relevant to what you are learning.

[matheusmoreira]

Same. Slowly writing things out by hand is excruciating for me. I would always refuse to do it, even as a kid. Rarely took notes.

[Danox]

I almost wish I could go back to school so I could use Goodnotes or Notability with my iPad to take notes awesome.