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Computers Can Wait; Children Need to Learn the Basics

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 09:01 CST

By Gerard S. Siuta

The recent News article about children beginning to learn and use computers as early as kindergarten in some schools should have been titled "Keys to Not Learning." I am constantly amazed by those in charge of education who continue to refuse to concentrate on those skills that will prepare our children for success in life.

If children are spending their time on the computer, what are they not spending their time on? Spelling, grammar skills, reading, math, science, geography and research in a library. These subjects not only prepare children for success later in life, but they also help develop critical problem-solving skills. Children who become proficient in the basics have little problem becoming proficient with computers -- high school is soon enough to provide for success with computers.

If we want American children to be competent learners, they must be taught the basics and how to learn. The constant stimulation provided by computers, television, iPods, cell phones, etc., certainly must add to the problems noticed with the inability of so many children to sit and concentrate on completing a task.

Years ago this was called having "ants in your pants," and most could be cured by being forced to spend more time sitting and concentrating on the tasks at hand. Today we call it a learning disability -- attention deficit disorder -- and do our best to say that it can be controlled only with medication. Why? Because some believe that it is wrong to force children to do anything. Who is the adult, and who is the child?

Education is supposed to be a coordinated effort ensuring that skills are constantly being developed. Unfortunately, this is not the case in so many schools.

How often we hear of school districts that do not permit science and history grades to be reduced when a student turns in a paper with spelling and grammar errors. Why? Because they are not English classes. Nonsense. Administrators who enforce such rules have little concern for coordinating the reinforcement of real learning in the students they are responsible for.

Wake up, parents. Only through your involvement with your children's schools and a return to the basics will you force education to change. Look at how so many of your grandparents, often with less than a high school education, could read, spell and write well.

Furthermore, those same individuals had excellent basic math skills. Many of them may have even become quite proficient in the use of a computer, even though computers came along long after they were out of school.

How, in 50 years, could we go from a successful education system that produced individuals very capable of learning to today's, where so many college graduates can't do basic math or put together a written paragraph? What a testimonial for the failure of much of today's American education system.

Gerard S. Siuta, a human resources director and former teacher, lives in Akron.

Source: Buffalo News

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