Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mario F.
Actual studies are still waiting. I do doubt however they will be made. Social experiments in this country have little scientific background. Instead they are, as was the case, simply the result of a political motivation.
Maybe Portugal should stop thinking itself special, and take advantage of the psychology and sociology research that many other countries have made that show that addressing the effects of poverty increase scholastic achievement. If you need a resource for such information I am positive that Mensa em Portugal can assist you. If they don't then let me know and I'll make a few calls.
Quote:
But to answer your question directly, I have a few things against kids having a computer. For one, there has been reports of kids of the poorest social strata selling their computers (20% of the Portuguese population in within poverty levels). On the other hand this policy was not a part of a wider educational effort that actually could have given some context to the computers:
- Teachers didn't receive new skills to follow students with their new technology; Homeworks are still classical pen-&-paper assignments, educational policies and programs weren't changed to take advantage of the computers. Many teachers don't know how, don't care and weren't told to care how to take advantage of their students computers for their teaching process.
- There's been no investment whatsoever in the creation of online educational content that could encourage students to use their computers as a learning tool.
Yeah because like Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre is worthless.
Quote:
- There's been no social awareness campaigns that could help many parents deal with what became an intruder in their homes; a piece of equipment that had their children locked on their bedrooms, setting up private passwords and negating parents any control over their kids online social interactions. To put this in perspective, the typical Portuguese parents work both 9 hours per day, stay away from home around 12 hours, has little education and very nearly inexistent computer knowledge or skills.
My parents handled it just fine.
Quote:
These computers have became Messenger, Twitter and Hi5 tools, have been used to download movies and music from the internet and have very little use as true educational tools.
Yes, because learning to proficiently use the tools like email, voip, instant messaging, etc. that professionals use in the workplace is obviously of no educational value.
If you teach a dog to speak, and all it talks about are bones and butt sniffing, does that make it any less of an achievement? The same arguments where made about teaching the poor to read. Yes, the vast majority of the poor use their ability to read for things like National Enquirer, The Globe, and 'books' (i.e. pr0n aka romance novels). But a few, a very important few, use that ability to read books about subjects that are far beyond their ability to acquire through education due to their financial station of birth.
Quote:
This information is being made public by parents associations a little over the country. The actual numbers are still to be known. Chances are they will never be. The whole computer craze was not even done with an historical perspective. Next year, maybe the other one it will stop.
Because if poverty isn't a quick fix it's not worth doing?