Ask Slashdot: Computer Charities for the Children?

Paranoid Diatribe wrote in with this worthwhile submission: "This past weekend, I wired my 4-year-old daughter's room with an old 486 running Win95 with a connection to my little LAN. Anyway, after seeing my daughter's face light up when she realized she could play in her own room, I got to thinking: What does it take to set computers, networks, internet, etc. for a "good cause"? Now I don't necessarlity mean getting the parts, and the physical side of things. That's relatively easy (though I wouldn't know how to solicit for hardware/software donations). I want to know the logistics of starting a non-profit organization where I can use my talents to benefit the children in my area. There's the legal aspect. The money issues. Tax issues. And (as much as it sickens me), the liability issues. I live in Salt Lake City, UT and the climate around here is (to put it mildly) pretty conservative. The last thing I need would be to wire a local community center to the 'net to have some over-zealous local politician sue me because some poor kid stumbled onto an objectionable site while online. Maybe my fears are not justified... but I'd rather play it safe. Anyway, I'm so completely ignorant about this sort of thing, that I really don't know what questions to ask. Do any of you donate your talents and time for charity? Is it worth it? Is there a "right" way to go about this?" I think this is a worthwhile idea, but what is one to do about the already prevailent attitude in legislation that our children need to be protected from the Internet?

Wasn't there just a study that said...

Why is it I am always the nay-sayer...

I was just listening to a long debate about the internet, computers, and television in childrens lives a few days ago. They made some very good points about why computers and television should be taken out of the lifes of children more and more. The reasons were not porn, or violence, or anything that you would like to call censorship.

The cases were clearly showing that parents are relying more and more on "electronic" babysitters, hoping the kids would just watch TV or play with thier computers, and staying "out of the way." Children need guidance, even if they are not subject to "bad" influances. Children have to be taught some lessons that they can't get from "electronic babysitters."

Social skills for one. I wouldn't want a whole generation of people who developed thier social skills on Usenet and Slashdot like sites, would you? Another point was that computers don't require any extensive amount of "logic" development, and the "better" a computer is in the public eyes, the less it requires from the users. This is why you get the BOFH stories, because people are given access to "powerful" computers without being taught any "logic" skills first. If we start giveing children more computer access at earlier ages, before we teach the basics (reading, lots and lots of math, etc..) they may call the helpdesk less, but it's unlikely they will be a generation of "better hackers" because they will lack some fundemental reasoning skills.

What it boiled down to is this: Parents _must_ spend more time with thier children, and _anything_ that comes in the way of that is going to cause more harm. The list of excuses to avoid this is endless... I got a program that can teach them more about math than I can personally, they need to learn independance, I don't have time because I need to be away earning a living to support them, etc, etc, etc.... But the simple fact is, they should be learning independance, self respect, math, social skills, pride, and logic under parental guidance. The fact that the parent doesn't have the ability to teach these things is not an excuse to "let someone else do it." What really needs to be said is, who we need to be teaching is the parents, not the children. We need to give the parents the skills to confront thier children, one on one, and make them into the people we would want to be our neighbors, friends, and reletives.

That being said, sure, a donation to a school of computers is a somewhat nobel thing. My children will probably have computers of thier own as well. But be warned, if the child grows to be more involved with any device more than they want to be involved with thier parents, it is an indication of something bad. And it is NOT unreasonable to remove the childs access to television or computers if the child is unwilling to spend time with the parents first.

Aside: Look at me, I can attempt to look at my life and be self critical. I am suposadly a highly educated, responsable adult. BUT, I can't spell very well at all. And, I will say frankly, that somewhere along the line someone just pointed out a "spelling checker" to me insted of taking the time to show me how important it is to be able to do it on my own. So now, although I "educated" I am relyant on an electronic device, and trying to go back and teach myself something I should have learned 20 years ago from a parent or teacher.

Re:The greatest place to start

I've worked extensively with the public education system in the united states, as the former technical lead in the customer service department of a company that sells an educational software package exclusively to schools.

It's doomed. Burn it.

My work included pre-sales coordination, so i wasn't only talking to the "bad" customers. Out of the literally dozens i worked with every week, I found that maybe 1 in 100 wasn't suffering from cranio-rectal insertion.

My advice is simple. If the school gets the idea that you are offering them a free service, they will overstay their welcome. Yes, I even have extensive experience dealing with the Salt Lake City and West Jordan school districts.

The first day will be fine. You'll arrive, install the system, show a math teacher and an administrative secretary how to work some of the programs, tell them where the power switch is, they'll chat with you for a while, say good bye, and everything will seem hunky dory.

The second day you will recieve a call from someone who says they can't find the mouse. Someone will have stolen it, err, re-assigned it to a more important use. Alternatively, they may state that they turned it on and "nothing works". After an hour of troubleshooting over the phone they will admit that someone decided the system absolutly positively needed to be moved to another location, and that nobody knows where to plug anything in. They will also wonder why the network doesn't work, regardless of the visible lack of a network connection of any kind at the new location. You will be asked to run cable for the network connection.

The third day, someone will accuse your system of having wreaked havok with something, anything else in the building. You will spend the rest of the day picking bits of paper out of the fax machine to prove it wasn't your fault.

On the fourth day, the administrative secretary will call you and say that "nothing works". Upon further investigation you will realize that she carefully wrote down every single operation required to turn on the system, start IE, and bring up her Hotmail. She will be waiting at the prompt stating that windows was not properly shut down and the drive needs to be checked, utterly helpless.

The following days will be various repetitions of the previous four. Some time within the first two weeks, someone important will call you and ask that you come to train a few of the teachers on how to use the system. You will arrive and find half of the district crammed into the gym staring at your system, which has been moved again, and again has the mouse plugged into the keyboard port and vice-versa.

On a date some time between one week and two months from installation, you will recieve an angry call regarding pornography.

Not until you disconnect your telephone, get new email addresses, and move to a new home will they stop asking you for help. You're a free lunch. Get used to it.

Personally, I'm a product of a private education.

Very, very, very, very, very well said

I could not possibly agree with you more!

I am always annoyed by parents that leave their kids in front of the tv to keep them "out of trouble". Perhaps thats what this whole debate over the internet it! Parents would like to leave their kid on the internet to keep them out of trouble, but they can't because it's not censored like tv. One of the short articles at the onion makes a great point about this - go to their page and look for the one called "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso".

We have to stop and think "What are we trying to do when we surround kids with technology?" Some parents will do this because they are kidding themselves into thinking their kids will have an "edge" in the new high tech world. We at slashdot ought to know better than that - they will just learn to point and click earlier. Hardly a hard-to-come-by skill.

There is something Neal Stephenson said that relates to this perfectly. I don't recall his exact words, but basically he said that the people that will control tomorrow's technology (and today's for that matter) are the ones that can comfortably deal with text. As in being able to read and write well. Multimedia is for the lusers - an interface for the 'eloi' out there.

Net access is great when people reach a certain age - it will help you to really see issues from all angles and get the whole story, as opposed to television newscasts which present a very one-sided version most of the time. It gives you another way to figure out who you are, express yourself, and find a community other than the ones you live among.

But little kids will not get that out of it. A 4 year old is much better off learning from a role model standing right there working with him/her, and playing with friends of the same age.

When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI. That ought to be interesting.