Exposing Children to Technology?

LabelThis asks: "While I'm not a huge fan of immersing children in technology, there is a certain point at which you must expose them to the tools that will help them be successful in the world. Looking back, I distinctly remember my parents making every effort to provide a computer for me and my sibling, early on (they bought an Atari 400 for us when I was 5). Either by accident or on purpose, that single decision (and the continued follow up of purchasing newer computers as needed) shaped my future and the future of my siblings. I now have a daughter, and my wife and I have a number of years to before we worry about equipping her with technology (right now spending time with her and helping her be a happy well adjusted toddler are our primary concerns). In the spirit of my parents choice, what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?"

The earlier the better.

[SSID]

I myslef am married with a 2.5 year old daughter. I must proudly say that she uses a laptop very well for her age. Just this past weekend my wife set up her laptop with the kid websites like Dora the explorer and a few others. My daughter navigated her fun and games sites like a champ. Yeppers, going to be another geek in the family. My wife is the one that keeps her grounded in everything else. Like social stuff and that sort of thing. I guess we teach our child what each knows best. I would have to answer your question with the obvious. When ever you think you want to buy/build your child's first computer. It's up to the parents and not anyone else.

To follow on that thought

[TubeSteak]

A computer is a tool, teach your kids that.
The internet... is a distraction that young children don't need.

Or if you do decide to stick them on the internet, be there while they use it. Make it an experience that involves you, the parent. Don't let the internet turn into the TV babysitter that some parents use.

And for God's sake, don't let them log on as Administrator.

Re:1st Programming for 13-year-old?

[falkryn]

since he's 13, I'd think he'd be old enough for something more complex than logo for instance. so, since he likes games, a good language would be one he could write some in (i.e. no COBOL for him), but as a bonus might turn into a marketable/useful skill later on in the non-gaming world if he keeps an interest. There's a number of C++ for beginning games books out there, but I might actually lean more toward learning something with quicker results, say perl combined with SDL_perl (recently mentioned here on /.) or python + pygame.

Re:To follow on that thought

[Planesdragon]

Maybe i've been using Linux too long, but I've found that my computer is largely useless as a tool without an internet connection.

It's not Linux. It's you.

A (short) list of things that a computer is good for without an internet connection.

1. Calculator
2. Budget tracking
3. Media player
4. word processor
5. Learning Computer Programming
6. playing computer games
7. quiz-tester
8. Study aide
9. alarm clock

All things that a kid could use, all avaluable (with proper setup) without the internet at all.

Re:To follow on that thought

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The internet... is a distraction that young children don't need.

Not really. To be honest, I don't know how one could really raise children without Wikipedia.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Schooling

[Savantissimo]

On the contrary, mandatory schooling has squandered potential, abused and imprisoned free minds and taught citizens to hate academics. See John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education [johntaylorgatto.com].

I could regale you with mountains of statistics to illustrate the damage schools cause. I could bring before your attention a line of case studies to illustrate the mutilation of specific individuals--even those who have been apparently privileged as its "gifted and talented."[3] What would that prove? You've heard those stories, read these figures [-] until you went numb from the assault on common sense. School can't be that bad, you say. You survived, didn't you? Or did you? Review what you learned there. Has it made a crucial difference for good in your life? Don't answer. I know it hasn't. You surrendered twelve years of your life because you had no choice. You paid your dues, I paid mine. But who collected those dues? ...

All alleged reforms have left schooling exactly in the shape they found it, except bigger, richer, politically stronger. And morally and intellectually worse by the standards of the common American village of yesteryear which still lives in our hearts. Many people of conscience only defend institutional schooling because they can't imagine what would happen without any schools, especially what might happen to the poor. This compassionate and articulate contingent has consistently been fronted by the real engineers of schooling, skillfully used as shock troops to support the cumulative destruction of American working-class and peasant culture, a destruction largely effected through schooling. ...

School wreaks havoc on human foundations in at least eight substantive ways so deeply buried few notice them, and fewer still can imagine any other way for children to grow up:

1) The first lesson schools teach is forgetfulness; forcing children to forget how they taught themselves important things like walking and talking. This is done so pleasantly and painlessly that the one area of schooling most of us would agree has few problems is elementary school--even though it is there that the massive damage to language-making occurs. Jerry Farber captured the truth over thirty years ago in his lapidary metaphor "Student as Nigger" and developed it in the beautiful essay of the same name. If we forced children to learn to walk with the same methods we use to force them to read, a few would learn to walk well in spite of us, most would walk indifferently, without pleasure, and a portion of the remainder would not become ambulatory at all. The push to extend "day care" further and further into currently unschooled time importantly assists the formal twelve-year sequence, ensuring utmost tractability among first graders.

2) The second lesson schools teach is bewilderment and confusion. Virtually nothing selected by schools as basic is basic, all curriculum is subordinate to standards imposed by behavioral psychology, and to a lesser extent Freudian precepts compounded into a hash with "third force" psychology (centering on the writings of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow). None of these systems accurately describes human reality, but their lodgement in university/business seven-step mythologies makes them dangerously invulnerable to common-sense criticism.

None of the allegedly scientific school sequences is empirically defensible. All lack evidence of being much more than superstition cleverly hybridized with a body of borrowed fact. Pestalozzi's basic "simple to complex" formulation, for instance, is a prescription for disaster in the classroom since no two minds have the same "simple" starting point, and in the more advanced schedules, children are frequently more knowledgeable than their overseers--witness the wretched record of public school computer instruction when compared to self-discovery programs undertaken informally. Similarly, endless sequences