As reported in the Grauniad, recently published research seems to show that computers are a hindrance to education, rather than the unmitigated benefit that many have claimed. I'm pretty good with computers, and I've tried really hard to get my children to learn to do something useful with them, albeit without a lot of success. As far as I can tell, the schools make very little effort to teach useful computer skills (I'll admit my eldest is only 13, so perhaps they will get around to it later), and no attempt to even explain the basics of how a computer or its software work. There appears to be a belief that just by having computers around, children will learn by some weird cyber-osmosis process. This research seems to kill off that belief, so perhaps now we can start asking some searching questions about how to get some value for the huge sums of money spent on computers in education.
Edit:Having just listened to a government minister saying that if we wanted to raise the quality of school meals the money would have to come from elsewhere in the education budget, I think it is pretty clear what should be done. Stop spending billions on shiny computers, and increase the 37p spent on ingredients for a school meal to some more sensible figure. Better diets have actually been shown to improve learning, as well as health, and would represent a much better educational investment.
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