[K12OSN] Re: Help save educational programming - WHY? (Off Topic anyway?)
ROC
roryoc at nc.rr.com
Wed Jun 15 16:26:44 UTC 2005
Subject:
[K12OSN] Help save educational programming
From:
"Sharon Betts" <sbetts at msad71.net>
Date:
Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:40:06 -0400
To:
"Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com>
There are several good reasons to stop public funding of "educational
programming".
1. Political philosophy: the less the government is involved in, the
better off the citizenry are.
2. Early childhood development: many studies have shown that children
appear to be behaviorly and even physiologically affected in a negative
way by too much TV watching. As I recall, the brain "patterning" that
occurs from extensive TV viewing is such that the viewers have real
difficulty concentrating on anything for any length of time at all.
"Commercial-free" programming may be the worst offender of all since the
lack of breaks that commercials offer intensifies the effect. This is a
more serious problem with young children as they are less inclined to
enforce their own breaks, and at this stage of their physical
development, the "patterning" can have more deep seated, long-lasting
effect. They are conditioned to have a constant change of view/scene
every 10-15 seconds or so. Some IT and other technical educators at
the college level believe that this "twitch factor" (also ascribed to
TV-like video gaming), is a reason for the decline in interest in
vocations in their fields - it takes too much concentration for students
with this kind of neural conditioning.
In short, ending "educational programmming" may save computer
programming. Perhaps that is more on-topic...
FWIW,
Rory O'Connor
More information about the K12OSN
mailing list