[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





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