Wednesday, November 10, 2010

With the Internet becoming the dominant site for reading and writing, especially among young people, some scholars predict that eventually only a small "reading class" will ever read novels, book-length nonfiction texts or serious magazines. They agree that reading is a vital skill needed in the 21st century. However many others do not agree with their views, believing instead that basic skills such as the memorization of multiplication tables, long-division algorithm,making change, and state capitals were only useful to past generations because they did not have any handy and speedy way to look them up. They believe that communication is also a basic skill, and once all books are recorded, the Web reads itself [aloud] and every child and adult has a text scanner in his or her cell phone that can read any printed text aloud, they wonder if all those years should still be spent teaching kids phonics. What is the use? If these skills are taught and never used it would be better and more practical to not teach them at all, instead focusing on internet and technology instruction that will be far more useful in the student's lives. They argue that schools are not effective in teaching these skills to students in the classrooms and that the time is wasted on memorizing information that is easily accessible online, leading to redundant and impractical learning inside the classroom.

4 comments:

  1. Secretly, I kind of agree with this (even though it is the opposite of what you are actually going to argue in your paper.) If everything is pretty much available online, why learn it? Maybe if the world stopped making kids learn what we have already figured out, we could move on to discovering new and better things! :)

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  2. Hmmm, that is a tough subject! I am not quite sure what I believe... I would be interested in reading what you said in your paper and the research you found out about your topic. Good job!

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  3. If we stop teaching kids how to read or do multiplication I will honestly think less of the human race. Those basic skills are what make our species more advanced than others and technology, although helpful, should not take over what our minds can do. If we stop challenging our brains, they will stop working as good as they used to, that is a fact.

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  4. Well I definitely think that kids should be educated anyways, especially because even though you can pretty much find everything on the internet, that doesn't mean that people actually learn and retain that information. And some people don't have internet, so what would they do?

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