Electronic Age

As I listen to the candidates speak about their policies, I listen closely to their educational policies. I listen to the same old rhetoric of “Kids should watch less TV and play no video games”. I think it is the lesser of the evils when it comes to kids doing drugs or being in gangs and shooting each other, don’t you think? Let’s face it; we are in an electronic age.

I have two kids, one of whom is a reader and the other who couldn’t be pinned down to read a book except at nights. He grew up watching an inordinate amount of TV compared to the rest of the family and I let him just to avoid hearing him say “I am bored, I have nothing to do”. I restricted him however to watching sports and PBS to a large extent as we don’t have cable. I find that he is a visual learner and has picked up a lot about America’s past time – its sports.

I also happened to watch a program on TV in Canada which showed how crayons are manufactured. It made fascinating viewing and was almost like a field trip to a factory where manufacturing takes place. Programs like that are both educational and fun.

I remember my parents objecting to me doing my work while listening to music. Studies have shown that one is able to process while listening to music. Kids nowadays have their TV on while doing their homework. I wonder if kids nowadays are able to process both visual images and learning at the same time as they have grown up with multi media. I agree plopping in front of the TV and mindlessly watching is not a good thing. However I have to object to the concept of playing video games as a bad thing.

Imaginative video games are both fun and there is a lot of learning going on. I think parents should object to mindless violent games and games that are demeaning to women. My kids grew playing video games – my son more than my daughter and both are pretty comfortable using a computer which is so important in most aspects of life nowadays. I remember watching my daughter play “Zelda”, “Duck tails”, “Mario” etc and how she would think about different strategies in which she could defeat an evil boss. Try as I may I could not even manipulate the joystick or play these games (Of course, I didn’t try very hard or have the time).

Many of the programs like Flying for example use a simulation program initially while learning to fly. I believe it is widely used in the medical field as well. I am sure there are many more applications than the ones I mentioned where computers and computer simulation is used.

My son grew up playing computer games on the computer like “Spy fox”, “Backyard” sports games, “Freddie fish”, “Putt Putt”, etc and I threw in a “First grade”, “Second grade” etc from the Learning company and they got played as well. I find him as I am sure it is with many of your kids, that these kids are whizzes at manipulating anything electronic.

My son finds it amusing to change my phones to read in Spanish and it takes me forever to restore them back to English! My cell phone is now programmed so it can understand the spoken word to dial a number. I see the picture of a laptop that is so thin that it can fit into a manila envelope. I am amazed and realize that we are in the midst of a technological revolution and I don’t see the end in sight at least in my lifetime.

Computers are being manufactured with greater and greater computing power and with more and more memory. The library has e-books which you can check and read on your computer which both my daughter and I have tried. Brace yourself, you technophobes out there; I can envision a future when there will be no heavy school bags for the kids to lug. The kids will have all their text books and notes on it – all they have to carry is a thin laptop or whatever it will be called in the future.