The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development
First of all, could someone enlighten the non-US readers about what common core is? I hear the term a lot, not clear what the main ideas actually are or how people view it.<p>My own kids go to private schools in the UK. None of the parents would have any problems buying a load of tablets or VR goggles or whatever if the schools said so, and the schools would not have any problems buying whatever manner of gadgets they thought were needed. These are schools that have historically fed kids to top secondary schools in the area, which in turn feed into the top universities in the country, and the world.<p>And yet, the classroom is more or less just like the ones I attended as a kid in the 1980s. Bunch of chairs for little people and letters and numbers made from paper cutouts. The blackboard is one of those big touchscreens but it&#x27;s used mostly like a blackboard. It&#x27;s a screen for showing videos only when the kids are in after-school care waiting for parents to come get them.<p>The kids start to read the year they turn 5, and the big kid who is three years in can mostly read an Economist article. Math-wise it&#x27;s going fine as well.<p>As a programmer I&#x27;d love it if the kids could learn some of what I do, and there&#x27;s plenty of interest, but essentially the article is right. The point isn&#x27;t to make little workers who can write an insertion sort. If you are educated, and you wind up in a place where that&#x27;s needed, it won&#x27;t take you all that long to figure out.<p>We&#x27;ve somehow missed the point of education. It isn&#x27;t to create specific skills that are useful for businesses. The point is to have an understanding of our place in the world, a vast context that encompasses a huge range of topics. If you do that, you will come across those specific skills, and much more.