Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I love how the new certitude that "modern students...don't engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote" so often gets used with a straight face and apparently without any expectation that it can be challenged. What does "don't" mean? "are not given a chance to?" And we're hearing a technology professional (surprise!) express the usual techie gripe against printed books in an unsupported assertion that the brain of the human species has changed recently. Excuse me while I go cough up a hairball. I'm reading above that kids "think in less concrete ways than their forebears." Really? What does "less concretely" mean? I have a 4 year old who thinks in ways I would describe as concretely and also in ways I would describe as "abstractly", but I don't believe her thinking processes are any different from what mine were at that age. It's an idiotic argument based on unfounded assumptions. Or are we saying simply that kids have to handle more simultaneous inputs of information these days? That's certainly true, but is the resultant inability to focus and to learn from what you call "finite" sources something we simply throw more addictive tools at? I think it makes more sense to asky why everyone suddenly has ADHD and return to a focus on the cognitive tools of learning, which teach kids how to teach themselves, instead of on the hardware and software tools, which teach kids how to look up information on a computer.