<story><title>Kids can&apos;t use computers, and why it should worry you</title><url>http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>300bps</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t that these people can&amp;#x27;t use computers. It&amp;#x27;s that they can&amp;#x27;t THINK.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find it&amp;#x27;s more specific than and not as serious as that.  I got my first computer in 1982, first modem in 1985 (hence my username).  I find that people who proudly state how not-technical they are actually purposely turn their brain off around computers.  It&amp;#x27;s not that they can&amp;#x27;t think.  They can and often do around non-technical things.  But they automatically assume they&amp;#x27;re unable to fix anything computer-related so they don&amp;#x27;t even try.  My wife is a perfect example of that.  If I hear, &amp;quot;Printer is not working&amp;quot; again I think I&amp;#x27;m going to throw it out the window.   The latest time, she unplugged the printer USB cable to plug in her iPhone and then called me to fix the printer.  If this was a &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t think&amp;quot; problem, she would belong in a group home.  Instead it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;won&amp;#x27;t think about technical things&amp;quot; problem.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was one of those kids too.  Only my computer teacher was in his first year of teaching computers, having been drafted from the math program because &amp;quot;computers use math&amp;quot;.  He was completely just learning about computers.  He would ask me, &amp;quot;Is that right, 300bps?&amp;quot; after almost everything he taught the class.  He ended up just having me do special projects doing things like creating math games on the Apple ][e.</text></item><item><author>otakucode</author><text>The problem isn&amp;#x27;t that these people can&amp;#x27;t use computers.  It&amp;#x27;s that they can&amp;#x27;t THINK.  They do not understand what critical thinking is, or how it works.  They do not know how to approach problems or explore solutions.  They don&amp;#x27;t know how to do it with their computer... or their car, or their vacuuming robot, or their television, or their oven or their relationships or any thing in their life.  They don&amp;#x27;t understand why the world is the way it is, they don&amp;#x27;t know how to figure it out, and they generally think that trying is a suckers game.&lt;p&gt;You mention that there are always 1 or 2 kids a year who have already picked up programming or know how to build a computer... I think I would live for them.  I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.&lt;p&gt;For the other kids, I&amp;#x27;d put aside the computers for a bit.  I&amp;#x27;d teach them critical thinking, because it&amp;#x27;s really the only skill they need to learn (see the documentary &amp;quot;High School&amp;quot; by Wiseman for an excellent example of how reformulating every single class as being centered around critical thinking led a poor latino high schools students to accomplish the highest percentage of students to attain college degrees in the nation... while preserving their youthful exuberance for learning).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>demallien</author><text>Hmmm, it&amp;#x27;s an interesting point.  I think the reason people don&amp;#x27;t even try is because they recognize that they can&amp;#x27;t tell the difference between something that might take them 15 minutes of monkeying around to fix, and something that is beyond their competency.  Worse, they are not sure that they won&amp;#x27;t make things when trying to fix the problem.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure it must be similar to the feeling I get when I&amp;#x27;m working on a new code base that I&amp;#x27;m not familiar with, and I need to make a modification in a function so that it calls another module correctly for some new functionality.  But I can&amp;#x27;t tell if that change isn&amp;#x27;t going to break something somewhere else, so making that change becomes quite scary.&lt;p&gt;In the software development world, we handle this by creating suites of automatic tests that we can run after the change to make sure that what we just did doesn&amp;#x27;t break things.  We also use config managent software so that we can back out any erroneous changes.  These things aren&amp;#x27;t available to nontechnical users - they can&amp;#x27;t verify that they haven&amp;#x27;t broken anything, and if they &lt;i&gt;have&lt;/i&gt; broken something, they may not be able to put things back the way they were.  This pretty much guarantees that people won&amp;#x27;t experiment with their computer.</text></comment>
<story><title>Kids can&apos;t use computers, and why it should worry you</title><url>http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>300bps</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t that these people can&amp;#x27;t use computers. It&amp;#x27;s that they can&amp;#x27;t THINK.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find it&amp;#x27;s more specific than and not as serious as that.  I got my first computer in 1982, first modem in 1985 (hence my username).  I find that people who proudly state how not-technical they are actually purposely turn their brain off around computers.  It&amp;#x27;s not that they can&amp;#x27;t think.  They can and often do around non-technical things.  But they automatically assume they&amp;#x27;re unable to fix anything computer-related so they don&amp;#x27;t even try.  My wife is a perfect example of that.  If I hear, &amp;quot;Printer is not working&amp;quot; again I think I&amp;#x27;m going to throw it out the window.   The latest time, she unplugged the printer USB cable to plug in her iPhone and then called me to fix the printer.  If this was a &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t think&amp;quot; problem, she would belong in a group home.  Instead it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;won&amp;#x27;t think about technical things&amp;quot; problem.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was one of those kids too.  Only my computer teacher was in his first year of teaching computers, having been drafted from the math program because &amp;quot;computers use math&amp;quot;.  He was completely just learning about computers.  He would ask me, &amp;quot;Is that right, 300bps?&amp;quot; after almost everything he taught the class.  He ended up just having me do special projects doing things like creating math games on the Apple ][e.</text></item><item><author>otakucode</author><text>The problem isn&amp;#x27;t that these people can&amp;#x27;t use computers.  It&amp;#x27;s that they can&amp;#x27;t THINK.  They do not understand what critical thinking is, or how it works.  They do not know how to approach problems or explore solutions.  They don&amp;#x27;t know how to do it with their computer... or their car, or their vacuuming robot, or their television, or their oven or their relationships or any thing in their life.  They don&amp;#x27;t understand why the world is the way it is, they don&amp;#x27;t know how to figure it out, and they generally think that trying is a suckers game.&lt;p&gt;You mention that there are always 1 or 2 kids a year who have already picked up programming or know how to build a computer... I think I would live for them.  I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.&lt;p&gt;For the other kids, I&amp;#x27;d put aside the computers for a bit.  I&amp;#x27;d teach them critical thinking, because it&amp;#x27;s really the only skill they need to learn (see the documentary &amp;quot;High School&amp;quot; by Wiseman for an excellent example of how reformulating every single class as being centered around critical thinking led a poor latino high schools students to accomplish the highest percentage of students to attain college degrees in the nation... while preserving their youthful exuberance for learning).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SomeCallMeTim</author><text>I used to have to help my aunt with her computer. She eventually learned how to do a few things (create and edit documents; print), but it was like she had an absolute blind spot to anything I would say about how to do things.&lt;p&gt;Eventually I gave up and had my wife explain things to her. I swear she used the &lt;i&gt;exact same words&lt;/i&gt; that I would have to explain some things, but my aunt understood her just fine and told her how much better she was at explaining. :|&lt;p&gt;Just mentioning this because it appears there are multiple factors at play, at least with some people. My aunt was a lawyer, by the way, so presumably she &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; think for herself logically on other topics.&lt;p&gt;Aside: I was also a kid who knew more than the programming teachers. And FWIW, I know a lot more about car maintenance than the author of the article, because (unlike him) I also apply my thinking skills to cars and just about everything else in my life. Seems like he shouldn&amp;#x27;t be throwing stones.</text></comment>