Should kids only be taught to read books?

[8wid]

Why can't the elements of internet, music, film, comic books, television, animation, and more be studied just as much as books before high school or college in American public schools? Why only books or written text and the others made to be though of as disruptive or mind-numbing? They can be taken seriously like others too? And I don't mean things like learning to type or music notation either. Think much deeper than that?

[Troy_Parker]

tl;dr

[Troy_Parker]

Kidding.

Yes, they should.

EDIT: Wait, ONLY books? No.

[Ultimatehero]

Originally Posted by Troy_Parker

EDIT: Wait, ONLY books? No.

Seconded.

DESTROY MATH, SCIENCE & HISTORY -- NOT NEEDED!!!

[Ultra Lantern]

They should learn how to use the internet.It's the wave of the future.

[SuperFerret]

As long as they're reading, it's good. It's the one thing I won't hold against the Harry Potter series.

[SuperFerret]

Math, science and history are usually taught in book form.

[Ponyboy]

Originally Posted by 8wid

Why can't the elements of internet, music, film, comic books, television, animation, and more be studied just as much as books before high school or college in American public schools? Why only books or written text and the others made to be though of as disruptive or mind-numbing? They can be taken seriously like others too? And I don't mean things like learning to type or music notation either. Think much deeper than that?

Evidently Jeff Smith's "Bone" is now in a lot of school and public libraries thanks to Scholastic.

I think the reason more TV, comics and animation aren't studied before high school and college is because they aren't fundamentals. Get the math, science, history and literature down... and then when kids have a firm grasp of basics, they can move into other areas that interest them.

[Teelie]

Books are not as important now because of digital text in the form of the internet mainly so no, they should not only read from books. The internet and related technology is ever more important than traditional books and that's what kids are more familar and comfortable with.

Their education should reflect their current reality not the history of how it used to be.

[Franklin Richards]

Watch this.

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:

[November Rain]

Personally i would say that firing up someone's imagination is one of the best things you can provide a child.

and the root of all this comes in the form of understanding the developing the neurons which sets this off.

personally i think the root of all creative is rooted in literature, so understanding how it works will ultimately spread into other forms of creative mediums.

that's in the same way, trying to get into animation without a basis in art is kinda pointless.

i think adapting to new technology is something that we may have had to learn but it will come so naturally to the younger generations, it's not like apple has to hold worldwide seminars on how to use its products.

[Polaris23]

Originally Posted by November Rain

Personally i would say that firing up someone's imagination is one of the best things you can provide a child.

and the root of all this comes in the form of understanding the developing the neurons which sets this off.

personally i think the root of all creative is rooted in literature, so understanding how it works will ultimately spread into other forms of creative mediums.

that's in the same way, trying to get into animation without a basis in art is kinda pointless.

i think adapting to new technology is something that we may have had to learn but it will come so naturally to the younger generations, it's not like apple has to hold worldwide seminars on how to use its products.

Agreed, and this is why children should be taught via books.

[Teelie]

Children are already very imaginative. It doesn't take much to spark them but they do get bored easily and that has to be carefully handled or they'll go off and find something else to do which obviously means they won't be learning what you're trying to teach. Interactive classrooms are what they should be in, not dull, stuffy rooms where the teacher drones on and on. Kids need to interact and learn on their terms and their terms are modern technology.

[November Rain]

Originally Posted by Teelie

Children are already very imaginative. It doesn't take much to spark them but they do get bored easily and that has to be carefully handled or they'll go off and find something else to do which obviously means they won't be learning what you're trying to teach. Interactive classrooms are what they should be in, not dull, stuffy rooms where the teacher drones on and on. Kids need to interact and learn on their terms and their terms are modern technology.

children are far from imaginative, how many kids have you seen on brainstorming comittees??? or have written world renouned literature or art?. In general, they are pretty dumb and very simple thinking

and what you are speaking of is how the information is processed.

it doesn't matter if shakespeare is taught out of a book or in interactive 3d solie light holographic atmospheres. It's still fundamentally a script and understanding the way the literature conveys a story is all that is required.

how the information is assimulated is different to what information is assimulated.

[Teelie]

Originally Posted by November Rain

children are far from imaginative, how many kids have you seen on brainstorming comittees??? or have written world renouned literature or art?. In general, they are pretty dumb and very simple thinking

and what you are speaking of is how the information is processed.

it doesn't matter if shakespeare is taught out of a book or in interactive 3d solie light holographic atmospheres. It's still fundamentally a script and understanding the way the literature conveys a story is all that is required.

how the information is assimulated is different to what information is assimulated.

Children unimaginative? Who has imaginary friends? Who dreams of going to the moon or becoming a superhero? Who are the ones that always find some way to entertain themselves with hardly anything at hand? Children. Calling children dumb and unimaginative is very inaccurate. It's outright ludicrous.

They aren't educated but they're children and lack of education doesn't mean dumb. Every last thing you listed is a direct result of learning and education but it doesn't mean they're dumb because they aren't yet capable of it. They have to be taught. Reading out of a book or being taught it orally or from a computer or through some kind of holographic virtual room, it doesn't matter as long as it's in a format they can comprehend and relate to.

[November Rain]

Originally Posted by Teelie

Children unimaginative? Who has imaginary friends? Who dreams of going to the moon or becoming a superhero? Who are the ones that always find some way to entertain themselves with hardly anything at hand? Children. Calling children dumb and unimaginative is very inaccurate. It's outright ludicrous.

a child's imagination is directly related to the literature they are introduced to as they grow up. They are taught and encourages to be imaginative. they arent' naturally imaginative.

a child wouldn't know what a superhero was if not introduced to superhero stuff, and again, the notion of imaginary friends come from their exposure to similar types of media available out there where odinary individuals regularly associate themselves with extraordinary ones.

those aren't natural behavioural developments of kids but the influence of us as adults on them, especially in the west. Take a kid from the middle of the jungle with no form of literary fun or education and see if they are as imaginative as a child from over here. This is my point really that the form of books in us influences them and children aren't latently imagniative beings.

They aren't educated but they're children and lack of education doesn't mean dumb. Every last thing you listed is a direct result of learning and education but it doesn't mean they're dumb because they aren't yet capable of it. They have to be taught. Reading out of a book or being taught it orally or from a computer or through some kind of holographic virtual room, it doesn't matter as long as it's in a format they can comprehend and relate to.

and again, this thread isn't about educational techniques to engage children, its about understanding the basics of other forms.

i.e. musically how certain chords are used to imply mooding, the influence of tempo or beats per minute optimised for a dance track, the best pitch and decibel ranges to imply certain emotive responses.

or why certain musician have influenced their timeframes and future timeframes they operated in.

in a sense, that would be a music literature and language course, which as the thread starter said, is taught at a degree level but isn't introduced beforehand.

you are saying technology would make learning this easier, which is fine or dandy but it plays no part on WHEN it should be learnt (or if it should be learnt at all), which brings us back to square one of this dicussion.

[Paroxysm]

Yes they should only be taught to read books. Books are were it's at. What great american e-novels have been written since the creation of the internet? Exactly.

[Teelie]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

Yes they should only be taught to read books. Books are were it's at. What great american e-novels have been written since the creation of the internet? Exactly.

Let's see. Books: been around centuries. Depending on your definition, well over a millennia. eBooks, been around at best 15 years. And eBooks can contain anything an existing paper book does now, and be updated to fix inaccuracies or modernize the text.

[Paroxysm]

Originally Posted by Teelie

Let's see. Books: been around centuries. Depending on your definition, well over a millennia. eBooks, been around at best 15 years. And eBooks can contain anything an existing paper book does now, and be updated to fix inaccuracies or modernize the text.

That's great, but you still didn't answer my question. What are some classic works of literature published on the internet?

I don't care HOW kids read, it's the quality of what they read that important here.

[SuperFerret]

Originally Posted by Teelie

Let's see. Books: been around centuries. Depending on your definition, well over a millennia. eBooks, been around at best 15 years. And eBooks can contain anything an existing paper book does now, and be updated to fix inaccuracies or modernize the text.

And this is good how exactly?

[Spider-Nerd]

Originally Posted by SuperFerret

And this is good how exactly?

We can remove text like "****** jim" so kids are shielded from historical context.

[SuperFerret]

Originally Posted by Spider-Nerd

We can remove text like "****** jim" so kids are shielded from historical context.

Yeah. I'd be pissed if I opened my favorite book and there was an update that changed the content. It'd be like any time you pop in a Star Wars DVD it would automatically update to the most recent Lucas-inspired "fix".

[Teelie]

Originally Posted by Spider-Nerd

We can remove text like "****** jim" so kids are shielded from historical context.

That's altering for political correctness and text books already do that even if it's completely irrelevant to my original point. Every few years this springs up as a controversy how a classic literary story is sanitized so making a claim that eBooks will do that is too late. Printed text already does this.

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

That's great, but you still didn't answer my question. What are some classic works of literature published on the internet?

I don't care HOW kids read, it's the quality of what they read that important here.

As to what modern literature has been printed in eBooks only? Probably none because it's still published in paper as well. This is an absurd strawman argument. I can't tell you something that doesn't exist yet so your response is we must assume it will never happen and should ignore it even though it's inevitable it will happen.

Originally Posted by November Rain

a clear sign of a child's imagination is that you can take a child with a massive natural iq and give them a simple task to perform and they will fail it because they lack the scope to think beyond what has been presented to them

in a sense, the mcguyver quality, which comes later on in life.

And reading from a book as opposed to a monitor or a tablet alters this how? Every last argument you've made against using something besides books has been invalidated by the fact it's still applicable to learning from an eBook or other digital format.

So basically, all the arguments against it are because you (ie; anyone against it) think they should learn how you did.

[Spidey-Bat]

Originally Posted by SuperFerret

And this is good how exactly?

Because they were meant to be read and understood by the contemporary audience.

This is one thing I despised about how I was taught Shakespeare. From 8th grade to high school, we read Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. The first 3 I could vaguely understand as we read them. For Hamlet, I thought "**** it, I'm reading it in modern English." And guess what happened? I enjoyed it! Now, which is more important, understanding a dead dialect from 500 years or enjoying the material?

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

That's great, but you still didn't answer my question. What are some classic works of literature published on the internet?

I don't care HOW kids read, it's the quality of what they read that important here.

A lot of great literature wasn't considered classic until long after their publication. The Great Gatsby sold very poorly until after Fitzgerald's death. So to expect an eBook to be considered a classic when the "genre" has been around less than 15 years is unrealistic.

[SuperFerret]

Originally Posted by Spidey-Bat

Because they were meant to be read and understood by the contemporary audience.

This is one thing I despised about how I was taught Shakespeare. From 8th grade to high school, we read Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. The first 3 I could vaguely understand as we read them. For Hamlet, I thought "**** it, I'm reading it in modern English." And guess what happened? I enjoyed it! Now, which is more important, understanding a dead dialect from 500 years or enjoying the material?

First of all, Shakespeare's dialect was something he mostly made up, and even then it's not that hard to understand. At any rate, that's still not something that should happen. A great many stories need to evoke the time that they were written, and the language used to write them is important to that, and it's important to enjoying the story.