Can Students Have Too Much Tech?
17th February 2015
Yet another thumbsucker from the New York Times. Distinguishing characteristics:
1. Tongue-bath for Obama’s socialist/fascist ‘domestic program’. (As if Obama’s ‘program’ were anything other than the standard Democrat ‘Vote for us and we’ll give you free stuff’.) That’s the first paragraph.
2. First priority is equality, not quality, in education. (Either ‘everybody can’t have one so nobody ought to have one’ or ‘everybody can’t afford one so the government ought to provide everybody with one’; ‘progressives’ don’t care which one you pick, so long as you stick to one of those two choices.) That’s the second paragraph.
3. First concern is how technology affects politically-fashionable ‘disadvantaged middle-school students’, not anybody from a more, say, productive stratum of society. That’s the third and fourth paragraphs.
4. Highest concern is for ‘weaker students’ (and, if you aren’t hip to the jive, this is spelled out: ‘boys, African-Americans’ — and that’s the only positive word about boys, if you can so characterize it, that you’ll find in the New York Times the day). That’s the fifth paragraph.
5. Supreme objective is not to draw any conclusions. ‘We don’t know why this is, but we can speculate.’ Okay, I’ll speculate: Who thought it was a good idea to give kids whose priorities, according to all the available evidence, never include ‘learning how to read or do math’ (acting White, don’t you know) an appliance that provided a universe of distractions that don’t depend on knowing how to read or do math?
6. Fill up with a lot of alarmism about the impact of technology on modern life. (Sky is falling. Film at 11.)
There you go. Now you know the formula for getting published in the New York Times. Go forth and lead us all to the Great Socialist Promised Land.