Friday, March 31, 2006
Do Computers Dumb Us Down?
On Wednesday, BOTWT declared this the bottom story of the day
I'm not so sure. The prof describes her reasons:
I will argue that the use of calculators is a problem for a student of mathmatics. I can hear the moans now - "addition is so mechanical, the perfect place for mechanization." Arithmetic addtion, what you do when you add prices together in grocery store, is mechanical, but mathmatical addition is far, far from mechanical.
You learn arithmatic because it is simple and mechanical, but from it you can gain a sense of the function of addition, or subtraction, or multiplication, or division - a sense you will find most necessary if you are going to do anything higher in mathmatics than add up your grocery bill. With a calculator undertaking the mechanical task for you, you can never really gain that sense.
Of course, a lot of people never move to higher math, but do you know who will and who won't when they are learning to add? And how many people will be denied the opportunity to discover a love for higher math because they never experience anything but the purely mechanical with a calculator.
There are even programs to do higher math, but when it comes to the things of calculus let us say, all it can really do is approximate the answer. I have used them and have at times arrived at very weird answers because it substituted brute force for real human insight into the problem - when I scratched the same problem out on paper, I got much more meaningful answers.
All of which begs the question about law school - is it about having the information, or about learning to think like a lawyer?
In blogging, is about the technology, or the content?
Computers can be problematic. They subsitute information for reason, facts for argument. Focusing on computers is focusing on the tool instead of the job.
I'm proud of this prof - wish there were more like her.
Related Tags: computers, classroom, law school, math
I'm not so sure. The prof describes her reasons:
Professor June Entman says her main concern is that students are so busy keyboarding they can't think and analyze what she's telling them.Computers are masterful tools for managing information, but information is not reason or analysis. Sheer volume of research is not a substitute for the right research organized in the right fashion. Since I am not a lawyer, let's switch this discussion to something I do know - math and science.
I will argue that the use of calculators is a problem for a student of mathmatics. I can hear the moans now - "addition is so mechanical, the perfect place for mechanization." Arithmetic addtion, what you do when you add prices together in grocery store, is mechanical, but mathmatical addition is far, far from mechanical.
You learn arithmatic because it is simple and mechanical, but from it you can gain a sense of the function of addition, or subtraction, or multiplication, or division - a sense you will find most necessary if you are going to do anything higher in mathmatics than add up your grocery bill. With a calculator undertaking the mechanical task for you, you can never really gain that sense.
Of course, a lot of people never move to higher math, but do you know who will and who won't when they are learning to add? And how many people will be denied the opportunity to discover a love for higher math because they never experience anything but the purely mechanical with a calculator.
There are even programs to do higher math, but when it comes to the things of calculus let us say, all it can really do is approximate the answer. I have used them and have at times arrived at very weird answers because it substituted brute force for real human insight into the problem - when I scratched the same problem out on paper, I got much more meaningful answers.
All of which begs the question about law school - is it about having the information, or about learning to think like a lawyer?
In blogging, is about the technology, or the content?
Computers can be problematic. They subsitute information for reason, facts for argument. Focusing on computers is focusing on the tool instead of the job.
I'm proud of this prof - wish there were more like her.
Related Tags: computers, classroom, law school, math
