How young is too young for a laptop

[Noilly Pratt]

And people wonder why kids can't speak in real sentences using real English, or why they can't write legibly

Funny you should mention that -- everybody praises my daughter for her word pronunciation, whereas a lot of her fellow students have a lisp or talk like they are babies still. My daughter tries the baby talk now and then and I just give the old furrowed brow look and she then speaks normally!

It irks me a bit when I hear that because my nephew had a really bad speech impediment that his parents refused to acknowledge. I spent a week alone with him camping when he was 10 and I was 18 and he came back being able to speak properly. I just ignored him when he lapsed into his baby talk/lisp, and he quickly got the idea, because I heard him before talk just fine if he slowed down and thought a bit.

Now, you'd never know anything was wrong.

[Noilly Pratt]

Or actually interact with other people and make small talk, socialize and work in groups... give respect to other people and listen and learn. Usch... school is supposed to teach more than book wisdom and now a big human part is missing if it all is about computers and working with them instead of working with other people.

I thank goodness for the school my daughter is in. One of their field trips was to a monastery, so that they could learn about other cultures. They've also seen a dairy plant, a grocery store distribution place, a conservationist came in and told them why we recycle and these kids are just Grade 2! There's very little money in the budgets for field trips, but we have all the parents cash in favours to friends to work at certain places, and we get field trips!

The older grades have computers, but it's only used as a creative tool, not an educational crutch! And if she's behind, I can teach her all she needs to know. (like keeping away from dirty old men like Hal)

Just kidding!!

[Jezter]

When I was in elementary, our field trips were often to places in our own little town. For bigger field trips, we collected money by having all sorts of happenings at our school where parents came and gave money. We made plays and such... and we spent a lot of time having classes outdoors in little groups collecting plants and such according to the booklets we had. Finding bugs and such with the same method. That was field trip enough for us! Lots and lots of different kind of people coming and giving speeches from disabled to police to metropolitans. Computers didn't come into play until in higher grades.

[Hal-9000]

In my high school they offered one class in 'computer sciences'.

I thought it was a fad and bypassed....