I've mentioned this before across HN, but I'll mention it again - human-to-human interaction is critically important for young children.
You basically have to teach young kids how to act like a human being. Kids will get this teaching in daycare and through their parents, but that alone isn't enough and it is important to reinforce this through schools.
People often forget this because you don't really remember it and then you end up making assumptions on how you act now - not realizing that a teacher may have taught you when you were younger.
I think the best example of this is handing out worksheets to kindergartners. An average person may think that you just give them pencils and paper. An experienced teacher knows that they have to teach the kids where to write their name, how to follow along the line, to read instructions, flip the page over to check for more, etc.
This is practically true for all children. Again, many may argue that you can receive this teaching through your parents and day-care, but once a child gets old enough they are spending most of their time in school. Think of it like language learning. You'll learn more of the language if you are being taught it all day, rather than only at home with your parents.
You also experience more interaction with kids your age at school. There are many situations that come up where a teacher guiding you is important, and these same situations may not come up at home (especially if you are a single child).
I do think after a certain point you can rely on technology more for learning. I just want to emphasize that having a human teacher trained for working with children is critically important for the growth of a child.
We live in a world that's dominated by staring at screens. You're doing it right now. This wasn't true when I was young. The world changed.
It stands to reason that the education system should also change to reflect the world that we live in. Screens, AI, all of it. Children will learn how to become members of the society that they were born into, not the one that we were born into.
This is true, but I don't think this directly disputes my point of having human-to-human interaction and trained professionals working with young children.
Would it be possible to do all that's needed for young children with just a screen? I'm not so sure. The issue isn't necessarily the content, but the behavior of the child and having a person there to teach and correct behavior.
Technology plus teachers is effective. I apologize if my argument came across as no technology for young children - I'm just saying that having JUST technology for young children is difficult.
I know many people that are teachers of young children and they use technology. Kids have Chromebooks at first grade and are learning things like programming, using the internet, determining if an article on the internet may be lying to you, determining if a website's main goal is to sell something to you, becoming a good digital citizen, etc. All of that is very important!
It's also important to have a teacher in the room to teach students how to use their Chromebook, how to open it, how to physically interact with technology, how to ask each other for help, etc.
You basically have to teach young kids how to act like a human being. Kids will get this teaching in daycare and through their parents, but that alone isn't enough and it is important to reinforce this through schools.
People often forget this because you don't really remember it and then you end up making assumptions on how you act now - not realizing that a teacher may have taught you when you were younger.
I think the best example of this is handing out worksheets to kindergartners. An average person may think that you just give them pencils and paper. An experienced teacher knows that they have to teach the kids where to write their name, how to follow along the line, to read instructions, flip the page over to check for more, etc.
This is practically true for all children. Again, many may argue that you can receive this teaching through your parents and day-care, but once a child gets old enough they are spending most of their time in school. Think of it like language learning. You'll learn more of the language if you are being taught it all day, rather than only at home with your parents.
You also experience more interaction with kids your age at school. There are many situations that come up where a teacher guiding you is important, and these same situations may not come up at home (especially if you are a single child).
I do think after a certain point you can rely on technology more for learning. I just want to emphasize that having a human teacher trained for working with children is critically important for the growth of a child.