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Comment by lacker | Hacker News Reader

Expecting a laptop to improve education because it's "tech" is like reading a book chosen at random and expecting to become more intelligent.

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It's kind of funny that we can say this; it seems that modern computers have come so far in having a user-friendly UX that you're now learning nothing about computers by learning to use one.

Back in the 1980s, just giving kids a computer (without also giving them a bunch of game disks/tapes/carts) would certainly teach them something, in that the only thing you can really do with this "tech" is to fiddle around/tinker with it until you learn how to make it do something you came up with. Just sitting around "being bored on" these computers can—and did—gradually build up a skillset in many of us.

There are still computers that are like this, of course. The Arduino comes to mind. There are also environments you could lock a modern computer down into that do the same.

As well, there are apps and "games" that teach you a ton just by attempting to understand the model behind them, which bored children will stumble into and then learn from under the guise of "wasting time at recess." (The best thing you can preinstall on a computer that a middle-schooler is going to be using is an interactive kinematics sandbox program.)

That is in fact a delusion many people seem to have. Reading books is seen as an inherent good, regardless of the book. School children are often told to get one book a week from the library. Any sort of book, it's often thought, will be good for the child. In my personal experience, most go straight for the "Where's Waldo" books. Fun books... but come on.

I'd pile on to this sentiment with noticing that many kids who do read these days are not progression past YA fiction in their discretionary reading options.

YA fiction isn't any less literature than other fiction.

True if literature isn't synonymous with 'worthwhile.'

It isn't synonymous with 'worthwhile'. That's just true. For one thing, 'literature' is a form of media, 'worthwhile' is an subjective quality of experience.

You snark, but I think the enclosing conversation was about whether YA fiction is worthwhile (or, whether we should be concerned when people fail to progress past it), not whether it's literature.

Whether or not a literal entire genre of literature is worthwhile is itself a question of the worthwhileness, IMO. Historically, this has already been debated multiple times with multiple different genres- experimental fiction, fiction by female authors, fantasy, scifi, fiction by american authors. Must we repeat it for every new genre that becomes popular or even remotely prominent in the sphere of mainstream consumption?

I assert that some books have more value to children than others and that the distribution of worthwhile books is different in different genres. I further assert that YA fiction is proportionally less worthwhile than other genres generally accessible to the "young adult" demographic.

Can you convince me that any of those assertions is wrong? Pointing out that "YA fiction is literature" doesn't come anywhere close to refuting any of the above assertions.

Neither have you refuted that this has been a historical game of stack ranking literary genres and I’m asking when we will grow up and let people enjoy good books.

I mean…they are young adults.

We live in very regressive times in that respect. As kids, we used to read and watch books and series and movies which mostly were originally intended for adults (I don't pretend that we didn't read any children literature or watch any youth program, but the former was seen as a step and the latter wasn't mass produced, so the natural way was to quickly evolve to adult literature and movies, just keeping a small regressive space for children/youth stuff). But now adults read and watch stuff that is specially designed for teenagers!

Even in a for-kids/for-youth book collection, where we used to have Jack London, Jules Vernes, James F. Cooper, Alexandre Dumas and so on mixed with more specific children's literature; I looked at the current catalogue the other day: such authors have been erased, and the whole offer is now made of novelisations of Star Wars, novelisations of cartoons and novelisations of comics... Oh you can still find them in other collections, but those are a bit more, how to put it, distinguished/smart collections (and aimed at a bit older age); so that was quite a shock to browse the catalogue of the 'standard' kids collection.

> regardless of the book

Well, as opposed to, say, watching TV (or the somehow even more mindless content that’s on YouTube), do you really disagree?

I do disagree. Books are not categorically better than television. It's pretty easy to think of examples where TV seems better than a book. For instance, a Nova documentary seems inherently better than Where's Waldo. I don't think that's a fringe viewpoint.

Perhaps a bit more fringe: I think a lot of light young adult fiction has the nutritional density of popcorn and any perceived inherent good in reading those books is likely a product of publishing industry propaganda campaigns. Scholastic Corporation, I am looking at you...

Well, I am glad that my kid is told to get a book a week from the library. I guess the main objection I have to my own statement is that for a child young enough that they are still learning how to read, reading any sort of book that is word-based (i.e. not Where's Waldo) will probably make them a better reader, in the same way that when you are first learning how to code, writing any sort of working 10-line program will probably make you a better programmer.

I think at some point it's good to read any book, as you're learning the process of reading.

But later on it definitely matters. I had this same struggle with my daughter when she was in middle school -- she got so many kudos for "reading so much" but the books were all filler. I tried many times to point out that books are just a medium and the content is key.

That is also my experience; I posted this in a sibling thread but it's also relevant here: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract....

It seems apparent to most classroom instructors that most tech is a distraction, not an enhancement. Obviously exceptions should be made for disabilities and there are some uses—spaced-memory repetition software or some computer science classes can use tech effectively. But in most classes it's detrimental rather than helpful.

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