August 10, 2018

Use Game Videos & Ditch Traditional Instruction, Says Edtech Chief

Today’s students should be taught with video games because their attention spans have decreased.

Mohit Midha, CEO of Mangahigh which develops math games,says to ditch traditional instruction because students cannot focus for more than five minutes. What a life! Getting to hang out with friends and play video games all day.

Speaking at a debate on artificial intelligence and education, Midha claimed people are obsessed with video games” but are “totally out of love” with “traditional forms of instruction” involving “pen and paper.” He gushed that kids can learn a video game without being taught how and, within two days, will be doing “headers.”

Does that mean they can become little math geniuses by acing a video game?

Yet Midha is right about one thing: students’ attention spans are shrinking. Bucket loads of research show that long term skimming of online information, together with interactive distractions, has resulted in lower comprehension. International research also found that heavy users of classroom technology scored worse on math and reading tests.

Teens who frequently use digital media are showing increased symptoms of ADHD – an attention span and hyperactivity disorder. A new two-year study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed students who used several types of digital media several times daily were twice as likely to have ADHD than classmates who were less frequent users.  Note that no students who had already been diagnosed with ADHD were included in the study.

So we should give more sugar to fat kids? If children experience higher rates of ADHD when exposed to digital screens, why are schools leaping into more digital learning?

Children who have ADHD are forced to take medication to control their behavior. The schools are already dealing with a mental health crisis among students, with teen suicide on the rise!!!

Not only does Midha’s profoundly stupid education theory turn classrooms into video arcades, it creates psychological problems for children who then are forced to medicate.  Geez, a school full of zoned out zombies.

Now what caring parent wants to send his child into an environment like that?

Bottom line: American students are dumber than any previous generation.  Since they can't learn through centuries old successful teaching methods, video games are in order -- along with medications and mental health intervention.

We’ve come a mighty long way since our Colonial days when young children learned how to read at Sunday School – using the family Bible without pictures and big print.

Why are Americans still funding public schools? Why are we allowing greedy goons to take control of our children’s learning and their mental health to fatten corporate stock and provide mega billionaire lifestyles?