Technology

That isnt the norm, thats insanity. My kid comes home everyday with arts and crafts. I think they might be responsible for a notable decline in tree cover at tis point.

Similar case for me but I am a little younger (early to mid 00s for me). Around that age we had a Windows XP computer to mess around with in kindergarten sometimes but very rarely. We really started using computers a lot in the lab around 2nd or 3rd grade but only to teach us typing and to take tests. Ironically most of our tests were for reading quizzes called AR tests and we would earn points which would allow us to win some sort of reward if we acquired enough points by getting good scores on the quizzes. They should bring that shit back because it worked for me.

For many years I have thought that elementary schools should be free of any modern electronic tech. In middle school it should be introduced but not connected to internet (word processors, interactive encyclopedias or coding like we used to learn it in the '80s or '90s, BASIC, Logo, that kind of stuff).

Finally, introduce internet in high school, in a controlled way, focusing primarily on knowledge and research sites. No LLMs included.

Of course you can't control what happens in the students' homes, but that should not affect what happens at school, specially if you replace homework with schoolwork, which I also think it's better in the long run).

It's because the boomers running shit thinks kids have as much difficulty with tech that they do.

Kids will just pick that shit up, thats the entire point of why we stay kids so long.

But if you don't teach them critical thinking at that age, they're fucked for life.

Even if they learn current tech, it'll be different by the time they get jobs.

But critical thinking never changes

You don't write things down anymore. I very much do not have the option not to write things down. I cannot remember my ass or my elbow without writing things down. Having ADHD just be like that sometimes.

But I'm gonna also say that a lot of it is about scrolling media that's visual instead of written. If you watch tik Tok and post photos or scroll photos instead of content where things are written and require other people to read, you get stuff like this.

When I was a kid there was a poll about what kind of books kids liked to read. An overwhelming majority of those kids selected that they did not like to read (and this was before full fledged internet service in every home and cell phones in every pocket).

So you're right that you don't get better at what you don't practice, but I think there's more to it than "people don't write things down anymore".