Re:A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor
by tzs on Thursday August 11, 2022 @08:13PM
(#32433399)
What a ridiculous article. It says:
> Last year my son, who was in third grade at the time, came home with a sheet of paper from his school that listed three categories for appropriate projects: developing a hypothesis and conducting an experiment to test that theory, inventing something new, or researching "something specific." The guidelines listed "whales" as an example of something specific. Given that my son was 8 years old, the idea that he could, on his own, do any single one of these things seemed ludicrous.
> Even the easiest of these items—researching a topic—is nearly impossible for a child who hasn’t yet mastered the ability to browse the Internet. (As a parent and the founder of a tech company, I’ve observed that in order to browse the Internet one needs to know how to scan the screen, differentiate between actual content and ads, and evaluate the trustworthiness of a resource—elements that are far out of reach of most 8-year-olds.)
Has that parent never heard of books and libraries? If their school has a library it should have books appropriate for a child with enough information for an 8 year old to research some topic like whales. If the school is one of the ones that has ditched their library, a good public library should do.
Even if they have to resort to using the internet, the parent should be able to easily point the child at some sites that are trustworthy and ad free, such as PBS Kids. If the parent does that, and keeps an eye on the kid while the kid is searching to make sure they stay on kid friendly sites, that's not going to count as the parent doing the work for the kid and should be acceptable.
> Last year my son, who was in third grade at the time, came home with a sheet of paper from his school that listed three categories for appropriate projects: developing a hypothesis and conducting an experiment to test that theory, inventing something new, or researching "something specific." The guidelines listed "whales" as an example of something specific. Given that my son was 8 years old, the idea that he could, on his own, do any single one of these things seemed ludicrous.
> Even the easiest of these items—researching a topic—is nearly impossible for a child who hasn’t yet mastered the ability to browse the Internet. (As a parent and the founder of a tech company, I’ve observed that in order to browse the Internet one needs to know how to scan the screen, differentiate between actual content and ads, and evaluate the trustworthiness of a resource—elements that are far out of reach of most 8-year-olds.)
Has that parent never heard of books and libraries? If their school has a library it should have books appropriate for a child with enough information for an 8 year old to research some topic like whales. If the school is one of the ones that has ditched their library, a good public library should do.
Even if they have to resort to using the internet, the parent should be able to easily point the child at some sites that are trustworthy and ad free, such as PBS Kids. If the parent does that, and keeps an eye on the kid while the kid is searching to make sure they stay on kid friendly sites, that's not going to count as the parent doing the work for the kid and should be acceptable.