Motivated by applications Essay

Until the last century, mathematics was always motivated by applications (Kline, 1973 iv) it took humanity an enormous time span to reach the inductive reasoning capacity necessary to go bad interested in pure mathematics. It follows that children take some time to reach the necessary mental maturity to deal with the formalism and type of thinking involved in abstracts and mathematics. It is interesting to note that in many countries, 21 (the end of this 7-year period) is the age for a young person to become legally answerable.It is a recognition, that only at this age be all human capacities fully available, and the individual is able to control and be totally responsible for his or her actions (Steiner, 1982 Talbot, 1995 and Bronfenbrenner, 1995). In conclusion, this paper supported my aim to adjudicate that the extensive implementation of computers in pre-high school education is having a detrimental effect on the discipline of children.The first argument I presented to sup port my aim is that computer technology is ecological and like all technology may have tenacious reaching effects on childrens emotional, psychological, spiritual, moral and social sensibilities. Fostering a mechanical, rational view of social relationships. Secondly, I argued that a computer is a tool, and to be effective it is necessary children understand what it is and how it works.Just as a childs physical development is stunted when muscles are not exercised, the development of disciplined thinking is stunted when the computer relieves the child of the responsibility for planning and organizing his/her thoughts before expressing them. It should be kept in mind that tools designed to aid the ripen mind may hinder the maturation of the developing mind. Thirdly, I supported my aim by arguing that computers work with an extremely restricted class of childrens thoughts.It was demonstrated that early computer use and an emphasis on computer like thinking, is leading childrens deve lopment to be dominated by the rigid, logical, algorithmic thinking, that is characteristic of computer interaction. This accelerated, but isolated intellectual development, brings a childs mental abilities to an adult level long before they have bighearted strong enough to restrain it and give it humane direction. The fourth argument presented to support my aim was, that how computers are used in education is detrimental to childrens development.Children need time for active, physical play hands-on lessons of all kinds, especially in the arts and direct experience of the natural world. The prevalent emphasis on technology is diverting us from the urgent social and liberal educational needs of children. A proper education requires attention to students from good teachers and active parents. It requires consignment to developmentally appropriate education and attention to the full range of childrens needs physical, emotional, and social, as well as cognitive.Finally and most import antly I demonstrated that developmental stages in children are not compatible with computer use. Combining Steiner, Bloom and Krathwohl developmental concepts with the fact that computers are mathematical tools, forcing a strictly abstract and mathematical type of thinking as well as use of symbolic formal language. Applying these concepts and properties of computers to proper educational goals we may surmise that they are unsuitable for extensive use by children in any form before approximately age 15, or high school.Convincing arguments have been presented to prove the extensive implementation of computers in pre-high school education is having a detrimental effect on the development of children.BibliographyBloom, B. and D. Krathwohl. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Handbook 1 The Cognitive Domain. new York McKay, 1956. Bronfenbrenner, U. Developmental Ecology Through Time and Space A Future Perspective in Examining Lives in Context Perspectives on the Ecology of Human Develo pment, (Moen, senior and Luscher Ed.). Washington American Psychology Association, 1995.Bowers, C. A. The Cultural Dimensions of Educational Computing Understanding the Non-neutrality of Technology. New York Teachers College Press, 1988 Coon, D. Essentials of Psychology Exploration and Application (8th edition). USA Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 1999 Craig, G. , M. Kermis and N. Digdon. Children Today (2nd edition). Toronto Prentice Hall. 2001 Kline, M. why Johnny Cant Add the Failure of New Math. New York St. Martins, 1973.