junk food letter writting
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Re “Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality” (Digital Domain, July 11), which described how studies showed a decline in academic performance after students in low-income households received a computer in the home:
Without active parental planning and supervision, children consume junk media as they do junk food. Left to themselves, children properly regard almost everything as toys and do not consider long-term benefits or hazards.
Parents should regard digital media as a way to enhance children’s development and family life. Learning is essentially a developmental social act that needs the nurturing involvement of adults. Eitan D. Schwarz, M.D.
Skokie, Ill., July 11
The writer is a child psychiatrist.
To the Editor:
Almost every time I’ve taught in a classroom with computers for every student, the students fire up the computers and start e-mailing, surfing the Internet, playing games and engaging in other nonproductive activities.
It’s much better to have a lab where students can go and use computers for specific assignments, closely monitored by the teacher. Simply putting a student in front of a computer isn’t going to have positive results by itself.