this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Technology
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I think this is one of the biggest missed opportunities in education.
We put "technology" in front of students, but mostly in the form of locked-down devices, prescribed apps, and step-by-step workflows. That teaches compliance, not understanding.
There's a huge difference between using software and understanding how it works, how to break it, fix it, or build your own.
Basic exposure to things like Linux, hardware setup, networking, and programming would give kids agency instead of just familiarity. Even if they don't pursue tech careers, they'd come out far more capable of navigating (and questioning) the systems around them.
Digital safety is a big one. Not just "don’t click bad links" but actual operational awareness: privacy, tracking, permissions, data ownership. The stuff that matters in reality.
I get that there are constraints like funding, vendor lock-in, teacher workload, curriculum pressure. But the current model feels like it's optimised to produce competent consumer users of systems, not people who can shape them.
Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.
You’re partly right. Did you read the article? One of the chief complaints is that in fact the devices aren’t locked down and kids are using them for things like games and youtube.
You’re in a Lemmy echo-chamber for the rest of it. The average user isn’t us.
As for the rest, schools teach to the lowest common denominator. The article itself plainly shows that the people “in charge” haven’t a clue how to effectively monitor, limit, and control usage of these basic devices. So throwing more at them isn’t the solution when they can’t even manage what they’ve got.
How can one become a tech nerd without tinkering with things though?
Yes but modernOS are advanced enough you dont need to tinker at all, kids will just go to the "app store" install some gacha games and never learn s thing about how the computer actually works. Like that's kinda what i did growing up except my first computer was command line only so i was forced to do some tinkering.
Na the kids need a basic ass machine with only a command line like we did growing up on apple IIs
"Sorry Billy, you need to get your X Windows environment up or you're just not getting YouTube on here. Look at your younger brother, he's already experimenting with Wayland. I'm very disappointed in you Billy."
Exactly!! -- kid is gonna go home cry and wake up at 1AM and figure out how to get wine running so he can play roblox with his friends
My first computer ran DOS