Reader David Spring read about Connecticut’s plan to pass a law to teach keyboarding skills in kindergarten, and he had a good idea:
“I think if moms do a lot of keyboarding while they are pregnant, it should help infants learn keyboarding sooner. After all, we should be able to look a two year old in the eye and tell them whether they are career and college ready.”

Thank goodness this proposed law is DEAD, according to my state senator.
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The ideal time is to be keyboarding at the moment of conception.
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I am not sure you can get pregnant having cyber-sex, but great idea!
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Employment for Embryos. Fingering for Fetuses. STEM for Sperm. . . ugh each sounds worse and worse . . .
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Does henpecking count?
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Keyboarding or waterboarding?
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Does it matter? The end result will be the same, zombies for students.
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Amen
Sent from my iPhone
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I agree that asking a very young child, who can barely even hold a pencil, to learn keyboarding is a form of child abuse and maybe even a form of child torture. Hopefully, at some point, more parents and teachers will rise up to oppose this insanity.
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Why not invent a keyboard that could easily be inserted in the womb so the fetus could be drilled in keyboarding skills before birth and then when the infant is born, it would be either aborted at birth for not being college and career ready or sent straight to Harvard and skip K – 12.
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Sending infants from the hospital nursery straight to college would save the cost of building public schools and hiring teachers. Infants might have trouble passing the AP exam considering that most infants probably do not know how to do “close reading of complex texts.” But if we raise our expectations for infants, I am sure they will eventually learn.
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Last month, Rep. Vito Barbieri of Idaho inquired if you could conduct a gynecological exam by having a woman swallow a camera, so women could just swallow a keyboard, too, I guess?
Yep, a member of Congress. Our Congress, the one that makes laws for us.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/23/1366341/-Idaho-lawmaker-asks-doctor-if-women-can-swallow-a-pill-for-gynecological-exams#
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The fact is that winning an election has nothing to do with intelligence or common sense. Inf act, a candidate might win without saying a word by sending out a blizzard of propaganda through the mail and lots of campaign ads on TV and radio and that way the voters never meet the idiot they might be voting for.
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All of this distrust of teachers to the point of proposing stuff that is absurd JUSTso we can test seems to be the height of cynicism.
Notice ther was no mention of this being best for a kindergartner developmentally. Just because we don’t trust their teachers to “keep them on track” whatever that means for a little child.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518
Why the physical act of writing is favored over keyboarding as a learning tool….
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To be an elected politician in CT you need to have several screws loose.
Note I said “elected”.
The ones like Jonathan Pelto who have no loose screws don’t get elected.
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So, I suppose our next President will be 5 years old? I mean, if two year olds have to be college ready and all…..
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They will have to change the US Constitution to run a 5 year old.
LOL
The Constitution gives three eligibility requirements to be president: one must be 35 years of age, a resident “within the United States” for 14 years, and a “natural born Citizen,” a term not defined in the Constitution.
But then again, the Constitution doesn’t seem to bother these corporate reformers as they trample it repeatedly through Arne Duncan and the DOE as he bribes the states to push CCSS testing and to rank and fire teachers and close schools using those rankings.
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I woud guess most pregnant women are already keyboarding a lot. Isn’t that all most people do these days?
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In Silicon Valley tech gurus keep their children OFF computers and iPhones etc
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Relying on a third grade student’s typing skills to measure that student’s ability to read and write is clearly not a plan for assessment designed by teachers.
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I had the best laugh I have ever had on this blog. You all have hysterical ideas! Now if the people in office would only see how insane these ideas truly are.
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There was the time I subbed in a first grade predominantly ELL class and taught them (per the textbook) the term “hurly burly”. Where had I heard that term before? Aha, Macbeth! I was teaching Shakesperian vocabulary to first graders! ELL first graders!!
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Although the focus has shifted to making little children “college and career ready,” it is also expected that kids become ready for Preschool and Kindergarten. When the “school readiness” shift came barreling down against children and families, ECE professionals argued that it was schools that have to be ready for children, who are diverse learners, instead of placing the onus on kids who’ve never been to school before, as well as parents, many of whom are stressed out from struggling to make ends meet in jobs with unlivable wages.
We lost that battle to know-it-all politicians, who actually know nothing about kids, child development, learning and teaching, and who could not care less about low income parents. Will it ever register in the consciousness of these know-nothing politicians, who inaccurately see young children as little adults, that schools such as Waldorf and countries like Finland are successful when they do not impose academic pressures on little kids and they let children have their childhoods?
Ooops, there’s no guarantee of new markets for profiteering in play-based learning. This is because that market has already been saturated with gimmicks for high income families, and little kids can learn a whole lot just from interacting with family and peers, being read to, and from playing with empty boxes, pots and pans, water and other stuff around the house that cost next to nothing for middle and lower income parents. So, that would probably happen NEVER –unless Americans stop electing self-serving wheeler-dealers to public office.
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I’ve already played David Coleman’s speeches for my little one in utero. She kicks violently every time she hears him. I wonder why? 😛
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What is wrong with these people?
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