Technology vs Books in Early Children's Education

It seems like technology has started replacing physical copies of text all over the place. People now take online notes, have electronic health records, and read on Kindles instead of books. One area where technology will have a hard time replacing books, though, is in children's education.

Sure, there are a couple Youtube channels (Cocomelon is a notable example) that offer well-animated videos with nursery rhymes. Some of their videos even have important themes like sharing, honesty, and patience. However, many of these quality channels have a very limited range of topics that they produce videos for, leaving a large gap that is often filled by lower-quality channels.

Because there are no videos, about, say, cars from the good channels, other channels of poorer quality are churning out content to meet that demand and attract a larger number of viewers. The videos are full of flashing neon colors, and tend to focus on one specific thing. A couple also try to include descriptions like color or shapes, but they are wildly inaccurate. Not only would they teach young children that green was yellow, they taught it in different languages! These videos are available in several countries, many of them non-English-speaking, as creators try to appeal to a broader audience. As a result, they include gibberish and sound effects instead of speech. What little intelligible language that is spoken in these shoddily-produced videos is usually not English, making it paradoxically useless to the majority of its demographic. 

All of this creates a problem: there is a limited amount of quality content in a limited number of topics and genres, and the content that tries to replace or supplement it is inaccurate, addictive, and absurd. So how do we solve that problem?

Books. I have a younger brother, so I've been reading a couple of his books. From Maisy to Animals 123, children's books have that range in topic and consistency of quality that the online alternatives have yet to catch up with. I can't deny that technology is a massive step in the right direction for many fields and subjects, but we still need to wait a while before it can offer the same benefits children's books can.

-Zhaoxin

Asuperu Kanojo: a inside to mental disorders

 

The cover of volume 1

   Asuperu Kanojo, or Asperger’s Girl, is a Japanese graphic novel written by Hagimoto Souha and drawn by Morita Renji. The book follows the main character Yokoi Taku, who recently moved to Tokyo and now makes a living by delivering newspapers and drawing comics. Because of Yakoi’s unusual plot and unhappy endings due to him most likely having ASD (never explicitly stated in the story, but heavily implied), his comics are completely ignored by everyone. However one day, a girl named Saitou Megumi suddenly appears in front of his apartment saying she’s a huge fan of his original works, it turns out she suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome and was abused and bullied when she was a child. After realizing Saitou came from extremely far away and has no intentions, or money to go back, Yakoi decides to let her live with him and thus beginning their journey of learning to rely on each other and treating their mental disorders. I know this is an extremely confusing and complicated introduction so please just read the actual manga. Currently the manga is finished with 12 volumes and 123 chapters in Japanese and Chinese, however the English translation is only up to chapter 41.

    Asperger’s Syndrome, also called AD, is a developmental disorder that affects the ability to socialize and communicate, it is quite rare but can last for years or even be lifelong. It used to be considered as a separate condition, but today it is part of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), though lots of people still use the term Asperger’s. Asperger’s is called a “high-functioning” type of ASD, meaning it is less severe than other kinds of autism spectrum disorder.

no context panel

    I came from China, and generally, it and other Asian countries place less importance on mental disorders compared to the west, to the point where I didn’t know anything about it until I arrived in the US. Thus, my knowledge of mental health as a whole is…not a lot and extremely basic, so I'm not sure how correct the story depicts it, but the reviews from others say it's pretty accurate. This story taught me a lot about mental health, like with Yokoi I learned about how he thinks and even though his childhood wasn’t bad, he still feels empty inside. Then Saitou’s sudden panic attacks, quick changes in emotions and behaviors toward strangers and herself. She is also most likely suffering from multiple disorders, including PTSD and depression from her abusive father and school bullies. I’ve learned a lot of these things from places like health class, but it was simply just facts and words that I memorized. In this book, you get to follow 2 characters and watch them grow and experience things from their perspective, allowing you to understand things much more than just studying. Overall, I think Asuperu Kanojo is a really good read, though there are a few… interesting and maybe questionable side plots, the mental health is definitely the main draw of this manga and I definitely recommend reading it.

The cover of volume 5