How do you like your machines?
There's a place I've been going to quite a bit in the past few months.
I have it programmed into my car's GPS.
I honestly would not know how to get there if I didn't turn on my GPS every time.
I kind of feel guilty about that.
I got a really nasty, threatening email yesterday from someone who swears that one day horrible things will happen to me.
I hope it doesn't mean my GPS will steer me off a cliff.
I read a report today about a school district in Massachusetts that wants to buy iPads for kindergartners.
Nice.
We are evolving and it's happening about two inches behind our eyes.
I've written dozens of times about the campaign to kill creative thought in our schools.
It starts with the obvious standardization and bubble-in measurements of kids' abilities and schools' effectiveness. It gets pushed along by slick gadgets like iPads.
When we get everyone totally on the same bubbled-in page, and everything is standardized, we won't even need human beings at all to teach our kids.
Steve Jobs will do it for us.
There's an app for that.
If you think that's not where all this is going, well... I think you're wrong.
And as long as the kids are okay with their deeply-inserted earbuds, glazed over expressions, number-2 pencils surgically affixed to their little hands, and every question they might ever encounter having only one correct answer among an alphabetized list of five choices, we'll be where we want to go.
Sometimes, though, when you get lost, you find cooler shit than what you set off to find.
I promise to turn off my GPS and find my secret place on my own next time.
If I get lost, don't look for me.
11 comments:
I believe things like iPads are tools. It's the way in which we use them that makes them object by which we grow or objects that wall us in.
The first thing I did when I bought an iPad was download this nightsky app. I went outside and held it over my head. Using it, I was able to explore the night sky in ways I'd never been able to do before.
I also believe that our school system is systematically beating creativity out of our youth. Schools are making them dumber instead of smarter. We've become a society obsessed with metrics. All our achievements must be measurable. No Child Left Behind...
But what about the ones who want to be left behind? The ones for whom test scores are not the end all be all of their existence? What about learning for the sake of learning alone?
I think that in the hands of the curious and the courageous, tools like iPhones and iPads and Kindles and computers can be transformative tools that open children's minds. In the hands of the average school administrator they become one more measuring device.
That said, there are days I long to burn all my devices and live in a shack in the woods. I think I'd be happier.
On a side note: I'm visiting Jack for the second time. He's more screwed up than I imagined the first time around.
I have a phone. It has a full-keyboard. That's as far as my early adaption goes. I don't have GPS. I don't even have my own laptop anymore.
I would like to pretend that I'm too ascetic for such things, but really I'm just poor.
I like the segmented feel to this post.
The 2nd graders here got iPads last fall and I have never heard why or what they did with them. It was from a grant, btw.
I forgot my point, but thanks for this post...it made me think more than I usually do.
This makes me sad. I myself, hated school and for all of the things you mention here. I didn't go to college and regret that now, however I don't feel any less educated than those around me with a masters. What should we do? My son is in the gifted program (go figure) and I don't want this for him. I want better for him. :(
I think you know what to do.
Kids need people -- real human beings -- in their lives. This is the key, I think, to developing the most powerful creative and critical intellectual abilities in young people.
I know this because I see it every day. It's too easy for parents (and now, sadly, even our state-run institutions are reinforcing this notion) to defer guidance over the development of our children by allowing them to plug in to their devices and tune out everything real that's going on around them.
It's why young writers -- kids who really want to write -- agonize when I ask them to write me a scene where their characters are real people interacting in some real situation.
They don't know what to do.
I think your kid's going to be just fine.
It can get overwhelming with all the new technology thrown at us. One way I try to connect back to myself and the Earth is by using the sun (without a sun dial) to tell time. The time changes kind of threw me off, but I'm getting much better.
I think people are looking at a transitional stage, seeing what's being lost, but not seeing the potential.
This new thing I'm working on will be 3 actual books. It will also be 3 ARG's (online role playing games) that depend on close attention, following clues and working with other people online. And it will be iPod/iPad games which, again, will encourage working with other people. It will also be a web experience and an enhanced e-book. Each part of the thing is a separate story, linking a sort of story universe.
The end result is something that offers a reader a wide variety of experiences, from the solitude of reading to the active pursuit of clues to the formation of online communities.
These same kinds of approaches can be applied to education. What's wrong with teaching history with games, for example? Why shouldn't we use the technology to put a student in the role of Napoleon and another in the role of Wellington, and let them play out Waterloo?
Properly done we can teach more for less money. We can make well-paid stars out of great teachers. We can simply bypass the imbeciles who run many school boards.
This isn't a threat to education, it's a liberation from 19th century teaching, and far from destroying creativity, it can open a world where learning can move beyond the limitations imposed by a system that relies on a mixed bag of teachers teaching what they learned 20 years ago and obeying rules handed down by politicians.
After reading Michael's comment (and of course everyone else's) I don't know who I agree with more. Maybe I should download the coin flip app for my phone and flip for my decision ...
I don't know how to respond without offending people that I care about, so I'll just shut up.
I'm still trying to decide whether or not to post the story about yesterday's email assault.
All kidding aside, why iPad's for kindergartners? What are they using them for letter/number recognition, reading, writing, art, or music? And seriously how much time do they spend on them? Children need and learn from hands on experience, holding a block that is an orange square to the social aspect of working and relating to other children in their class. I'm not against technology but you can't remove the human aspect. Relating to someone in an online game and working with that person is ok but you need to learn how to interact with real people, standing next to you before you plug yourself in. Children and adults are already
so lazy thanks to technology. Not that I don't think it's cool
using a GPS system (I don't have one), or being able to
google on the go while traveling in the car, as a passenger but is it really necessary to stop using some of our old ways just because there's a new gadet out?
Andrew:
Dude, I'm incapable of being hurt by argument. I spend half my time online arguing ideology with people and I've been called everything. Politics is my baseball, brother, so I have a very tough skin. I wouldn't have written the comment if I thought you'd feel you had to pull your punches.
Connie:
What you or I or anyone else think should be is almost irrelevant at this point. The technology will set the table.
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