Gotta get something off my chest. I was subbing in a Downriver Middle school last week (8th grade Art). The students were working on a powerpoint presentation about a sculptor they had to select from a list the primary teacher provided. They had to provide some basic background information and include somephotos of their work. I was quite impressed by the ease with which every student navigated the web to find their research information to import it into their powerpoint. Most of the layouts were exemplary and honestly, many had less trouble with formatting than I would have had. I thought back to my introduction to computers in high school. It happened to be in 8th grade (1980). All we did for the trimester was learn how to run programs in BASIC language. I know that most of you who are reading this (thanks by the way) probably have no idea what BASIC is. It would be like comparing Pong to the Xbox. Now that i'm thinking about it, you probably don't know what Pong is either. The point I'm trying to make is that we have come such a long way in how we teach our students, the technology we are able to expose them to and the learning methods we now employ.
But my question is... are we still missing something? In putting together these projects, no less than 10 students asked me what "Country of Origin" meant? I went from astonished, to confused, to pissed. How could an 8th grader not know the meaning of that phrase? And who's to blame for that? Their elementary teachers?, their current grade level teachers?, parents?, peers?, themselves?, WHO!?
I've got my own ideas about the state of education in our society, why most teachers are failing their students and why parents don't take a more active roll in the lives of their kids.
But I want to know what you guys think? If someone can help me off the ledge on this, please do.
I think the whole group you mentioned is to blame. Actually, some say that most damage is done at middle school level. And parents bear a lot of the blame, because they expect schools to educate their children. They are the ones who are primarily responsible for the education of their children and many refuse to take that responsibility because it takes them out of their comfort zone. Another reason for what you have mentioned is too much and too early reliance on technology. I really do not think children need to be exposed to technology as much as they are now, and that is one of the reasons they do not know how to read books. Some researchers even say that the processing of information by the brain is different when it comes from the computer screen as opposed to when it's read from a book. I think we are losing the human touch when we are incorporating too much technology and relying on it. The children will have plenty of time to play with technology in college and later.
ReplyDelete