I know that schools in this area are regarded as some of the best in the country, but I often wonder when education, in general is going to catch up with the times and what's taking so long for it to happen. Here's an example...Last night my ninth grader had yet another assignment that involved at least a half an hour of coloring. Yes.....coloring at 15 years of age. Someone please tell me why high school students are still being given assignments that involve coloring when they are all capable of drawing maps and other assignments like this on the computer in about half the time? Not to mention the fact that using the computer is teaching them a much more relevant skill than coloring by hand!
Now let's talk for a moment about paperwork. Imagine going to work every day without a computer. You would have a computer at work, but you can only use it on special occasions. You take all your notes by hand, get all memos and other documents on paper and cart hundreds of all those documents to every meeting you have, back to your desk to work on them, then take most of them home every night in a backpack. Instructions and other communications from your boss and coworkers would not come to you via email, but all on paper. These are the really important papers, so whatever you do....don't lose them. This is exactly what it's like for our kids in school.
In most private schools kids get a laptop. Their classes are all recorded and available on audio podcasts for students to download if they've missed anything. They study tools that can be downloaded to their ipods. They email back and forth with teachers like the rest of us do in the real world.
In some aspects our public schools still seem to be preparing our kids to go out and live in the 1980s. So when will the education system get an overhaul and catch up with the technology age? I don't even hear this discussed in the media as an issue. Why isn't it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees the disconnect. I understand that this isn't an easy fix and it won't be cheap, but isn't that the same thing all businesses must do to be competitive today?
What do you think?
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