Mistriss who you want to be, hold on or never be free

Mr Wulf posted a YouTube video with lots of interesting stats, nothing we haven’t seen before, mind. But that isn’t my beef with it. Oh no. My beef is with those trite statements at the end, the questions that you need to ask of those who are teaching your children. 0h gnoes!!!onesones We iz bein left behind! (Note: I haven’t yet read the Shift Happens wiki before posting this diatribe.)

(OK, so I should re-watch it, to make sure of the FACTS! but really, why would I do that?)

Glib statement 1: Ask your Kids: Are you doing this is school?

Why?

We should be equipping The Children™ with a decent education. You know, being able to read from a book, being able to write with a pencil. If we give The Children™ a grounding in maths, physics, English et al, and teach them to think, then they won’t have any problems realising that clicking ‘publish’ on the latest social networking site will erm, publish their thoughts. Case in point: Learning to use a word processor should be more than learning to use Word. I know it is the de facto, but there are others. (As an aside: If you can afford to buy Word, you are making more money than I am. So, therefore, if you didn’t buy it, you stole it. Or are using Open Office or some alternative. Same with Photoshop vs The Gimp.)

We don’t need to handhold. We need to give the tools so they can infer for themselves. Apply knowledge. Not just be told.

Glib statement 2: Ask your Principal: Are you helping my child become literate in the 21st century?

Why?

Why would I want them to ignore the vast body of knowledge that has been accumulated since time immemorial? As long as they can use a browser, they are ready and literate for the 21st century. Who cares if they have been spoon-fed applications and not taught how to apply knowledge. I would prefer to ask why they are ignoring teaching, in order to make sure they tick the ‘part of the digital revolution’ box. By all means use the tools available, but make sure they are seen as that. Tools. Not a means to an end. Not the be-all-and-end-all. These are tools. No different from slide rules and calculators. They perform a function. And that function isn’t to turn your back on solid foundations and principals.

Glib statement 3: Ask your school board: Are you providing the resources and training necessary to prepare students to be successful in the 21st century?

Why?

I would prefer to ask why they are so hung-up on league tables, and why they think it better to get children through SATS and the like rather than give them the capacity to think for themselves, to give them a grounding that will serve them through their entire life?

Digital divide, you say? How about the learning gap, where we are ill-equipping children to compete in the very knowledge economy you are scared of arising out of ferrin places?

Glib statement 4: Ask your elected representatives: Now that you know all this, what changes should be made to the education legislation? What’s your vision?

Why?

Our elected representatives are part of the problem, and always have been, with their social engineering projects. Not that I am saying the education system was ever perfect, but it has only ever gone downhill. The State cannot be expected to provide this.

Education shouldn’t be geared towards one style of job, one type of employment. What I do in my everyday job I never learned in school, nor at uni. I would like to think it was the fact I had passed through those institutions and had a hunger to learn more helped me. My first job, case in point, was as a programmer, and I didn’t come out of uni with a CompSci degree. Oh, alright, I did some coding, given my degree, it was FORTRAN and a bit of assembly. But even so.

Won’t someone think of the children? As these do-gooders definitely aren’t.

Talk to me