| Random thought dump incoming. There are a lot of issues in the public education system. In fact, one might ask whether the compulsory Prussian-based system is still relevant and effective these days. One thing's for sure: you're not going to fix these problems by pumping in consumer electronics into the curriculum. You'll temporarily mask it, maybe please the parents and students a little (especially the poorer ones), but ultimately you'll have accomplished nothing. For one thing, you're offering them locked down, DRM-packed, proprietary tracking devices that give an abstracted user interface but won't give you much potential to tinker with its inner workings or hack around. Most districts go with Apple products, so even things like app development are significantly more closed. There is no doubt that education needs to catch up with the technological world and the Web of Things that lies ahead, but it's being done in the most careless and ineffective way imaginable. To the point where it might even be hampering education. If your objective is to make a subservient class of automatons who lack critical thinking skills, then sure, stuffing them with iPads is the way to go. Public education should be online-integrated and technologically conscious, but in my mind what we need is a radical paradigm shift: a higher acceptance of autodidacticism and alternative education as viable learning paths. A lot of public schools teach at a very slow pace, one that more savvy kids can be ahead of with the global repository of information online (of course, most prefer social networking, but I digress). Who knows? MOOCs might make a lot of schools obsolete soon. What's worth noting is that the private schools which the children of the elite and the wealthy attend tend to be educated in highly selective institutions that for the most part do not utilize contemporary technology and rely on more traditional approaches to education. Perhaps there is something to be noted here. |