Chapter 3 Rethinking EducationChapter 3 Rethinking Education

Last week I read a chapter ahead so this week I am catching up on the week that I skipped.  Reading through this chapter there are parts that I agree with and there are parts that I disagree with.  Of course with every subject there are going to be optimists and skeptics.  However I have always been the type of person who can never make a solid decision.  This is mostly because I usually always see multiple points of view and can see both ways.  On that note I believe that people who see technology as a method that is just a phase may be outdated in their views of reality.  Reading this chapter made me think of Regis Phillman who on his morning TV show continues to tell his audience that the Internet will someday dye.  This acquisition seems almost ridiculous. I thought it funny that some people thought that students were lazy because they didn’t make their own ink, the decided to buy it at the store instead.

However there are something’s the chapter has a little wrong.  The book keeps mentioning how schools are on the brink of changing.  Everything we know about schools is about to reformulate to meet the new needs of the students.  However I believe that the school system that we have in place works as long as schools make small adjustments.  Technology is important in the classroom, however I don’t think it is necessary to rebuild schools to change.  Schools could easily add laptops to their curriculum to help students adjust to the needs. This goes back to the quote that if a teacher can be replaced by a computer it should be.  If computers can do a better job at teaching children than humans teachers are doing something wrong to reach out to their students. 

What I really thought was interesting was that teachers in the past taught students everything they possibly needed to know so that students were prepared for adulthood. Today technology is so advanced at gaining more information; it is not possible to learn all the necessary information.  Textbook are getting bigger and more responsibility is put on the teachers to teach more information in the course of a year.   When I am a teacher I don’t think its necessarily important to learn and retain all the information they learned.  However it is important for students to learn how to find the information when they need it.