The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
As autumn rolls ever nearer, advertisements on TV and in every flyer that reaches your mailbox are filled with computers, scanners, and digital cameras available at special back-to-school prices. With all of these gadgets available, you would think that education today is a high tech enterprise, but this isn't necessarily the case. Canada is the most wired nation on the globe, our homes and schools are filled with computers, but students aren't necessarily doing anything with them besides surfing the Internet, downloading music, and instant messaging their friends. Why do we even have schools anymore? It's almost an old adage in education: if a doctor from 100 years ago walked into a hospital today, would she be able to function? Probably not, too many things have changed. But if a teacher from 100 years ago walked into a classroom today would he be able to function? Probably, not that much has changed at schools, although our society has turned on its head since then. I am not saying that schools should be about computers. Schools should be about knowledge, skills, and learning to use the tools of our society. Schools need to be vital institutions in our society. Students need the latest, most current skill set possible for them to be competitive, productive, and informed citizens of an advanced democracy such as our own; especially at this point in our history. Like it or not, our society is filled with technology of all types and it is vital that students learn to research, solve problems, and communicate using technology. It is almost a given that students will learn to use an office suite including a word processor, spreadsheets, and presentation software in their time at school, but there is a lot more to it. Kids need to learn how to tell truth from fiction online. The Internet is filled with websites promoting hate against almost any group you can think of, and almost all of them have a section of games on their site appealing to kids. Kids surfing through sites such as these need to learn how to tell real information from fake. Which is becoming increasingly difficult these days. In the past, it was easy to tell a professionally produced, published product from a cheap one. These days, when everyone has access to the same digital web production suites including photo editing tools, video editing and animation software, fringe groups and Fortune 500 companies are getting harder to tell apart online. Kids are always wowed by fancy productions. Show them videos available online, or flash animated comics, and they are amazed by what they find. But teach students how to do these things, give them real tools and have them do real things with them, and they will never again be overwhelmed or awed by advertising or Hollywood. They will learn to see through the glitz and look behind the messages being pumped at them 24/7. These are vital roles for schools in our society today. Our society cannot afford that schools be holding tanks for teenagers, giving them the same set of skills we walked out with years ago. The problems we are leaving them with, which need to be solved, are too urgent for that. ([email protected])
