technology lag in school

to follow up on what Claude Sweet said:

> My background is in education and I can tell you that only in
> universities are faculty and students provided with the latest
> and greatest in computer and Internet technology.

... and Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, Inc...
Did you see the results of the ThinkQuest awards?

[snip]

> ...I still have problems with convincing teachers that it is NOT
> necessary to learn how to manually write html files for most
> people who are concerned with producing product rather than the
> process itself. I guess it is a carryover from the days of DOS
> and the demeaning remarks of DOS computer users about people
> who preferred the graphic user interface of the Macintosh or
> Windows.

It is an analytical religion that dates back to the revolution of
Gutenberg, Newton and Leibnitz.  The computer may have upset the
apple-cart on this one -- I maybe don't want to know.  The
teachers are firmly into the paradigm that problem-solving is
based on atomization, on analysis.  The three R's are all calculi
of little code tokens.  Can you blame the teachers if there is a
lot of inertia there?

Just ask the teachers: How many people drive cars?  How many
people build cars?  Put the history they are living in the
context of the living that they recognize as history.

Al

Received on Tuesday, 1 December 1998 16:04:16 UTC