Disliking society’s major drawbacks isn’t necessarily an argument about school itself.

It’s always odd to me when people deliberately remove their children from mainstream cultural influences and then turn around and claim that those children do NOT have trouble relating to their peers.

I guess it makes me wonder why they care.

She wanted to learn CONTENT, KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION, and USEFUL SKILLS. Being in a classroom with 30 kids and walking the halls with hundreds was teaching her which clothes and labels were “in,” which teenage boy singers were “hot,” which kids had access to drugs and were having sex, and which bullies (many of whom had been bullying since elementary school) the school was going to ignore. It was also teaching her to be passive about her education and that her future in this system was going to be determined by someone’s assessment of how well she played the school “game.”

Her elementary school was fantastic, yet kindergarten and first grade were an educational waste. The social “skills” she learned were how to do what the person in charge tells you to do, how creativity will generally get you into trouble, and how the kids who disrupt the class have the power to gain the attention they crave and ruin the educational environment for the rest of the students.

Frankly, I wish I would have blinked away the brick and mortar hypnosis a LONG time ago. She is now WAY more responsible for her own learning, spending much MORE time in meaningful curriculum with a learning network that challenges her to improve where she is already strong and helps her further develop those areas where she is weak.

Is she socially backward? Her girl scout troop members and leaders don’t think so. Neither do the people with whom she horse-back rides and skis, those to whom she serves dinner at the homeless shelter in the neighboring town every month or the kids she helps entertain at our church’s Kids Club each week. She can comfortably interact with all ages of people – both younger and older – and has a respect for everyone’s individual talents and skills, not a desire to be someone she is not.

There are no easy answers to these educational dilemmas – and no answer will be right for every child. Our other child is very happy in a brick and mortar public school (although NOT our local school system). But please don’t condemn from your own ignorance what is working very effectively for some parents and children who care PASSIONATELY about their education and for whom local brick and mortar public school environment just doesn’t work.

My bet is that Emily Sirota’s opponent knows that her husband has *four hours* on commercial radio every weekday here in Metro Denver. I don’t listen to his show, but how is that not a huge (and hugely unfair) advantage to a candidate also named Sirota? Funny he doesn’t mention that.

(N.B. I would vote for Sirota over her opponent if I lived in Denver. It’s the whining I object to, not the fact that David Sirota wrote a column about the money being poured into a school board race. How couldn’t they see it coming?)

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/21/w_enters_my_wifes_schoolboard_race/

I’m sure teachers can find ways to use this productively. But for public schools that have, by 7th grade, 35-40 students in a math class, I really doubt that teachers are able to go up to Jimmy and say: gee, my ipad says you are having trouble. Great idea, but not happening in that all-too-common situation.

The online Math Program they mention, Pearson’s Digits has a tag line of: “Optimize Time” and “Personalize Learning”. Seems to me both of those are ways to remove the teacher from the equation — just shove more kids in the classroom with a laptop and have them teach themselves.

My point is: I fear that this technology just allows oversized classes to provide another form of ‘evidence’ of teaching via student performance, as well as replaces an actual investment in teaching and teachers.

Like I said, I love technology, but it gets credited with magically solving a lot more than it actually does. And I don’t even want to get into the proprietary and monetary issues associated with all of this… e.g.: prepackaged programs are a far cry from your great idea of constructing your own textbook for classes (something I’ve been doing for 15 years, and my kids’ teacher does with paper…).

This is sometimes called “teaching backwards.” Kids learn the content at home, then practice the skill in class. History classes often run this way (kids read a chapter, or some documents then the teacher uses discussion prompts or slides or documents in class to work on a specific skill). While it seems perfectly normal for history classes, and to a certain extent, in Science (think labs) it’s apparently pretty new in math classes although there were earlier attempts at individuated instruction.

But, despite liking tech more than H’ann, I’m not at all convinced that technology necessarily adds value — and can subtract. E.g.: the line in Tony’s cited article: “Software wirelessly recorded the children’s performance in a file that the teacher would review that night. [A teacher reports]: “Last year I’d have to walk around and ask every kid how it’s going…”

The notion that ‘asking kids how it’s going’ (e.g.: interaction) is not a crucial part of teaching is horrifying. How many of us have changed a lecture/discussion upon realizing we weren’t hitting the mark? Or learned more from a discussion with a student than a test result?

Horrifying.

But online Kindergarten? Blech. In our K-12, the kids in kindergarten use the smartboards and ipads in twos and threes, not alone. And the smarttable really is going to be fantastic for special ed.

Why is it that American education thinks everything has to be good for everyone at all times, like radioactive water in the 1900s? (http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-08/healthy-glow-drink-radiation)

And why don’t I have a helicopter in my driveway?