I heard an interesting, and frustratingly colossal blunder in the work to improve our schools. The NYC Board of Education was getting close to instituting a policy to block the use of cell phones (and other electronic devices) in schools. The cell phone companies blocked the policy because of potential lost revenue. Not, mind you, revenue for the schools, but revenue for the cell phone companies. The short term money interests of a few corporate entities trump the integrity of the already challenged learning environment of 1.2 million students. Thanks Bloomy. I'm late on this because it was a secret.
As if concentrating in class was hard enough before the onset of cellular technology. I am sure of the fact that my grades diminished when there was a hot girl in class. If I had constant text contact with all of my friends, I would not have heard a word of what was happening in class, because I would have been waiting for the next piece of important, useless, information about some girl or news of where we were going to get alcohol next. Think about it. How easy would it be to be coerced to skip out on the next class?
Parents should be outraged. The basic hope or premise of education is to provide a sanctuary for children to concentrate and develop a foundation of critical math, language, logistic skills so that when they do grow up they can better understand and analyze how to utilize the technology in constructive ways. To borrow Thomas Friedman's phase, students who are "continuously partially present" will not build those core skills. Don't worry. They'll have plenty of time to text, Facebook, chat, tweet, talk, or whatever else comes down the pipe next with there friends beyond school hours. Especially given that jobs for teenagers are a rarity. There is nothing worse than telling a kid to get off the phone and hearing the excuse, "I am talking with my mom." That's even worse. I can understand a child not getting it, but the parents. Then when I speak with the parents they are surprised that their child is on the phone!
If they only realized the many consequences of acquiescing to this short-sighted whim of corporate America. Teachers lose an element of control in the classroom due to many more distractions. Teachers and administers compromise the ability to triage during the event of an emergency, because while they are attending to issues in order of imminent importance and then making contacts with a clear message of what happened and what was being done, the kids called mom, who, with her partial story, called some other person, and now what was probably minor incident has potentially turned into a pr nightmare. In addition, students don't develop the ability to sustain in-depth conversations, to write in-depth analysis of learned material, because they missed a large portion of what was presented and then they can't shut out everything and focus on completing the task. More and more assignments that I received are half-assed at best. In order for politicians to appear to be improving the system, they lower the standards and further dumb down the tests. My SATs were already dumbed down from my parents!
Should the school system build in more technology into the curriculum? Absolutely. Instead, the ever reactive, rather than proactive, system says that teachers should use multiple learning styles and cooperative learning to entice students to learn. Sure. Those methodologies have there place in the classroom, but shouldn't the system try to eliminate as many obstacles as possible. This way, we are not reduced to trying to trick students as they sit through a mandated subject regents class with their sidekick, cell phone and mp3 players vibrating in their pockets.
