These days I look at our education system with a deep sense of sadness and befuddlement.
What are the cornerstones of our educational base now?
At one point they were reading, writing & arithmetic .
Why are they no longer ‘teaching’ children these fundamentals?
They are not teaching children how to write any longer. They are not teaching them how to spell. Children have iPads now that they work off of with calculators to assist in the math areas.
A recent article spoke of children coming into school not having developed the muscles to hold a pencil or pen in order to write. Here are the two schools of thought that currently seem to exist.
“One school believes that learning handwriting is important for children because they think fine motor control and how you organize your thoughts develops with your writing skills. But the other camp believes that we’re moving into a world where [everything] is done on computers, so learning how to write by hand is an outdated skill.”
I believe and know for fact that the first school of thought is based on proven theory and writing should never be considered an outdated skill. It should be an absolute necessity. Now more than ever!
I am absolutely appalled though that schools are moving toward technology at such a rapid pace without any thought as to how this will impact the youth of today years from now.
One person bemoaned on their blog how ‘dangerous’ pens and pencils are and that they should be banned from the classroom! The reasoning was infantile at best. The writer of that blog post insisted that pens and pencils can and have been used as weapons.
It is not the pens and pencils that are the issue. It is the children’s behaviour. I cannot recall throwing pencils at other students. That is not to say it didn’t happen. The children that did partake in this type of behaviour were quickly reprimanded.
And if a child displayed such disruptive behaviour there were usually underlying and more serious issues at play that would require further investigation to help the child.
And as we know, technology has created some major hindrances in child development and brought about things such cyber-bullying.
As a child I loved getting school supplies. I would get a new pencil case, pencils, erasers, rulers, geometry kits, pens, binders, and packs of loose-leaf paper, We had the duo-tang folders to put the paper in and I would label each folder with the subject matter that it would contain. This was based upon the colour of the folder as well.
I loved the smell and newness of everything. In elementary school we were given ‘scribblers’ by the schools. This was how you practiced your penmanship and spelling.
So the big thing was having a cool lunch kit. I do believe the last one I may have had was a Partridge Family one. I also had a book bag made from a cheap vinyl and yet these items gave me a sense of belonging.
We were given projects to do and book reports to prepare. There were certain things the teacher looked for. One was indeed penmanship. And I worked at this. My mother and oldest sister had beautiful handwriting and I aspired to write as they did.
Writing and reading were the two things I loved most about school. Arithmetic…well, it scared me a bit back then. Being that I am someone who learns best by visualization, those early math books weren’t very good at allowing me to do this.
Still the problems presented such as (i.e. a train traveling 45 mph arrives at 10 PM. Another train travelling 65 mph arrives at the same time…what distance did each cover?) always gave me pause to think. And while they often confounded me at the beginning, they eventually became the ones I really like.
They were like a mystery to me.
What I liked about them is they assisted with critical thinking and they helped in terms of developing the brain’s cognitive and figurative functions.
Being able to assess and determine a variety of issues is a good thing. And it is the lessons from my youth that have helped enormously to shape the person I’ve become.
I feel children are being robbed of an education if they are not being taught to read, write and spell. If they are not being taught to calculate math manually as well and are solely reliant on technology then what happens ? For example what happened to play?
Parks and playgrounds now sit empty. Why?
Here is another excerpt.
“Of course, there are so many other concerns when it comes to kids and devices with regard to social interaction and the development of emotion.
“Whilst there are many positive aspects to the use of technology, there is growing evidence on the impact of more sedentary lifestyles and increasing virtual social interaction as children spend more time indoors online and less time physically participating in active occupations,” Karin Bishop, an assistant director at the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, told The Guardian.
Flanders echoes those concerns, and points to emerging literature that indicates that extended screen time may be creating problems for children, including an increased prevalence of ADHD, a lack of good interpersonal skills and an expectation of instant gratification.
But he also doesn’t think that it will result in scaling back on tech in the classroom.
“Right now, schools are still emphasizing learning the alphabet by tracing the letters with their fingers and writing them out with pen and paper,” Flanders says.
“But I think 30 or 40 years from now, that’s going to be a thing of the past.”
I really believe that schools need to have a concise educational plan.
For example:
Grades 1-4: No computers in the classroom. (All learning is based on the tried and true methods of working with paper, pencils and pens along with text books. The use of reference materials, such as dictionaries, thesaurus’ and encyclopedias should be encouraged. )
Grades 5-7: Begin to introduce computers into the classroom as a tool, nothing more.
The emphasis should be on developing children’s skills and abilities to become engaged and plugged in adolescents. The formative years are critical in terms of assisting our children to develop such skills. To think that writing is going to be an ‘outdated skill’ is damn well frightening to me.
The page has been the one thing in my life that always listened. I could pour out everything and anything onto that page. It was now purged from my youthful soul that was shattered at that time. Had I held all of that in, had I never been able to express the hurt, the angst, the fear that existed…I’m not certain I would even be here.
A counselor told me that they had encouraged a female patient to journal. She hedged at the idea. Later it would be discovered that the girl did not know how to write.
Writing gave me a voice. It enabled me to express the feelings that were locked inside that verbally I found so difficult to share. Even if no one else ever saw the words written they were there.
Don’t take these skills away from children.
Read below what is replacing paper and pen.
‘Written communication among kids and teens today has morphed into such a confusing mixture of acronyms and emojis that it can almost make hieroglyphics more easily understood. This is why it’s important for parents to be up on the latest text slang.
“Text lingo practically changes weekly and a lot of the times, parents have no clue what their kids and their friends are saying,” says Titania Jordan, chief parent officer of Bark, a software program that monitors, detects and alerts parents to potentially dangerous conversations on their kids’ cellphones, and email and social media accounts.
“I’m surprised at how many parents still don’t know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means.” (For the record, it refers to hooking up, not actually watching Netflix.)’
And yet we readily hand our children cellphones and tablets that connect them to what, I am no longer certain.
Read Ray Bradbury’s book released in 1953 for ‘Fahrenheit 451’.
Below is a summary of the book as written by The New York Times.
‘Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.’
This has a chilling ring of truth to it. The T.V. has now been replaced by iPads and Tablets.
Will there come a time when books are no longer necessary, when their value is no longer worth the pages they’ve been written upon?
I for one certainly hope not.
Still I recognized that depression had once again settled in. I was isolating myself. All the insecurities and yearnings once again tossing me to the curb with all my perceived inadequacies washing over me.
And surely when we look out upon the horizon, we should see the curve!
After a year and half the American election finally came to bitter end. The outcome was not what anyone expected.
The Occupy NY movement in Timesquare, Sept 2011, photo taken by N. Pilling
Power of One by Nancy 