An Essential Question

It's been a LONG time since my last post.
A lot of paperwork, career questions, mounting frustration, and needing to back up a bit for perspective...it took a couple of months.
So-I'm reading my ed-tech blogs/feeds and see this one from David Warlick. Provocatively titled "Curriculum is Dead", the idea is sensible enough to me. Technology is the parchment of our day and ALL students need to know how to write on it.

I'm on his team with this.

What has prompted my two months of silence is that in NYC public schools-and I'm sure in many urban settings-the classroom environments seem too "conflicted" yet for this vision.

I'm certain that there are many factors contributing to what I see in some of the middle school classrooms I visit: unmet needs on SO many levels; administrator's agendas that are wildly misfit to classroom realities; priorities that are determined day by day ("...there's a walk-through today...make sure you have x, y, z in order..."); student's "realities" built on media marketing imagery; almost no natural quiet for kids to experience....

This is not a comment on Teacher's efforts. Most teachers try very hard to do the right thing each day-sure, there's always room for improvements and new insights.

What I'm really troubled with is the level of restlessness that our kids exhibit-the degree to which our culture has juiced them up on a relentless stream of media hype. Through "lowest common denominator" thinking, we're being herded into place to supply audience to meaningless, thoughtless, superficial campaigns to move resources (time and money) from us to "them" with the same intentions of a street-wise pickpocket.

Kids seem to be more subject to raw manipulation and muscle-twitch reaction without the benefit of reflection, and consideration. As Miguel Guhlin recently posted:

...what really bothers me is that rich kids control the computer, while poor kids are controlled by it...

Watching student's using school technology to check out sneaker ads and visit/download their celebrity's latest photo shoot, while a Math class focused on an Excel project glides by unnoticed just stops me in my tracks.

Just this week, while listening to NPR, I heard a piece about Hazel Haley, the Lakeland Florida High School teacher retiring after 69 years on the job. With such deep experience, she notes little significant change in young people today-with one exception. A quote from her interview is below-it speaks volumes...

Academically, is that they no longer are remotely interested in acquiring a body of knowledge. Today's young people-'I will learn it for the test-I'll do well on the test, and then I will...flush it.

We are off the track, folks.