* HOW YOUNGSTERS WILL LIMIT SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE

Sixteen years ago an article in the New York Times reported that in the schools of the future:

• "students will use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments on school-issued laptops that also substitute for text books"
• "educators will track students' academic growth with sophisticated software that allows them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level"
• "parents will use instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress"

In some schools all of this has been realized and more besides. But in many others a fundamental limitation is nullifying it all — the kids. They still have to buy into schooling before technology can even begin to transform their education. And kids with all sorts of education-stultifying problems weren't buying into schooling before the advent of digital technology, they aren't buying into it now despite the promise, and they won't buy into it in the future. 

This is particularly true of the schools that most urgently require transformation. Schools in our inner cities. Technology hasn't transformed these schools. They haven't become more successful delivering instruction. They aren't doing better communicating with parents or fostering their interest. With rare exceptions, these schools remain the same educational wastelands they were before the advent of the digital age.

Here is a brief tale that illustrates the point. A teacher I know vry well witnessed the following incident. She was trying to teach in a Philadelphia inner city middle school that was technologically impoverished. Through some miracle one solitary classroom had been equipped with brand new computers at every desk. One morning while classes were changing, two adolescent boys began chasing one another around the computer rich classroom. 

Soon they were leaping from one desktop to another, trampling keyboards and kicking over computers. Perhaps the boys had that intent before they even started their chasing. We'll never know. In any event they wrecked utter havoc and there was no money to replace or repair the damaged equipment. The computerized classroom was essentially deceased and the wrecked bright spot returned to its normal dreary state. 

The boys were never even identified, much less caught. Disorder was so rife in this school that this wanton destruction just blended into the customary chaos. In any case, whatever promise the new computers offered was lost to all. Students could not "use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments" even had they wanted to. And kids who wanted to complete their assignments were in relatively short supply. In fact, on nice days as many as a third of the students were hours late reporting for class, or not showing up at all. 

So far as teachers now being able to "track student's academic growth with sophisticated software that allowed them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level," that's just impossible — at least at the secondary level. Doing that while trying to teach upwards of 150 kids spread over five different periods, each with 30 or so very different kids is simply impossible. And it will remain impossible so long as we organize public education on a factory, mass production model to make it more affordable. 

So far as "parents using instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress," that requires their parents to have the necessary technology, interest, sobriety, time and freedom from the thousand and one problems that poverty brings. Good luck with that!

What is one to make of this? That schools and school kids do NOT exist in a vacuum. The influence of the world around the school comes in like a malignant phantom hovering around every youngster. What goes on in our schools simply mirrors the other America in which these schools are subemerged. And no amount of technological innovation is going to change that. It just is what it is. 

 

For more detailed realistic considerations of educational issues, visit newfoundations.com