Andy Rathbun’s Sunday article, “Forget the blackboard,” on electronic advances in the classroom gives me visions of loading hay into a burning barn. Even assuming that these marvels actually improve the learning process, which is less than evident, the real problems of education seem to be getting shoved out of our comfort zone.
To begin with, the best equipment and techniques in the world don’t do much for the students who quit being students. The widening cultural paradigm that finds dropping out an increasingly acceptable life choice is festering into a socio-economic cancer that could, unchecked, create a completely unsustainable population ratio of completely unskilled, untrained, unengaged and ultimately criminal adult citizens.
Even among those who remain enrolled, the incidence of intoxication and habitual indolence is terrifying. As a community educator, I have presented to classrooms with several students barely conscious. Teachers are challenged to their limit with attending to the willing and must ultimately write these kids off as a loss.
And doesn’t it make you just a little bit itchy that so much of both our scholastic and business worlds depend so heavily on a couple of AA batteries and a technology that both the PC and Mac giants really, really hate to waste money on perfecting?
Harold R. Pettus
Everett
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