The familiar is comforting to us. We don't fear what we have experienced before, the known. When we as parents visit our kids' school, it's no wonder that we feel that the schools are fine. Most of us attended the same type of schools; the setting is familiar. The rooms have desks with attached chairs, notebooks, textbooks, crayons, pencils, blackboards, etc. -- perfect images of how school was when we were kids. The way schools communicate with parents is also the same. They send us a notice on paper in our kids' backpacks or on a notebook, and even that is exactly like how our parents got the notes.
What's wrong with this picture?
Our kids today have more access to information at their fingertips than we ever did, but the schools have done woefully little to keep up with the information revolution. Why are teachers still giving assignments that can be solved by one simple Google Search? We are so used to the concept of school being the same as it was in our youth that we don't notice, don't think about, how desperately it needs to change. I am not saying that schools should be inundated with the latest technological gadgets, but that the basic premise of our education system needs to change.
- We need to meet students where they are, which is a more advanced place than we were at