Transform Not Reform
Trent Batson has scratched an itch I have had for years. Ever since I started using computers and a browser in the classroom, I have felt something didn’t fit. I was doing what I was supposed to be doing with technology even going beyond the call by becoming an early adopter of social tools, new hardware, and online learning platforms, but I was missing something. I was assuming that it was me that was the source of the problem. Perhaps if I was better at using these tools better I would enter into the pantheon of those who had mastered them. After reading Batson’s short but transformative post, I realize that it isn’t me (or at least not mostly me). It was the schools I worked within. I knew this on an instinctive level. Hadn’t my wife and I homeschooled our kids. Or rather we unschooled them. Shouldn’t that have been a clue? I felt that I had to render unto other people’s kids what belonged to them and unto mine what they deserved. And ne’er the twain, etc. Classic double bind.
This problem is one that Batson confronts: it isn’t anyone’s fault. There are no villains. The problem is that the world has changed and we need to live in it instead of the other one. The metaphor he implies is involves pouring. We add technology to the mix of education. Batson implies that they are oil and water and that if yo