Brit Kids Learn to Twitter in School
I racked my brain for a way to write about this in one hundred forty characters or less. Sorry, can’t do it.
But in deference to the subject matter, I’ll be brief.
Twitter and Wikipedia have been added to the curriculum at schools in Britain.
Oh, you want more? OK, then. The proposal is to have kids leave primary school with a familiarity with blogging, Twitter, Wikipedia and podcasts. They’ll have to have fluency in using a keyboard and spell check . . . in addition to handwriting and actually learning to spell.
But it’s not all about technology. The proposal also calls for less usage of calculators and more of a focus on life skills, including learning to handle peer pressure and develop relationships.
The teachers union has jumped all over the proposed changes, accusing the government of going with trends instead of evidence-based studies of how kids learn and what they need. “Computer skills and keyboard skills seem to be as important as
handwriting in this. Traditional books and written texts are downplayed
in response to web-based learning,” said John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers.
As a writer who does a lot of her work on the Internet, I can’t say I disagree with the plans. I love traditional books, I sit down with my daughter and read them every night. But I get my own news on the Web, and I expect she will too soon enough. I can’t see a future where she won’t need keyboard skills or the ability to navigate the net.
If this were your child’s school, would you be protesting the changes or cheering them?
Image: Twitter
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I am pretty old-school and I don’t let my kids use calculaters. Actually, I have had this talk with the math teachers. I would be the first mom in the administration office to question this idea. Our kids can’t spell or resite basic multiplication tables. It is a shame.
If you’re 20-40yo, your children need keyboarding skills. But your grandchildren will grow up talking to their computers. Yea, like Star Trek. They’ll look at a keyboard like you look at an LP. Their computers will auto-correct and reformat their uncoordinated ramblings into whatever form is acceptable at the time. 50% of education will be making the computer do what you want.
The dumbing-down of our children has already begun. There is no stopping it. Resistance if futile.
The problem is that there is a limited number of instructional hours in a year. For every curriculum goal that is added, one must be diminished or removed altogether. You left out the things that would be removed. Here’s a partial list: the Tudor period (you know, the whole Protestant revolution, Elizabeth, the founding of the British Empire), the Roman Empire, WWII.
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
I agree with the schools to a certain extent. It is and will be a required skill to work with computers and the internet but I really don’t think teaching kids to use specific services like Twitter is really going to help them much. They really need to master the basics of writing and spelling before they venture on to automated processes. It’s downright scary to see some of the kids who are able to graduate high school and really can’t put together a decent paragraph. Thanks for the chance to vent. I’m done now.