"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called
research would it" A. Einstein
"I do not seek, I find" Picasso
"Like shooting arrows than painting a target where they
land" Homer Burton
"Blissfully Ignorant to How
Accomplished Today's Kids Really Are
I've been to a couple of
workshops recently, and had the chance to synthesize some
of my thoughts during a taping of our local technology TV
show yesterday morning.
In our conversation about parenting in the internet age,
Lee Keller and I started by discussing all the *great*
things kids are doing with computers and technology. The
show will eventually get to the point that parents have to
be involved in their children's online world, including
establishing limits and being aware of the--shall we
say--less-healthy world of the internet where cyberbullying
and inappropriate content and even predators are a concern.
But we wanted to start on a positive note to get the
message across that the great majority of what our kids are
doing is truly awesome. In a talk I attended on Saturday,
Stephen Abram made a number of these points, including the
assertion that IQ scores have risen among North American
kids by 20 points over the last ten years and that during
that time young people invented their own language with IM
speak and text messaging.
Now think about that for a moment.
Invented
their
own
language.
Gosh, we ought to be proud, right?
And think about the explosion of creativity that has
occurred at the same time as personal publishing of your
own work intersected with a new social dynamic that allowed
teenagers and young adults to gather and discuss the
videos, poems, songs, essays, and personal expressions of
who they are in a virtual world that reached around the
globe.
Whoa. Who saw that coming 20 years ago? For that matter,
who sees the value in what our kids are doing today? In a
landscape littered with standardized testing and much
hand-wringing about whether our students will be prepared
for the "jobs of the future", and where we rank compared to
other nations, we've completely missed the fact that kids
in North America are leading the way in this new explosion
of personal creative expression.
So, cheer up all of your school administrators and policy
makers and principals and classroom teachers. There's a
revolution happening right under your nose, and it's likely
that you, like most adults, are completely missing the
point of what's happening. Because while you're developing
the next big program or watching that 'viral' video
bemoaning the ways our kids are slipping, they're already
way ahead of you, blazing their own trails and moving on
without you.
Good thing they're doing it without us.
Because when you live in a world of bean-counters who want
to draw a direct line between educational inputs (teaching)
and educational outcomes (test scores) the value of
creativity, expression, and communication gets no place in
the matrix of what's good and bad in education.
Good thing the kids know better." Blog from
'Brainfreeze"