http://www.thestar.com/article/614219
Simply put, I have to agree with the writer of the article, and the very many people that they interviewed for said article. We are far too unprepared, but in now way am I claiming that we're not partially to blame. As a whole, our generation is lazy, but attempts to be rebellious. Although, out generation seems to miss the irony of leading a rebellion of conformity. This only plays maybe a third of the reason as to why we are so unprepared. Another large part of it is that we are so divers ed in learning styles because we've been taught all the way from preschool that all of our learning styles are different, so some of us strive to become unique in such a regard, which has indubitably screwed some of us. Luckily for me, I seem to be across the board in my learning styles, so I'm a fairly easy guy to teach, as long as you don't stick to one pure style of teaching.
Getting back to the subject of the entry, I think that our Generation is the lazy, unprepared, and underfunded generation. As a result, people like me will most likely be labeled as such, which I will mostly grow angered by.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
School Vs. the Technology Age
A clash of titans, but who will win? The obvious answer is simply that Technology will overcome schools and they have the choice of changing to keep up, or being inevitably destroyed in the wake of our generation.
Everything that school has to be offered can be done over the Internet. Everything but human interaction, which is probably the only reason that schools will continue to survive if they choose to not catch up soon. The era of technological advancement is at hand, and failing to keep up is failing to stay alive.
Simply put, I don't think that there is a line where there will be too much technology in school. They'll be lucky if they can keep up with the curve.
A lot of the old ways still need to stay in place though. We need paper based literature, we just do. Without it, All generations will be doomed to the simplistic mindset that is our generation, and that is truly a scary thought. The fact that other generations could dooms themselves to a life of ignorance should scare anyone with half a mind. Without understanding the days of the old, we are only doomed to repeat them.
Another thing along the lines of my last point is that most students claim to use spark notes rather than reading books. Yes, I do see that spark notes has the potential to be a useful tool, but the fact that people are abusing such a great tool is infuriating. We read in school not because we are told to, but because we are attempting to grasp a higher meaning of life, or what things were like at one point in time, or even to what they could possibly be. We read to learn, but only after learning to read. That is something that will always, at least I hope will, be done without the aid of technology.
The fact that school board is threatened by spark notes is quite pathetic. They are so very many ways to deal with students who use these, but they find it a viable threat just saddens me.
There seems to be no need for me to go on any longer as much of what I would have to say about other things, well I've said them in previous blogs.
Everything that school has to be offered can be done over the Internet. Everything but human interaction, which is probably the only reason that schools will continue to survive if they choose to not catch up soon. The era of technological advancement is at hand, and failing to keep up is failing to stay alive.
Simply put, I don't think that there is a line where there will be too much technology in school. They'll be lucky if they can keep up with the curve.
A lot of the old ways still need to stay in place though. We need paper based literature, we just do. Without it, All generations will be doomed to the simplistic mindset that is our generation, and that is truly a scary thought. The fact that other generations could dooms themselves to a life of ignorance should scare anyone with half a mind. Without understanding the days of the old, we are only doomed to repeat them.
Another thing along the lines of my last point is that most students claim to use spark notes rather than reading books. Yes, I do see that spark notes has the potential to be a useful tool, but the fact that people are abusing such a great tool is infuriating. We read in school not because we are told to, but because we are attempting to grasp a higher meaning of life, or what things were like at one point in time, or even to what they could possibly be. We read to learn, but only after learning to read. That is something that will always, at least I hope will, be done without the aid of technology.
The fact that school board is threatened by spark notes is quite pathetic. They are so very many ways to deal with students who use these, but they find it a viable threat just saddens me.
There seems to be no need for me to go on any longer as much of what I would have to say about other things, well I've said them in previous blogs.
The Modern Pressure Cooker, Highschool
I would agree by the comment that small highschools in a one school town are most definitely pressure cookers in the sense that everyone is fairly close in the means of who they know and hang out. They're most likely a lot less open to change as a lot of small towns are on the conservative end of things, thus being the reason why they're still small. But let's not get on the subject of left and right wings.
The relationships would be far be the worst part among these small school. My school is a mediocre example as we do have our fair share of drama, but we're big enough to move between groups. I do see a fair amount of drama as I have made the mistake of associating myself with the less than bright people of my school and they're simply too stupid to get over the drama. Granted, the worst of the drama mostly does occur with the "Popular Cliques", the very people I avoid simply because of the mediocrity and hypocrisy, and the many other things that are ailing our generation.
But as a whole, I do agree with the fact that most small town schools are pressure cookers.
The relationships would be far be the worst part among these small school. My school is a mediocre example as we do have our fair share of drama, but we're big enough to move between groups. I do see a fair amount of drama as I have made the mistake of associating myself with the less than bright people of my school and they're simply too stupid to get over the drama. Granted, the worst of the drama mostly does occur with the "Popular Cliques", the very people I avoid simply because of the mediocrity and hypocrisy, and the many other things that are ailing our generation.
But as a whole, I do agree with the fact that most small town schools are pressure cookers.
If I were to be in charge of the School Board.
In truth, I would never be stupid enough to end up being in charge of the current school system. It is too fractioned and distant from itself for it to be worth the hassle of running. It would need a total revamp of everything, in fact, it would need to be totally dismantled, and then rebuilt from the ashes to be run properly. but enough of my socialistic views on the current school board, I will get on to what the topic at hand is supposed to be.
Throwing away the idea of leading this school system, I would rather just have influential suggestions toward it.
Among the many of these suggestions, the most important to be would have to be the extreme lack of non-compulsory English classes. My school personally has a total of two of them, which is quite pathetic. Anyone like me who wants to pursue a career or life in literature, writing, or anything related, has to either switch schools, or face inevitable hardship in University, something that can easily be avoided by offering more classes.
As a whole, we should have a broader variety of courses in every subject area. Although, this does vary with schools, as a whole, our course selection still strains to attain the rank of pathetic. What it would qualify under this rank utterly scares me.
Throwing away the idea of leading this school system, I would rather just have influential suggestions toward it.
Among the many of these suggestions, the most important to be would have to be the extreme lack of non-compulsory English classes. My school personally has a total of two of them, which is quite pathetic. Anyone like me who wants to pursue a career or life in literature, writing, or anything related, has to either switch schools, or face inevitable hardship in University, something that can easily be avoided by offering more classes.
As a whole, we should have a broader variety of courses in every subject area. Although, this does vary with schools, as a whole, our course selection still strains to attain the rank of pathetic. What it would qualify under this rank utterly scares me.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Rule of Right now.
I've never been a big fan of social networking sights myself. I see the uses in them as ways of communicating, killing time, and probably one of the best advertising tool on the internet, second only to Google and other internet giants. But It's starting to bug me how reliant people are on what people think and say over these sights. I honestly think that if someone isn't willing to say something to your face, then they don't deserve the right of being able to say it online. Free speech is truly a beautiful thing, but our generation is too dim to see that it actually has constructive uses, and are too ignorant to see that they only uses for that of destruction.
I joined facebook simply as a way to keep keep in contact with certain people, and did spend the occasional hour browsing it, but I stop at that. But now there's this twitter thing, and from what it's been described as to me, I refuse to use it. It seems as though to be a large blog that wants to be facebook and a million person chat room at the same time. Just the very idea of it annoys me to no end. the fact that people need to put so much of their life on the internet and keep in contact with people that either have absolutely nothing to do with them, or even are too lazy or addicted to sharing every moment of their life with the outside world that they won't actually hang out with these people. When I was informed of twitter and what it was, 9/10's of me wanted to go home and delete myself from all social networking sights just because I realized at that very moment that my entire generation was ignorant to true socialization, and would rather talk to someone over MSN than face to face.
I am not the best example of this as I do spend a lot of time on my computer, but I am almost always working towards something constructive. Hell, half the time I have myself set to appear offline on MSN simply because I'm sick of the internet drama of uselessness of the usual "Hey,Hi,What's up?Nothing,you?Nothing." conversations. Just writing this whole things has brought me to the point of wanting to drop all of this fad and actually go do something constructive.
Just the fact that people are so worried about being forgotten or ignored that they have to post every little thing they do somewhere were millions of people can comment on and talk about just outright pisses me off. My generation, and the ones around it, need to learn to grow the fuck up, and get a life.
I joined facebook simply as a way to keep keep in contact with certain people, and did spend the occasional hour browsing it, but I stop at that. But now there's this twitter thing, and from what it's been described as to me, I refuse to use it. It seems as though to be a large blog that wants to be facebook and a million person chat room at the same time. Just the very idea of it annoys me to no end. the fact that people need to put so much of their life on the internet and keep in contact with people that either have absolutely nothing to do with them, or even are too lazy or addicted to sharing every moment of their life with the outside world that they won't actually hang out with these people. When I was informed of twitter and what it was, 9/10's of me wanted to go home and delete myself from all social networking sights just because I realized at that very moment that my entire generation was ignorant to true socialization, and would rather talk to someone over MSN than face to face.
I am not the best example of this as I do spend a lot of time on my computer, but I am almost always working towards something constructive. Hell, half the time I have myself set to appear offline on MSN simply because I'm sick of the internet drama of uselessness of the usual "Hey,Hi,What's up?Nothing,you?Nothing." conversations. Just writing this whole things has brought me to the point of wanting to drop all of this fad and actually go do something constructive.
Just the fact that people are so worried about being forgotten or ignored that they have to post every little thing they do somewhere were millions of people can comment on and talk about just outright pisses me off. My generation, and the ones around it, need to learn to grow the fuck up, and get a life.
A+ For Everyone
Well, first off, I think it completely discredits the course, and if an employer was ever to get word of a class doing that, it might screw over anyone who has ever taken a course along those lines.
One could argue that it would take away the stress of grades and give students the ability to be more creative in their answers. Personally, I think that taking away the stress of marks will make most lazy, as well as making the course a joke. They wouldn't have to earn anything what so ever.
Giving entire classes A+'s and passes at the beginning of the course really destroys the credit of the school and anyone who has ever gone there. As cool of a concept it might be, it's just going to backfire, guaranteed.
One could argue that it would take away the stress of grades and give students the ability to be more creative in their answers. Personally, I think that taking away the stress of marks will make most lazy, as well as making the course a joke. They wouldn't have to earn anything what so ever.
Giving entire classes A+'s and passes at the beginning of the course really destroys the credit of the school and anyone who has ever gone there. As cool of a concept it might be, it's just going to backfire, guaranteed.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
American Teen
Today we watched a movie in class called American Teen. An indie film done by A&E, being an oximoron in itself, it was still an ammusing movie. You have the typical teen drama of that completely odd chick, the loner geek, the out of place jock, and the rich bitch. Of all of these characters, the rich bitch had to have been in some of the funniest scenes in the movie. She just had such a full of herself attitude and was obsolutely sure that her way was the obsolutely right way. If someone didn't agree with her, they were wrong, simple as that. To have enough power to simply have your way like that is sort of ammusing as well as bewildering that someone so dim could lead a school.
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