Beyond Textbooks. Straight into the Void

Today's New York times has an interesting article about the way in which some school districts are attempting to save money and represent the wave of the future by going
beyond textbooks; encouraging teachers to cobble together learning experiences from the Web, or to invest their own time in creating open-source Powerpoints that would be available for anyone's use.

"Today's students are just wired differently," one of the experts in the article is quoted as saying. No, they are not WIRED differently; they just can't read, and so many of them will gravitate toward any interface that presents them with as little reading as possible. Instead of acknowledging that reading--and being able to read synthetically and critically--is a skill crucial to the next generation of citizens, superintendents who want to go "beyond textbooks" hope to replace classroom learning with its emphasis on coming prepared to discuss and work and even sometimes collaborate--with something more like a single-person-shooter video game.

I'm the farthest thing from a Luddite, but I find this ridiculous. The author of the article identified the digital divide as one of the major drawbacks of computer-based education, but even as someone who teaches web-based courses, I can tell you that at the elementary and probably the secondary level, it's an unsound idea.

Yes, the workplaces of the future will demand that students be innovative and computer-literate, but the best and most impressive computer of all is still the human brain, and to say "knowledge is out there, I don't need to know anything, I can just Google" is to let ours degrade.

If you find "textbooks" boring and dry, have students read and discuss articles, monographs, memoirs, diaries, letters, songs, poems, great works of literature, but allow them to develop the ability to really read. Integrate math and physics lessons by having students design and build things in the classroom. Have a "life lab" where students can combine what they learn in their science lessons with practical experience. The computer is good as an occasional supplement when a student has outstripped a school's offerings but it is no substitute for a multifaceted education.

Trip Postmortem

We arrived back in Las Cruces yesterday afternoon, having indeed broken our trip in Odessa, TX. While we were there on August 1, we saw the Midland petroleum museum--interesting mostly as a manifestation of what museums look like when they are funded by/tailored toward a particular point of view. They have a great collection of vintage pump jacks over there, but the interpretation of the discovery of oil/development of the oil industry, funded by Halliburton, was extremely celebratory.

We had dinner at the second-nicest restaurant in Odessa, which I can recommend. It's an Italian restaurant called Zucchis; in a strip mall but once you go in the decor is lovely, and the food was excellent (although why it was so expensive--over $20 for an entree--is a bit puzzling). We then saw Harry Potter and the Boring Half-Blood Prince and I kept falling asleep. It's very cynical of the Harry Potter franchise-holders to put out a movie that was THAT bad, knowing that people will still come to see it for plot purposes.

On Sunday, we set off bright and early through the rest of West Texas, reached El Paso at lunchtime due to the 80 MPH speed limit (unbelievable!) and found a great Chinese restaurant, Sam's Chinese. Go there, especially if you live in LC where the Chinese food is inedible. Fresh ingredients, tasty sauces, the hot and sour soup was wonderful, and it was inexpensive into the bargain. And then, finally, home.

My assessment of this experience is as follows:

1. Driving across country is worth doing once, especially at this somewhat relaxed pace and if you have more than one driver in the car.

2. Charlotte, NC is a beautiful city.

3. There are a lot of great things about Tennessee. The eastern mountains were amazing. I've already been to Nashville and thought it was pretty good from a historical perspective even though we didn't see it this time. I also really liked Memphis a lot. TN would have been a place that I could have lived other than NM.

4. I still really dislike Texas (sorry, Texas!)

5. Roadfood.com is definitely the place to look for restaurants, but always PHONE first before you head to a place. We were disappointed a couple of times to see that places had gone out of business.

6. A dash-mounted GPS is a must-have for cross-country travel, but you also still need maps and books, preferably from AAA. Also, it's a good idea to check places out on tripadvisor.com or some other similar website ahead of time.

7. There's no reason to make a hotel reservation ahead of time unless you are traveling on a holiday. We only made one reservation, and that was for Forth Worth, and I was able to get a reservation on hotels.com for half off.

8. Another GREAT thing to have is a satellite radio. We used ours every day, for news and talk shows as well as music.

I don't regret our choice to drive at all. Now I just have to clean out the passenger compartment of the car!