Addendum to the $500 Rattle

I have no idea what schools are going to look like when my daughters in the thick of them. They could be 80 students per room with a standardized curriculum that is facilitated by an underpaid unlicenced teacher or it could be a charter or magnet school I would have to closely review. We might keep them at home if we can afford it or get vouchers and if our kids are athletes and we can pull off the morning commute we would go out of district to be on the winning team.

Point is, I worry sometimes because when I grew up the path was much clearer and I always knew what to expect and now we don’t.

I read an article (listed below) about a school in Minneapolis that is giving out iPads to students. Thinking about my recent post I was happy for a moment until I saw one quote from a 12 year old that said “writing with pen and paper is lame”. I thought in terms of my profession: “What about writing on a whiteboard?” Does this make me a dinosaur that chisels into stone?

As much a fan as I am of technology I still claim for the benefit of my kids to be a fan of pen to paper. Yet as demonstrated by a large amount of applications I recently had to fill out for work I discovered that I can’t do it well anymore. From my microscopic script in the day planner to graffiti in the early Palm Pilot days, to oversized writing in dry erase, I can see that my writing and spelling have been affected. But then I also fear that the one choice we could end up giving to our children could be the inefficient QWERTY keyboard that was designed to slow people down.

I am reminded of the times when my father sat me down in front of a heavy black messy ribbon mechanical typewriter and called out letters to teach me how to spell my name, address and phone number. It was fun to punch those keys, but I did also learn how to write these things as well.

We still like reading books, my kids know about them. I hope it stays this way and I hope we continue to teach manual expression, that wonderful tactile intimacy that we have with our words but I suppose there are iPad apps for doing that too. I don’t want them “thumbing” 160 character stories into an assisted key algorithm and losing all site of complex interaction or nuanced communication. Yet I write this thought with a grammar and spell checker in place.

I wonder that if in those places where they have no choice but to learn to express themselves with pen and paper could they have a real advantage? There is still nothing like a hand written love letter, holiday card or a thank you note. PDF forms just don’t cut it either.

Here is the referenced article:

http://www.twincities.com/ci_17904745?nclick_check=1