There are times in the headlong rush to pronounce that the world flat and our kids are round, that I have a disquieting feeling in the pit of my stomach. We pick up the pace as teachers to engage in all the new tools because the kids are there, and we are behind, and we are sending them into a world of global competition, and if they are not willing to view the world as a 24 hour market place where some kid on the other side of the planet can beat them out of their profit margin if they don’t move at the hyper warp speed, they won't be ready.
In the vanguard of Education 2.0 are the cries to embrace whole cloth anything that connects, to get our kids there, drop the filters, just teach them responsible practice, advanced practitioners vs. the IT department, rage against the machine, bring down the walls, the world is flat for heaven’s sake!
It gives me great pause. And every once in a while that pause, that disquiet in the pit of my stomach gets a little validation from the people I read and respect. I sense that somewhere lurking back here is a bit of reservation. Can it be that they like me think that we have to introduce our kids to this brave new world, but with a great deal of wonder at where it is all taking us?
Let me explain further by way of a story. I went to my dentist. In catching up with news he and I and the assistant began talking about my job, and kids and Internet safety. He allowed that the was very strict with his kids. To control their access to the computer and the Internet he had some type of lock box device where you literally had to have a parent with a key to allow the kids to use the computer.
Now I know him, and his kids. He and his wife (his partner in the practice) are the absolute salt of the earth. They are the parents you always see volunteering at the school, in the booth, at the concession stand. They have a dental practice in a old mill town. They, for the longest time, held their rates and bent to the insurance company whims to keep with the guidelines so folks with dental insurance would not have to pay out of pocket.
When I coached their kid in Little League they went out of their way to thank me at the end of the season, and a couple of days later there was a card in the mail with two tickets to the local minor league team’s game. I knew them as parents long before I ever knew that they were local dentists.
Their kid was “pulled up” to play major league at age 8 because we were short and my head coach saw her play and wanted to “grab her” so she would be on his team for the next three years (without having to go through the league draft). She was a great kid, tough as nails, but in over her head against 12 year olds. She had such passion. I can still see her in the catcher gear, three sizes too big going behind the plate because nobody else would do it. And I remember when she came back to the bench in tears, because she was so mad at herself that she struck out. I tried my best to tell her what a great player she was that all she had to do was grow up into it. It was with little effect. She did not like striking out, and it upset her that she was not better. She was not being a baby, she was mad, that she could not perform at the level required to succeed.
This child gets little or no Internet access because her father wants it that way. And you know what, I think that’s OK. In fact I think that is great. Far from being fearful that this child will get beat out in the flat world, I am fearful that she will go out and become part of it. I don’t want her out here flitting from one job to the next, and pulling out her Blackberry and iPhone to stay connected to the stock market in Uzbekistan. I want her and her passion and her drive to stay right here in my community. I want her and other kids like her to be just like her Mom and Dad serving the community, filling places on local boards and commissions, or the church council, or running the hospital charity softball tournament. When I am 80, I want to be looking up at her at the other end of the mask and drill, owning her parents practice, replacing the fillings her mother put in and admiring her father’s work in making my crowns 30 years past.
I wonder that if we chase the flat world, we will never be deep with roots that anchor us and our families to the RL community (rather than a virtual community like SL)?
I am reminded of a story I heard about the life of Henry David Thoreau. In his time in New England, to be considered to be a “polished” young gentleman, you had to have traveled to Europe for study and culture. If you didn’t you were looked down upon. When at a party, the poor Thoreau was asked if he had yet “done the continent”, Thoreau supposedly replied, “No, but I have traveled widely in Concord.”
And then I am reminded of an old Stan Rogers song about the demise of Canadian Maritime fishermen and the Atlantic fishing industry –
“So, what’s now this romantic boy,
Who laments what’s done and gone!
There was no romance on cold winter ocean,
And the gales sang an awful song,
But my father’s ship knew of wind and tide
And my blood is Maritime,
I heard an old song on Fisherman’s Wharf,
Can I sing it just one time?
Can I sing it just one time?”
Cross posted in Life in the Fast Lane
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