Schools must play high-tech catch-up
April 18, 2007
The iPod-in-every-pot plan that state House Democrats appeared to be promoting and then backed away from last week was just plain goofy. The idea of bringing more technology into our schools, however, is not, and it's too bad that the House Democrats have set it back some when they should have been focused on solving the state budget crisis. That's the best thing they can do for kids.
But let's be clear: The students in our schools today will confront a rapidly changing, disruptive, information and technologically driven world that will defy predictability. Will they be ready?
The answer is no, if we continue to think our public schools should resemble what they were when today's adults passed through them in the 20th Century.
A recent report by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization that includes the country's top business, education and technology leaders, captures the essence of the dilemma facing our schools: "Today's education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn." We need to break down the 2-by-4-by-6 paradigm of today's public education system -- two covers of a textbook, four walls of a classroom and a six-hour school day.
As Michigan attempts to catch up with the 21st Century, this state must realize that our children have to compete with the children of the world, not just those from adjacent school districts or states. It is imperative that policy makers and educators address the fact that in a hyper-competitive, entrepreneurial, information age, the old way of providing education must be altered -- and sooner rather than later. Michigan's students must be the recipients of an agile system of education and public policies that effect substantive change.
IPods and other technological opportunities can and should be part of revolutionizing our schools. Information technology changes the relationship between people and knowledge and is reshaping in profound ways when and how we learn. Does the rapid evolution into a knowledge-based global society driven by information technologies sound like your neighborhood public school? If not, how can we expect our children and our state to be prepared to compete in the future?
In a rapidly changing world, staying even is falling behind.
Michigan cannot lead without casting off the anchors of attitude, archaic laws and public policies and beliefs that bind us to the 20th Century, status-quo education model. The House Democrats had the right idea, but rather than advancing the cause, their bumbling may have tied another anchor to the much needed education revolution.
TOM WATKINS, president and CEO of TDW and Associates, a business and education consulting company, was Michigan's state superintendent of schools from 2001-05. Contact him at tdwatkins@aol.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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