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Microsoft's High School Opens in PA
Joopndufus writes to mention a CNN article about a Microsoft-planned high school, newly opened in the Philadelphia area. Funded entirely by that city's school system, Microsoft offered its management skills and personnel to design every aspect of the high-tech setting. From the article: "After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed 'School of the Future' opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building -- students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive 'smart boards' -- but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques."
Oh, damn, I just got off the phone with 1996. They want their wit back.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Or, more importantly and much more frequently, by boring them to tears for 7 hours a day.
Yup. And one of the primary causes of boredom in my case was that 90% of every school year was spent on review. Every Social Studies class started about the time of Columbus and stopped around WWII. I remember showing my 7th grade math teacher my 2nd grade sister's homework, and we were going over the same damn equality concepts. If we would spend 10% on review and 90% on new stuff, kids would be far more engaged and far better educated. Instead of covering the Revolutionary and Civil Wars for the Nth time, have a class on Asian history or current events. And kids would be far more interested in history if we taught it as it actually happened, as opposed to a whitewashed uber-patriotic version of how Pat Buchanan would look at history.
Bored as above, I was quietly reading a textbook on another subject when my teacher came up behind and smacked me in the back of my head.
I was never smacked, but I was constantly getting in detention for reading ahead when I was supposed to take my turn reading with the class. Bizzos.