We in the US are doing a terrible job of educating our children...
If that is truly the case, why are American colleges jam-packed with students from other countries trying to get an education here, rather than the other way around?
Sure, this possibility should exist to for those that are so inclined, but face it, most students will not ever have the need/desire to actually code. Should they have to?
On the other hand, e-mail is quickly becoming a primary method of communication for many people. Word processing is essential to most any business. These are the applications our student need to learn.
I mostly agree with you but... Sure, they're pretty awful at teaching critical thinking...
Not necessarily. They can be pretty awful at teaching critical thinking. However, if you can point out web pages (for example) with conflicting opinions, and assign the students the task of evaluating these to form their own opinions, that would be very useful.
You can't tell me that these students aren't going to have to know how to use computers later in life. The trick is to make them so that they truly are educational.
It doesn't matter how pretty your PowerPoint presentation is if there's no content behind it. The school district I work for tends to subscribe to the philosophy of Dr. Willard Daggett. Take a look at his web site if you want to know where we should be headed in technology education.
but when my wife's school (in a good area, BTW) runs short on funds for buying pencils, for god sakes, you have to wonder why they are spending multiple thousands per classroom for something that most teachers don't know how to use.
Ever heard of e-rate (amongst the other thousands of grants available)? Pencils don't qualify.
I've never gotten the nerve to do this (not that I would admit it if I had!), but every time I get a Spam message (especially one of those Make Money Fast ones with lotsa P.O. Boxes), I want to fill out all those business reply cards checking the 'Start my subscription now and bill me for the next 10 years' option. After all, you know they have valid snail-mail addresses.
Here is some more food for thought: if this is such a wonderful and classic book that warned us 30 years ago about the perils of censorship, then why is it that every year that goes by our reality gets closer and closer to Bradbury's fiction?
Perhaps a better question would be "How much sooner would the censorship we are now witnessing have taken place were it not for such books as this on (and 1984)?"
I don't believe a "great book" has to have "great content" and "great style" - it does, however, have to engage your brain, which Fahrenheit 451 clearly does.
I'm the Director of Technology for a small school district (basically a netadmin with budget authority). I am NOT a certified teacher -- unfortunately, I seem to be a rare exception in this regard, not only from what I've seen here but from meeting with my peers at other school districts. I would like to clarify a few issues here.
Those that can, do; those that can't teach. There may be an element of truth to this in some cases, but I find that most people become teachers do so because they have a passion for teaching, not because they are unable to make it in "The Real World(TM)" Most teachers are very willing to expand their knowledge base if something is brought to their attention in an appropriate setting. In this case, an appropriate setting may be after class -- you MUST come in with an attitude of willingness to help, and not as a know-it-all. On the same vein, somebody here mentioned that teachers will do anything not to be looked upon as less than gods in their classrooms, or something to that effect. My experience has been that teachers are perfectly willing to say "I don't know" and get back to you with an answer later. However, attitude here is key: Appropriate question: You haven't heard of GPL? Let me show you some articles. Inappropriate question: You haven't heard of GPL? What are you, stupid? Where have you had your head the last three years?
Do NOT show up at a school board meeting to try to push your agenda unannounced. Blindsiding people will NOT win them over to your side. You would be surprised at how much you really can lock down a Win9x box (I'm sorry, but floppy and CD-ROM drives are no longer available. Yes, that fireproof safe with the cables coming out of it for the monitor, keyboard and mouse is really a computer.)
Many people here seem to have forgotten the first rule of selecting an OS (actually, this was always the rule for hardware, but I think OS fits nicely as well): select your application first. I would love to have linux in our labs, but the educational software just isn't there yet (although this thread has inspired me to further investigate how some of these apps operate under WINE). In one lab in particular, we have some physics equipment that connects to a SCSI interface - I highly doubt the software will run well in an emulated environment. Dual-booting is fine if you have a computer club that wants to play with stuff, but you can waste a lot of class time having to reboot because the software you need to use is only on Windows, and the last guy was running Linux.
In our case, we have a well-functioning NDS tree. When Novell rolls out NDS for Linux (possibly this month?) I'm going to re-evaluate how feasible this may be, but for now maintaining separate users/passwords is too much hassle. Somebody did mention that Novell (among others) has good educational programs: we just bought another year of maintenance (based on FTE count) of NetWare, GroupWise, ManageWise, ZenWorks, BorderManager (Yikes!) and Web Lessons(?) for less than the retail price of NetWare alone on a single server (and we have five servers). And face it, for administration (particularly across WAN links) NDS rocks!
Many people have mentioned that schools are often strapped for cash. More often than not, schools are strapped for space as well. I have a bunch of indentically configured P90's coming out of some labs this summer. I would love to install Linux on all of these, and set up an Internet-only lab - but I can't because we have no space to put another computer lab.
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If that is truly the case, why are American colleges jam-packed with students from other countries trying to get an education here, rather than the other way around?
Sure, this possibility should exist to for those that are so inclined, but face it, most students will not ever have the need/desire to actually code. Should they have to?
On the other hand, e-mail is quickly becoming a primary method of communication for many people. Word processing is essential to most any business. These are the applications our student need to learn.
Sure, they're pretty awful at teaching critical thinking...
Not necessarily. They can be pretty awful at teaching critical thinking. However, if you can point out web pages (for example) with conflicting opinions, and assign the students the task of evaluating these to form their own opinions, that would be very useful.
You can't tell me that these students aren't going to have to know how to use computers later in life. The trick is to make them so that they truly are educational.
It doesn't matter how pretty your PowerPoint presentation is if there's no content behind it. The school district I work for tends to subscribe to the philosophy of Dr. Willard Daggett. Take a look at his web site if you want to know where we should be headed in technology education.
Ever heard of e-rate (amongst the other thousands of grants available)? Pencils don't qualify.
I didn't think they were ever restricted from doing so, but just chose not to lest what goes around comes around.
Any other ideas on fighting back?
Perhaps a better question would be "How much sooner would the censorship we are now witnessing have taken place were it not for such books as this on (and 1984)?"
I don't believe a "great book" has to have "great content" and "great style" - it does, however, have to engage your brain, which Fahrenheit 451 clearly does.
Well of course! How else are you going to provide the energy this thing will take?