The Failures of Technology and Communication in our Schools

My children have taken part in “tolerance” classes at school; every youth must participate. It is about tolerating differences and looking out for others, standing up against bullying. A website was created at the school, where students can upload art, video and blog entries that bring greater awareness to the issues surrounding bullying, in order to build lines of communication and strengthen the community, so that there will be less bullying. Several schools are supposed to be participating in this website project, and it is hoped that students and the greater community will interact with the postings.

This is supposed to be a win-win. It all sounds so good. Technology in the schools! Kids get to use all sorts of electronic devices and be 21^st Century Journalists of school culture! Students can use unlimited creativity to promote a positive cultural atmosphere at school!

When my son was taking the class last year, it was a simple matter of uploading his information via the computer in the classroom, the host computer for the site. He was also able to upload blog entries from home. There was no login page, but if he typed a forward slash, followed by “login” after the site URL, a login page would appear.

This year, even though he was no longer in the class, my son wanted to continue his participation in the project. I was pleased that he wanted to engage in something beyond a classroom requirement. He loves to write and has a lot of good ideas. He wants to be a good mentor to younger students.

For some reason, however, he was no longer able to access the login page. Every attempt resulted in a “Forbidden” message. My son approached the teacher of the class on numerous occasions to report his inability to login and upload blog entries, he was seeking help.

The teacher, on a few of these occasions said that the website was working just fine; students in his current class were having no problem putting work up on the site.

My son would return home and attempt to access the login page again, only to receive the “Forbidden” message again.

One time, the teacher’s aide suggested that there was a problem having to do with cookies and history. Maybe if we cleared those, my son would be able to login. Clearing cookies and history did nothing to help the situation. My son emailed the teacher through the school access system, detailing the error message and a continuing inability to access a login page. He met with the teacher the next day; told my son that we must be having problems with our computer.

Discouraged, my son came home and spoke to us about it. He had tried to deal with this himself, to no avail. He had been trying to upload blog entries all year, only to be told that it was a problem with our computer.

I told my son,  all of our equipment is working just fine. If there were anything wrong, you would not have been able to email the teacher.

I opened my laptop, opened my web browser, accessed the website and could see the problem right away: there is no login field on the home page. I typed “login” in the search field, and hit the enter/return key. Search results: Sorry, nothing found.

I sent my son to the library and to a neighbor’s house. Would their display of the home page for this site display a login field? No. Surprise, surprise, NOT!

I then looked more closely at the website. A more thorough investigation revealed that there were very few entries for this year, all entered on the same date in April, and again last February.

What is going on? My guess is that the kids in the class must post at least once, to fulfill a class requirement. They make that posting from inside the classroom. Once the requirement had been fulfilled, that was it; the kids didn’t bother with the website again.

Here was my son, who wanted to be involved in an ongoing project, being stonewalled by the teacher and his aide. This must mean: (1) neither the teacher nor the aide built the website, and don’t know enough to “fix” the problem or offer a solution; (2) the teacher doesn’t care if the website is relevant to the school or wider community; (3) the teacher and the school are unaware that the website is inaccessible from outside the confines of the school; (4) if aware, they don’t want to put any effort into doing anything about it.

For whatever reason, the final result is a sham.

And this, my friends, is the problem I see with the forced entry of technology in the classroom. We tax-paying parents are told that if our children are going to be ready for the latest jobs, they cannot learn in the traditional way—those ways are outmoded. We need fancy new equipment and the kids need to interact with technology to do their schoolwork. The results will be better, test scores will go up, graduation rates will be higher, and our kids will be better prepared for the workplace of tomorrow! The politicians and tech titans have their photo ops, and the vendors make a pile of cash. 

This is, to a great degree, both a sham and a shame. It is all about forcing school districts to make monstrous expenditures on equipment that will be outmoded from one year to the next, forcing some teachers into the role of webmasters who are really incapable of handling such a role, forcing most teachers to spend hours above their paper grading to duplicate grading information in awkwardly developed computer systems. There are no time savers, here; expensive systems push overworked teachers into electronic servitude at a great cost to the local communities. And guess what? The results of all this outpouring of money for tech is showing little in the way of measurable upward trends, at least, according to the many articles appearing in the newspapers on this subject.

2 x 2 = 4, whether the sum is written with pencil on a piece of paper or typed up in a computer document. Solving the problem is faster using a pencil and paper, using far less energy, making a smaller carbon footprint, than turning on a computer. Word processing is a fabulous innovation, but writing by hand also stretches the brain in ways that are now being reported.

The teacher of this class, an otherwise affable person, spent the entire year stonewalling my son, telling him he must be doing something wrong, rather than admit he doesn’t know how to solve the problem.  Or, worse yet, he doesn’t care to help my son be involved in building something on-going and relevant. Whatever the situation or intention, the teacher has actively misled my son.

I sat my boy down and told him what I suspected, and asked him to stop trying to make entries on the site. It is almost the end of the school year, now; don’t waste any more of your time on this. I am sorry the teacher couldn’t have been more forthright with you.

He said, I know. I’m disappointed; I really did want to continue to be involved in the project. I think I’ll start my own blog over the summer.

Good for you, I said (thinking to myself, whew! We didn't lose his interest in making a difference for someone else!)

I sent the following message to the teacher, by way of the awkward, expensive, over-burdensome system the school district purchased:

Dear Mr. H-----,



My son enjoyed making blog entries on the W------- Project site last year, while attending your class. He has tried at various times to post things from home this year (which he had done last year), but has been unable to do so because THERE IS NO LOGIN FEATURE on the web page. Adding "/login" to the URL does not bring up a login page, but instead displays a "Forbidden" message. I know he has asked for assistance, and I know he has been told that the problem is with our equipment or our connection. 


I can tell you this is NOT a problem having to do with any of our 5 different computing devices or our internet connection or cookies or history or anything of the kind. We went to the public library and had no luck on the library computers. We went across the street to a neighbor's house and found that they could not access a login page from their computer. There is NO LOGIN FEATURE or PAGE. Perhaps my son did not explain that clearly enough. I hope it is clear to you, now that I have explained it, what the problem is.

If people are required to login to the website to post, then there must be a LOGIN PAGE or LOGIN FIELD. I put "LOGIN" into the site's search field, and nothing came up.

From the home page, I was going to "contact us" using the provided email address, but when I clicked on the link, I received a message that this address could be a phisher, so I decided to contact you through the school access system instead. 



I would be really surprised if postings of any kind can be made to this website anywhere other than the host machine at L----- Middle School. However, if this is possible, my son would really like to know, so that he can add some blog entries. For example, is there a way to post from WordPress? If so, how would my child do that? 

Meanwhile, I think the webmaster for this site needs to work on it, unless it is only meant to be FORBIDDEN. It is certainly forbidding, at the moment.

I am sure the intent is for the site to be accessible and relevant to a wider audience.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

School ends next week, and my kids are moving on to High School next August.

Meanwhile, we hear about Mr. Facebook’s fabulous gift to local schools. I am sure that means the money will be shuffled momentarily into school district office, only to be spent immediately on the latest computers for the classroom. Great for the vendors' bottom lines. Headlines read: Tech Giant Invests In Kids. Smiling faces peer from photographs.

Is it really all about consumerism? It makes me wonder…

Add Light and Stir

Hear ye, hear ye! Mercantile and personal greed meet in the newest American reality-show, “Black Thanksgiving; the pre-pre-pre-Holiday Sale Event of the Year!”

This can only be further proof of the madness of crowds, but it also confirms something I have thought for many years: I live in a sick and dying culture.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned people camping outside department stores on a holiday, in order to fight their way in to fight over bargain-priced mass-produced (in China) consumer junk. But, this is the twenty-first century, and here we are, with tent cities emerging in shopping malls, days before the National Thanksgiving Holiday.

Skewed priorities? Understatement. There is no more pitiful commentary on the American public than that it has been bred and trained to shop and spend. The appropriate Pavlovian response to “bargain pricing” is buy more.

The camping shoppers are a horrible contrast to the tragedy of homelessness. The shopping centers will be providing port-a-potties and security for encamped shoppers. Homeless will be rousted from their encampments and charged with loitering, unless they can find a shelter that has room for them.

Thanksgiving is an American Holiday; oddly enough, it is about giving thanks. (One would think that self-evident.) One can set aside the history of the occasion, but not the intention. This holiday is not about overeating, watching football games, and sitting around, but if it is not about those things, then it is certainly not about shopping.

Truly, we should be giving thanks each and every day for the many blessings that we are lucky to enjoy. So many people live the delusion of self-sufficiency and the caricature of “self-made” that it is hard to consider that we actually have no hand in most of the blessings we receive. Yes, yes, yes, we work and we earn, but we are constantly rewarded—even when we do not deserve to be—with beauty we have not created, plenty we have not earned and kindnesses we take for granted.

The Holiday of Thanksgiving should be about thanks, yes, of course. But more it is about giving. The thanks resides appropriately in giving, or in giving back. Said another way, to paraphrase Patrick Dennis’ larger-than-life “Auntie Mame”, life is a (pot luck) banquet, where everyone brings something to the party, each according to their ability or talent. It’s not about me, it’s not about you; it is about all of us, together, giving a little here, doing a little there, to keep the whole train on the tracks and running smoothly down the line.

The blackness of Black Friday (now turned into Black Thanksgiving and even Black Wednesday, in many places) is all about balancing the end-of-year financial books of capitalism. This blackness is indeed blacker than black; it belies the truth that life is not money. Life and living require the giving (with thanks) and receiving (with thanks) of integral use and the attendant reciprocity of generous renewal. The greater American public is really good about using, not so accomplished when it comes to generosity or renewing, much less with properly cleaning up after itself.

We need to do something about this blackness. We need to add light, generously and to taste; we need to add light and stir.

How do you bring light? You bring light by giving, generously, audaciously, unexpectedly, continuously. Smiles, hugs, food, gifts, right-of-way, all of these gifts and more  are waiting to be given and graciously received by someone. Our better natures need a good diet, light and exercise!

Are you the light of the world? Prove it. We need your light now, more than ever. Light the lamp of your soul and pour it out generously. Show us all how to dispel the blackness of our soulless society.

Hear the words of the old Rolling Stones song:

May the good lord shine a light on you,

Make every song you sing your favorite tune;

May the good lord shine a light on you,

Warm like the evening sun.

May your Thanksgiving holiday be filled with thanks and with giving and with the beautiful light you bring to share at the banquet of life.

May the good lord shine a light on you, so you can shine your light on the world!

As a descendant of those families that brought you the Thanksgiving holiday, in advance, I give you thanks for all that light you are about to recklessly strew about.

---

Shine A Light lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, ABKCO Music Inc.

Black Friday: In the Vale of Retail

The term “Black Friday” is only endearing to big business. This is the day that launches the annual ritualized cultural insanity of consumerism that lasts until the New Year, and keeps most companies afloat, if not overflowing.

Historically, the term “Black Friday” started out as a description for the stock market meltdown of 1864, but was, in 1966, used by law enforcement in Philadelphia, PA to describe the traffic management problem that was on their hands—holiday shopping mob control.

Later on, accountants were able to see the silver—or gold—lining in the ugly term. Ka-ching, ka-ching!

We all know what it means, but do we really understand what it does to us?

Crowds will jam the malls between now and Christmas, like ants on a hill. When I worked in retail, we called these people mall maulers. They were pushy, nasty and rude. Driving anywhere becomes a drudgery, most especially if you are not headed to shop. Drivers are pushy, nasty, rude and full of rage.

People will be rushing to buy the very latest gizmos, not to mention clothes and brick-a-brack, for themselves, as much as for others.

Psychologically, many of us talk ourselves into it because it is supposed to be all about an event; our obligatory gift giving is supposed to commemorate the alleged gifts that wise men apocryphally gave to a baby, after whom a religion was named, thousands of years ago. We imagine ourselves kings and queens (perhaps not wise persons) when we flex our buying power, don’t we? But is this spiritual? I think that if it is spiritual, it is most clearly defined as spiritually material.

Another aspect to this is that we must have it NOW (or “off with their heads!)”

Some people talk themselves into this madness by pretending that they can purchase everything they want for prices that are lower than they would be at any other time of the year.

However the incantation goes that allows people to join the grasping throngs, this is all really nothing more than rampant consumerism, and it is inexcusable. Everything purchased is overpriced, over-packaged and overblown—which is to say that it will all blow over, and the gizmos du jour will be yesterday’s news very shortly, and stacked in your garage or the nearest landfill not too long after that.

What is this collective insanity worth? Of what value is it? How can this be an expression of gratitude or faith—or love—when it lines the pockets of some and renders others destitute, as well as damages the earth?

I want you to think on these things, as you follow in the footsteps of millions of other drones on this Black Friday death march through the vale of retail.

Silly Bandz: cute fad or environmental hazard?

Kids have been coming home with Silly Bandz now for weeks, trading them on the playground, giving them as party favors. These are brightly colored little rubber band-like items made of silicone, formed in different shapes, worn as bracelets. Inexpensive, and popular they are, yes. For now.

However, once Silly Bandz cease to be popular, they will end their life cycle as garbage. I have already seen broken ones littering the playground and street gutters near schools. Silicone is proven to be a bad thing for people, pets and other animals, birds and fish.

I point this out because our communities pride themselves in teaching "Green Thinking" and "Life Skills" to our children. I know that there are schools and even school districts that have been banning these seemingly innocent toys, mainly because they prove to be a distraction in class, even leading to problems on the playground. But parents should be thinking beyond the distraction factor, thinking in greater depth about the ramifications of ubiquitous, faddy, non-biodegradable products that are marketed to our children.

The fact is, Silly Bandz will eventually become part of the landfill and end up in our waterways, killing particularly birds and fish (they look like brightly colored worms, don't they?), but also posing a danger to other creatures. By the time that fad dies, and a new one is born, the creators of Silly Bandz (and like products) will have raked in millions of our dollars, but will not be accountable when the product becomes part of the mix of environmental problems facing the planet.

The fact that these items are cheap, numerous and readily available means that we are inadvertently teaching our kids (1) to be consumers and (2) to thoughtlessly assign value to items that have a dubious use and value, yet a life cycle that poses a future environmental threat.

Perhaps this seems a silly topic to be writing about, but we must now, at all times, be thinking seriously about the life cycle of the items we mass produce, whether they are cute toys or packaging, processed food, or whatever the items are. When we see the all too real stories about toxic sludge byproducts of aluminum manufacturing inundating Hungarian villages and flowing into the Danube river, we need to wake up to the fact that there needs to be more thought, regulation and oversight in the manufacture of just about everything.

I won't suggest that Silly Bandz need to be banned, because I know that parents will balk at the suggestion, and that I will accused of raining on everyone's parade of fun with junk.  However, I believe that this, and many other products, offer thoughtful and caring parents opportunities to teach children about consumerism of products that we know to be ultimately unhealthy for our planet.

To date, I have not spent a dime on Silly Bandz, and I have spoken of my misgivings to other parents on a selective basis. I have spoken to my children about why I think they are bad. They have a few of them, but they are informed now (by what I told them and by what they experienced recently, while volunteering on Coastal Cleanup Day), and they don't seem to be interested in collecting them.

This is a good sign.