A recent newspaper article talked about how special educational needs are being excluded to boost exam results and how exams are outdated and UK governments’ obsession with them is misguided. Exams do not educate children.
A reader commented:
Children are being prepared for yesterday’s jobs with all the important skills and attitudes needed for the future being ground out of them.
For the first time ever, I felt compelled to chip in to such a debate, to say that this is why I’m campaigning for inted, and offered a link to an earlier blog post. I received this reply:
Many teachers already use the internet as a teaching tool. I visited your link and in the first line you lost my interest.
You mentioned making money. The internet is merely a resource, a source of information, a library almost. Thing is though, you need to be highly selective in what information you choose to believe.
The internet will never ever replace a good teacher. Face to face education, the ability to enthuse, motivate, interact, all vital. Teaching is an organic process.
To defer to a computer screen is to offer our students a massive disservice and must be avoided at all cost.
My response:
I’m not suggesting merely using the internet as a teaching tool. I’m suggesting we teach children not only how to code and be safe online – great that those things are – but also to show them the boundless opportunities that the internet offers.
In my opinion, and having worked online for more than a decade and used the internet to create a way of working I love, it is absolutely not “merely a resource, a source of information, a library almost”.
Of course, we all need to be highly subjective in what we choose to believe, and I’m in no way suggesting the internet should replace a good teacher. What I’m suggesting is that the internet should be taught as a subject, a more modern media studies, combined with basic business knowledge and how to encourage and use creativity.
Many, many people make a living online in lots of different ways, and I think children should be shown that there are jobs available to them that go beyond what traditional and redundant careers advice suggests.
