The Role of Technology

Technology is the answer to our education problems, at least that is what those who spend money on Capitol Hill would have you believe. We need more computers, electronic white boards and Ipads or our students won’t be able to meet minimum requirements for jobs. Here lies the issue, minimum requirements. Our education system is based around minimum requirements, what do you have to know to get by. Literacy used to mean being able to read and understand classical books such as Moby Dick and Plato, now Literacy is if you can read the McDonalds menu. In math calculators have replace the human mind. What happens if the person accidently hits the wrong button, they don’t have their mind to reference that 20X21 does not equal 2100 and they must have pushed a wrong button
That is not to say the computers and technology shouldn’t be taught, but they should not be used as a crux to learning. Eventually you have to walk on your own, you can either be taught how to do that when you are young and it is easy for you to do that and you have plenty of time, or you can wait till that crutches have been pulled out from under you and your pushed into the real world, when it will be a struggle, because you are still starting from the beginning and now you have to fend for yourself.
Our nation has become one of minimum requirements, and that is what we receive. Technology may have a place in modern education, the one that keeps failing us, but to a classical education it is only a tool to be used after the mind perceives, not in place of the mind.