Road to Nowhere

NPR is just chock full of good stuff.

Here's a question for you. Do you think computers in the classroom is a good thing? Many people do, and have pushed for computing in the classroom. The Web was supposed to bring the world's information to your desktop. Ah, if the world were only so virtuous.

What the Web brought, in addition to all this information, was porn, stuff to buy, sports scores, blogs, and all sorts of time wasting activities. You can download software to talk to others, work on your Myspace page (please let it be Facebook). In other words, many, many, many things that have little to do with learning, and everything to do with distraction.

Indeed, being hooked up to the Internet means savvy students can simply ignore what you're talking about. What educators want is a way to restrict students' access to the Web. Indeed, a better approach may be to limit or restrict access to the Internet, instead only permitting access to limited information.

Perhaps a different protocol for education websites that don't link up to the usual ones.

How many schools thought that just having computers would solve their woes? How much innovation came from teaching people to use computers? It would be something, at the very least, to give presentations, since many students lack good speaking skills.

But how many news organizations would even think about this subject matter? So often it's serious news like Iraq, or inane news like Paris Hilton. NPR, even more than PBS, seems to hit great topics that lie just on the side of news. They want to know what's happening to society, how it is evolving, and not simply cover what people think is important, but actually cover what is important.