A New Pedagogy?

I think that Will Richardson is a very smart guy. But he’s got it all wrong when it comes to technology restrictions and filters in schools. Computer restrictions are good for students. It makes them work harder to find work-arounds. It’s a teaching tool.

Whenever the school’s filter blocks a site that I try to access, I just ask a student for the work-around. Any student. I don’t know when the last time Richardson taught teenagers. The best way to motivate adolescents to do something is to tell them they can’t.

In fact, I am tempted to propose to Kestrel’s administration that the school change its No Smoking policy to: “Instead of getting some exercise and walking all the way around the corner to smoke, please feel free to light up on school grounds so that you can help put money into the pockets of our local merchants and large multinational corporations, and, ensure that our health care industry remains the most robust and profitable in the world.”

A little bit further down in his blog, Richardson writes of the reaction of a portion of the public to Obama’s speech to school children (even before he gave it), and the marginalization of the nation’s schools in the education of the nation’s youth in various areas. I believe that point that Richardson failed to make is the importance of exposing students to different points of view. Of course, as many had known, the President’s speech was not politically motivated or loaded with socialistically charged points of view. But that is not to say, it is wholly American to have our students gain a balanced picture of the world by exposing them to various perspectives and points of view. And, ironically, it was factions on the political right – purportedly defenders of free speech – who were most opposed to the President of the United States addressing the nation’s children.