Watching the students at Fieldale-Collinsville Middle School in Collinsville, VA, I can’t help but think of Bill Cosby’s stand-up routine from the 80’s.
Cosby’s father tries to give his son a little perspective into his generation by telling a young Bill how “he walked to school 4 o’clock every morning with no shoes on, uphill, both ways, in 5 feet of snow and he was thankful.”
Isn’t it great how our parents try to keep us grounded on terra firma?
I didn’t have it nearly as bad as Cosby’s father.
Back in my day, the longest walk I had was to the bus stop across the street from my house. Home computers ran on a system called basic and the computer game of the day was called Zork, not World of Warcraft. A mouse was a little furry rodent. The internet was locked away in a lab and an apple was still widely considered just a fruit.
Today, you can’t find a classroom without a computer. The internet flows through the air. Learning is as close as a high speed internet connection and limited only by what you can type or navigate with a mouse.
Henry County Public Schools is bringing education even closer for their students. With help from federal stimulus money, every fourth- and fifth-grade student in the county schools has an iPad to use.
Deep down inside, wouldn’t it be great to go back to school and take advantage of this new technology?
As an adult, we do have to keep the kids grounded and pull out the “back in my day” stories every now and then. We need to show them where we came from, but it doesn’t mean we should keep them there.
Let them show us where we’re all going.
In the closing words of Casey Kasem, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
No comments:
Post a Comment