Combating alienation in a technology-obsessed culture
What role can education play in combating the alienation bred by a technology-obsessed culture?
Have you read the article Unplugged Schools by Lowell Monke in the September/October edition of Orion?
I think it is sure to spark a lively discussion.
THE HEALTH OF OUR CHILDREN’S INNER LIVES, their civic engagement, and their relationship with nature all would be improved if schools turned down the thermostat on that technologically overheated aspect of American culture. Schools dedicated to that task—we might call them “unplugged schools”—would identify the values associated with technological culture and design curricula and an environment focused on strengthening the human values at the other end of the scale.
The most obvious thing schools can do in this regard is give children experiences with the real things toward which symbols are only dim pointers. Unless emotionally connected to some direct experience with the world, symbols reach kids as merely arbitrary bits of data. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but to a second grader who has held a squiggly nightcrawler in her hand, even the printed symbol “worm” resonates with far deeper meaning than a thousand pictures or a dozen Discovery Channel videos.
Nature is, of course, the richest resource for firsthand experience. Individual teachers have long tried to provide some contact with the natural world by bringing plants and small animals into their classrooms—a limited approach yielding limited results. Many schools are beginning to think on a larger scale. …
Read the full article at this link .
