… is written by a high school student.

She’s not very happy.

Wait until she gets to a university.

************************************

This year, most teachers here at Joplin High are having a hard time motivating their students to complete and turn in assignments. Hour by hour, I sit down, open my computer, turn into a zombie, shut the lid, and head to the next class. Some periods there is hardly a need to even look at the teacher. To many students, beating a high score in Tetris sounds a lot more productive than wasting time doing an assignment that can easily be downloaded at home. If someone were to ask me a year ago if I would prefer a paperless campus, I would say that our current situation sounds like a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want to ditch heavy textbooks for sleek laptops? In reality, I question the value of technology in the classroom on a daily basis.

The absence of all human interaction all day long enters you into a Michael Fassbender-intensity trance. Get ready to learn!

Don’t we already spend too much time staring at screens instead of physically interacting with our families and friends? According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, it’s estimated that, on average, young people spend up to 7.5 daily hours in front of a TV, computer, or video game. These hours are outside the school day.

Au contraire: Education should be as much as possible an extension of whatever daily shit you’re doing outside the classroom.

Simply dumping more information on students through technology by advising them to visit numerous websites and watch tutorial videos, as many of my teachers do now, will not make for a smarter, more creative student body.

But it will make for a much happier teacher!

Unlocking the ingenuity, drive, and enthusiasm within a student tends to become virtually impossible when they all become Internet-absorbed zombies. If this is what 21st-century learning looks like, then maybe there’s no reason for students to attend school. After all, there’s not much to learn from Tetris.

Oh puleeze. Do it yourself! It’s all about self-directed now, baby! Just do what you want. Follow your bliss.

And on the not attend school bit — Where have you been? All your friends are home onlining their high school years.