Are iPod Banning Schools Cheating Our Kids?

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9018594

So many college students I’ve met — even at some of the nation’s top universities — are there because they have an aptitude for memorization. Many straight-A high school students have few interests, little curiosity and zero inclination toward intellectual discovery. Our system rewards the memorizers and punishes the creative thinkers.

 

An iPod, when used during tests, is nothing more than a machine that stores and spits out data. By banning iPods and other gadgets, we’re teaching kids to actually become iPods — to become machines that store and spit out data. Instead, we should be teaching them to use iPods — to use that data and to be human beings who can think — and leave data storage to the machines.

 

By banning iPods, we’re preparing our kids for a world without the Internet, a world without iPods, a world without electronic gadgets that can store information. But is that the world they’re going to live in?

Let me pull out a bit of the above for emphasis:

Many straight-A high school students have few interests, little curiosity and zero inclination toward intellectual discovery. Our system rewards the memorizers and punishes the creative thinkers.

That nearly knocked me off my chair. Who do we want eventually running our libraries? Rote memorizers or creative thinkers. To me, the answer is obvious and as I prepare for my third year of full time teaching, I see where the emphasis should be.