Community Update

I had to admit yesterday that I am somehow failing my daughter in terms of her education and, in particular, her engagement with "21st century" technology.

I was going to be driving her to school -- no way buses can manage effectively in this weather and on these roads -- but she also told me we needed to leave early.

"Why?"

"Our printers broke [true -- on the list of things to do] and I need to print an assignment out that is due."

Fair enough, but, like the printer, this plan broke down as -- even with the early departure -- we got caught in the snarl of weather induced traffic en route to her school on Quarton. It quickly became apparent we certainly wouldn't be early and we might, in fact, be late. Heck, I didn't know if I could get out of the sub-division incline.

"I won't have time for printing!" she cried.

I said, "Well, just be a bit late for your first class."

She stared straight ahead...hard. And then she stuttered, "I ...can't..."

This is the part where I got worried about her education in an educational universe that believes 21st technology is somehow different than 20th century technology, 19th century technology, or 1st century technology.

"Honey...getting in an assignment that is due is more important than a single tardy. You never get tardy. You're stuck, we're stuck [almost literally] that's the kind of decision you have to make."

Pause.

She grabbed her phone and started frantically clicking ...."maybe there is something on moodle...email this...." She was kind of blabbering.

I repeated my suggestion about taking the tardy, prioritizing, making a decision in the moment.

Pause.

"I don't think like that."

That's when it really hit me. My daughter has little sense of technology as a tool. And she still doesn't understand, I fear, in a culture saturated in technology, that no meaningful decision in life gets made via technology. Technology comes after the fact.

"The revolution will not be televised," Gil Scott-Heron wrote in the 60s sometime, imagining that what was "real" in terms of anti-establishment activity would not be part of the establishment. No TV, that was for powerbrokers. The phrase became part of, in fact, the black power movement for a while.

But what the 21st century reveals, alas, too, is that forces designed to repress and oppress actually occupy the space off the grid.

As every adult knows, all serious decisions at work happen face to face, maybe on the phone. The tech part comes later. This includes decisions both good and bad. MSNBC can dream of an email linking Bridgegate to Gov. Christie, but there just ain't one there. Anyone in administrative authority knows this -- except, perhaps, for Kwame Kilpatrick.

So I worried: how will I teach my daughter who is being taught at school that technology is everything that nothing of real significance happens there?