from her Peripheral Visions:
there have been a series of experiments in educational television, devoted to packaging reading or geography in the frenetic cadences of quiz shows, cartoons, and commercials.
it is hard to criticize programming that seems to work in conveying something useful, but children who are given chocolate milk to get calcium into them grow up as chocolate eaters, not as milk drinkers. children prepared for school by children's television arrive better prepared for the content of their lessons but perhaps less tolerant of the rhythms of reflection and multiple return appropriate to gradual growth in understanding, for attention that is exacted tips over easily into boredom, while learning flourishes on the subtleties of recycled attention. recognizing that education should be enjoyable rather than punitive, we sometimes attempt to alleviate boredom by making bits and pieces of education entertaining, instead of discovering and supporting those modes of activity to which the experience of boredom is simply irrelevant.
how much are we doing this today.. with pbl, gaming, tech bling...?
not that any of those are bad if that's what geeks you out.
but used for even a kind-hearted cohersion... we're getting at the wrong thing..
let's resign from pre-scribed learning.
when a people at war become mirror images of the enemy, the war is already lost.