Craig Hill
KC Hill
Paladin
Oracle of DelphiTechnowaffle strikes again
November 20th 2006 20:59
Last week I was at a boy's education conference and heard an address by Dr. Tim Hawkes, headmaster of the Kings School, Sydney. Here was a respected authority on boy's education, a published author, headmaster of one of the supposedly best schools in Sydney, academic, leader with a great opportunity to say something important and lasting about boy's education to an audience of teachers and school administrators who are in a position to do something about it. What would he say? Which pressing issue would he address?
To my amazement he chose to waste 45 minutes of his time and ours to ramble on about the most irrelevant, trivial and non sensual topic of technology. During his meandering address which had no central thesis or coherent theme and which seemed to had been cobbled together in the car on the way to the conference (although this couldn't have been the case on account of the copious sci-fi themed power point slide he had) Hawkes seemed to be trying to make the point that … wait for it … boys like computers! How'*s that for a ground breaking thought for you? From this Hawkes draws the conclusion that teachers should present everything in MTV sized sound bites, use lost of pictures, use technology whenever possible and play dumb when it comes to technology in order to boost the ego of the Millennial boy who knows everything there is to know about technology.
Frankly I've never heard such a condescending, supercilious vacuous address to a group of intelligent educators. Anything illustrated with sci-fi graphics and peppered with superficial neologisms must be inherently suspect. I'm sure Dr. Hawkes is an educated, intelligent , thoughtful man so exactly why he chose to address the conference as if he was pandering to a group of preschoolers I don't know. Perhaps by scattering around terms such as ipod, mp3, download, and blog he was trying to be hip – maybe it's a mid life crisis.
In the drive for ever new technology itis as if we have given up on discovering new and important knowledge and instead have resigned ourselves to regurgitation old information in new ways. A trivial though emailed by wireless network, transmitted to a cell phone and laser beamed to a satellite is still a trivial thought.
Dr. Hawkes closing statement was that "The boy of tomorrow won't just use technology – he'll be technology." My question is, if that's the case, what happens when there's a power cut?
To my amazement he chose to waste 45 minutes of his time and ours to ramble on about the most irrelevant, trivial and non sensual topic of technology. During his meandering address which had no central thesis or coherent theme and which seemed to had been cobbled together in the car on the way to the conference (although this couldn't have been the case on account of the copious sci-fi themed power point slide he had) Hawkes seemed to be trying to make the point that … wait for it … boys like computers! How'*s that for a ground breaking thought for you? From this Hawkes draws the conclusion that teachers should present everything in MTV sized sound bites, use lost of pictures, use technology whenever possible and play dumb when it comes to technology in order to boost the ego of the Millennial boy who knows everything there is to know about technology.
Frankly I've never heard such a condescending, supercilious vacuous address to a group of intelligent educators. Anything illustrated with sci-fi graphics and peppered with superficial neologisms must be inherently suspect. I'm sure Dr. Hawkes is an educated, intelligent , thoughtful man so exactly why he chose to address the conference as if he was pandering to a group of preschoolers I don't know. Perhaps by scattering around terms such as ipod, mp3, download, and blog he was trying to be hip – maybe it's a mid life crisis.
In the drive for ever new technology itis as if we have given up on discovering new and important knowledge and instead have resigned ourselves to regurgitation old information in new ways. A trivial though emailed by wireless network, transmitted to a cell phone and laser beamed to a satellite is still a trivial thought.
Dr. Hawkes closing statement was that "The boy of tomorrow won't just use technology – he'll be technology." My question is, if that's the case, what happens when there's a power cut?
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