Are we there yet? Short reflection about the times we live in… By Maddalena Tosoni
Starting with the current school year, German elementary schools will not teach cursive writing to first graders anymore. Only print, upper and lower case.
I had to process this thought for a while.
What does it mean for our children? What does it mean for us? I am a big fan of e-books and can hardly pick up a paper book without feeling I am in a time machine, but THIS?? This caught me completely unprepared….
A couple of years back I watched a persentation by Peter Hinssen presentations titled ‘Are We There yet?’. His view was that we are half way there to a fully IT driven/controlled world.
The big leap forward to the interconnected and highly technology driven world we live in now started in the early ’90. We went from the client/server model, with its historical preoccupations with chip speeds, software versions and proprietary systems, to a networked model. Stand alone computing gave way to networks. With that the PC was pushed off center stage and ever faster, high-bandwidth networks allowed an many of the PC’s functions to be performed by larger systems inside companies and the network itself.
And from there on the use and evolution of this Network model just grew and grew exponentially.
Today we use i-Pads and all kind of i-devices for an increasing number of tasks. In one of the latest i-Pads advertisement you can see kids learning how to write on one of them… My four year old son knows, without any help from me, how to plug in the i-Pad to charge its batteries. He has no understanding of the use of a keyboard and looks at me with big incredulous eyes when I try to explain to him that not all screens are touch-screens….
Progress cannot be stopped. And we should not want to stop it. But in just a couple of years I believe we went from being 50% there to about 80%.
Now I ask you: how are going to use post-it notes in the future? Are we going to attach our i-Phones on the refrigerator door??
Then again…. Have you ever seen a scrap of paper and a pen being used on Star Trek? Didn’t think so ;o))
P.S. My daughter’s teacher told us in a conspiratory tone that she will still teach our children cursive. But please don’t tell anyone!!
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