Nationally over 70% of high school student drop out. Nearly 70% of high school graduates start a post-secondary opportunity the fall after their graduation. 40% of these leave the post-secondary institution within the first year; why?

I will not argue that there is a place for the traditional methods, but similar to the advances in education’s acceptance and molding to ADD, ADHD, ELL and other special needs students, the traditional system will either have to start thinking about the diverse needs of the millennial group or lose a large portion of their student to nontraditional delivery public education organizations. This exodus has only begun in public education as choice is now accepted, understood, and craved by parent and students. These choices although embryonic in th secondary schools, have been prevalent in post secondary for quite some time. Diverse schedules, delivery times, competency methods, and paces have been common to post-secondary for quite some time.

One dimensional delivery systems will work for some, but learning happens in multi-dimensional methods; hearing, seeing, and interacting. How many college classes could deliver the same content and produce the same results in varied increments of time or through varied methods of learning. I’m afraid the traditional system does not want the answer. I think we will get stuff done in many paradigms. It really is what fits best for the students leaning style and pace. Not only will this vary by students but by individual courses in each student’s schedule.

Personally “reading the bloody readings” is a much distorted statement. I highly doubt the entire class reads all the readings. Also I lean a lot from Wikipedia. Not to say it is fact or fiction, but what is research? Research designs raise more questions. For every finding you can usually find other research finds that refute it; particularly in areas of education.
I also have extensive experience with ADD and other special needs students. Not sure if I agree with the ideal that bleeping, “blooping”, and electronic “bumf” got in the way of what these students needed to do. I actually was thankful for the alternative delivery options for students that needed a chance to learn in different ways, in different schedules and in different environments.

The masses are speaking and business will foster the educational paradigms of the future. Just look at the balance sheets for charter schools and nontraditional education organizations such as U of P. Traditional education has done a poor job academically and economically. There are plenty of research studies to back that up.

Your point of view is the epitome of the late 20 something and up viewpoint that this post is directly trying to respond to. Particularly since you will be in the position to teach/TA courses populated by Millennials and perhaps a few Digital Natives.

Help me better understand you. You've identified yourself as 30 something, which makes you about 10 years older than the Millennials. As a returning grad student – I'm curious if you completed your 4 year program when you were 18-23 or recently returned to school, completed your bachelors and are now following up with your masters.

Here's the fundamental difference. You state, “If we don't have these cretinous boys who are too busy playing video games and drowning in wikipedia to actually learn or think, then good riddance”. You're so entrenched in the Industrial model that I have a hunch you don't realize the direct contradiction there. It's not that Millennials won't do the readings. In fact, it's a whole different issue. What do you think those individuals are doing on Wikipedia? I find it amazing that you don't see the self directed, unforced learning taking place when an individual freely explores an encyclopedia with their free time. That's learning and educated curiosity like that goes much further towards learning to think than having a power point read at them ever has.

On the subject of multi-tasking. Please search the blog for my post on Parallel Processing. I've since worked to further refine the subtle but significant differences.

I find your last statement deeply saddening. We are on the cusp of the re-birth of modern education – a shift which will better all of those involved. I wonder where your true animosity towards technology and it's associated potential really stems from.

And you know what? We get stuff done. We keep interested. We actually read the bloody readings. If we don't have these cretinous boys who are too busy playing video games and drowning in wikipedia to actually learn or think, then good riddance.

I have ADD–don't give me this rubbish about multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is a curse that makes life harder for people with my condition, not easier. I need less bleeping and blooping and electronic bumf that gets in the way of what I need to do. The best way to deal with ADD, aside from the appropriate medication, is to filtre the distractions by working with paper materials, avoiding television and stripping one's computing down to bare essentials–treating the machine as a tool for working with information, rather than an end in itself.

If our grand-children manage to maintain technological progress, rather than regressing to a standard of living more remniscent of that of our great-grandparents, if not a sort of Mad Max savagery, it will be because we find a way to cure the “digital generation” and turn them into productive and thoughtful citizens, rather than buying into this load of nonsense about “digital natives.”

Cheers!

MANY former teachers who learned they couldn’t change the sedentary behemoth that is the education system have not even sent their own children to school, having seen from the outside AND the inside some of the insurmountable and growing problems.

I have three children who were homeschooled in the ways John Holt wrote about in the 1970’s. The oldest started playing video games when he was five, and now at 22, he works for Blizzard Entertainment. But video games and jobs are only a very small part of the picture. School does damage to people, as many of the defensive, ignorant (and misspelled) comments above show.

The printing press opened the world, and people no longer had to be students or own their own libraries (and the houses and servants to hold and maintain them) to learn. Now with the internet, they don’t even have to own the books. Learning is a whole new deal in the world today. Schools will figure it out in about twenty years. Meanwhile, there are babies being born who might not thrive in a school system designed for the 1950’s.