Video Reaction

5. I chose to pick the wild card option. I was a bit worried when the students talked about making tech schools a universal occurrence. I based my response around why this woudl not be a good thing:
It is easy to see the benefits that woudl come from digitizing Americas schools. It seemed as though the four students that the video focused on were gaining an incomparable edge over other teens but I think they were losing a lot as well. If schools like New Tech High were made universal, students would be deprived of important fine arts education and the schools woudl be distributing funding unfairly.
The students that went to these "Tech Schools" were deprived of art, after school activities, and sports. Although they may not miss these aspects of education now, they are still an important part of the high school experience. I am definitely not an artist but making pinch pots in ceramics' took the edge off calculus. High school students are not adults, meaning that they should be given the opportunity to indulge in the non academic parts of school as well. One woman in the video explained that schools have the job of producing well rounded people that can pursue a life and not just a career. I think that it is nearly impossible to leave a school like New Tech and expect to be well rounded. Also, in my own application experience, having a holistic high school career is important in order to get into college. These students may end up limited in their university options because their education relied so heavily on the following of one career path. These students may feel more prepared for the work force but they are really loosing a part of their high school education and also put at a disadvantage when it comes to their future pursuit of education.
The price tag for creating schools like New Tech High is astronomically high. It is irresponsible to completely digitize every high school for this reason as well because some students may not benefit from the money spent. I was the editor of my high school newspaper like Cedra. I am not usually compatible with comptuers but I learned the inter workings of several adobe programs and fostered an awkward love and page layout. I spent many nights on my computer up until 3am playing with borers and font sizes. The fact that this may seem ludicrous to some is precisely my point. If a school spends millions on installing state of the art programming and forcing students to learn how to use them they could be wasting time and money on uninterested students. I would have loved a class on page design but this does not mean the average high school student would benefit from it. By specializing all schools in order to close the digital divide, many students may be kept from learning what they actually want to learn. Schools should not
By forcing schools to teach their students only to deal with computers they are not producing well rounded individuals and keeping some from pursuing other goals.