The Time magazine article How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century recounts a joke exchanged by educators:
Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."
The article does not suggest that schools in the United States are completely frozen in time, but that they are not keeping pace with the changes in technology in other areas of life. Children are global citizens now, even those in rural America, and they must develop the 21st century skills demanded by today's economy. Web 2.0 skills are no longer an option but a necessity.
Let's continue with Van Winkle's tour of our country. Other than the elimination of the card catalog, would he believe many of our libraries have been frozen in time?
