Is E-Mailing, Texting, and Chatting Online Really So Bad for Teens?

I have talked to a handful of parents about the continued old form of public education. This form is one in which students are physically congregated into a centralized locations where a teacher teaches and students try to learn.

Well, this was fine before the advent of computers and the Internet, but we now live in the age of information, which include the transport and accessibility of information. And information available by computer and Internet isn't limited to documents, but also broadcast style information.

When presented with this new form of decentralized virtual congregation style of education the parents usually fall back on the inability for social development. To put not too fine of a point on it, they claim their child will not and can not develop socially without traditional congregated form of student interaction.

While I consider this a cop out, many parents feel this way and are emotionally charged in defending their position. In fact, most parents of children I have spoken with see no wrong in the existing system, and only see individual incidents worth critical analysis.

Yet, my reply to this is always that as a human I developed socially much more from within my family and then again within my neighborhood. I learned to observe and interact at the cinema with friends, at the malls and parks, etc.

The point is that whether or not the public school system is there to teach students how to interact with other students or if it is there to learn something they cannot or will not get from social interaction. My premise for asking this query is one in which parents want this seemingly free daycare, and as long as a piece of paper says they are doing 'ok' then why change the free daycare?

And with this age of technology the notions endured over the centuries should think outside the [school] box and consider that their child isn't so much being sold short in using a decentralized virtual congregated form of education and that maybe, just maybe, their child can learn develop socially on the computer instead of the classroom.

And when taken into a complete context, parents need to realize that their responsibility in their child's social development should not be mainly in the classroom, but from within their home and their local community at large.

I have talked to a handful of parents about the continued old form of public education. This form is one in which students are physically congregated into a centralized locations where a teacher teaches and students try to learn.

Well, this was fine before the advent of computers and the Internet, but we now live in the age of information, which include the transport and accessibility of information. And information available by computer and Internet isn't limited to documents, but also broadcast style information.

When presented with this new form of decentralized virtual congregation style of education the parents usually fall back on the inability for social development. To put not too fine of a point on it, they claim their child will not and can not develop socially without traditional congregated form of student interaction.

While I consider this a cop out, many parents feel this way and are emotionally charged in defending their position. In fact, most parents of children I have spoken with see no wrong in the existing system, and only see individual incidents worth critical analysis.

Yet, my reply to this is always that as a human I developed socially much more from within my family and then again within my neighborhood. I learned to observe and interact at the cinema with friends, at the malls and parks, etc.

The point is that whether or not the public school system is there to teach students how to interact with other students or if it is there to learn something they cannot or will not get from social interaction. My premise for asking this query is one in which parents want this seemingly free daycare, and as long as a piece of paper says they are doing 'ok' then why change the free daycare?

And with this age of technology the notions endured over the centuries should think outside the [school] box and consider that their child isn't so much being sold short in using a decentralized virtual congregated form of education and that maybe, just maybe, their child can learn develop socially on the computer instead of the classroom.

And when taken into a complete context, parents need to realize that their responsibility in their child's social development should not be mainly in the classroom, but from within their home and their local community at large.