SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

       It’s back to school time. Time to impress your friends with all your new clothes and cool new gadgets and gizmos. But it’s the schools that are cramping the style of students across the country. Funny that being educated and smart isn’t as cool as style these days.

       So you’ve got a new cellphone that plays music to distract you and your classmates from studying or a digital camera that can take videos of your fellow students swearing and abusing teachers. But if you can’t show off your new toys, how cool does that make you look?

       Schools have cracked down on the level of entertainment kids are allowed to bring into class. Again, entertainment in the eyes of students, a distraction and nuisance in the eyes of administration. Many schools are banning all sorts of electronic equipment as they are interfering with the learning process.

       Back when I was in school (oh no, I sound like my parents) we didn’t have things like MP3 players and text messaging. Perhaps that was a good thing considering our attention was truly focused on the task at hand, you know, the reason why we were at school -- classroom learning and getting good grades.

       While these new handy dandy devices are making it easier for students to cheat on tests and conduct other immoral behaviour, it makes me wonder about the mentality of today’s student.

       I was more concerned about being late for class and getting detention and not how to accessorize so I look the coolest in that detention room. I wasn’t worried about coming up with the sneakiest way to text message my friends or create digital cheat sheets for exams, but rather studying my butt off so that I could pass the test by actually knowing the stuff that on it.

       And when you look at the quality of student coming out of our public school system it’s shocking to know that many high school graduates still don’t know the provincial capitals, how to correctly spell the months of the year or even use the correct “its” and “it’s” when writing sentences.

       Often we are quick to criticize the curriculum and/or school boards but I don’t think this is any reflection on the quality of teachers we have, but rather the quality of the entertainment devices students have that are far more interesting than the teachers.

       But what do I know? I guess learning just isn’t cool anymore.