Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Schools are for learning. Or are schools for teaching? The two are different.

If learning is the goal, this school district succeeded. “High school students crash the WiFi system so the teachers cannot access homework assignments.”

The kids at that high school learned a lot. They learned computing; they learned computer security; they learned the psychology of design; they learned…we could go on.

Perhaps what they learned is not what the adults in the school district were attempting to teach. Ah, there is a difference in what the adults were teaching and what the kids were learning.

Let us recognize that the adults—whether by accident (probably) or design (probably not)—provided the motivation for learning. They created a situation in which the kids wanted to learn computer security and all those other things. Let us give them credit for that.

Now, if they (the adults, not the kids) can take this lesson and apply their own learnings to all the other things…