This week I read a blog that someone wrote about living in Africa. Her main point was that life is simpler but more complicated at the same time. For example, she wrote about a man riding his bike down the road loaded up with a 6 piece bedroom set. Simple, yet way more complicated at the same time. She said in Africa a dishwaher is a person. Simple, yet more work. I related to everything she wrote… except the part about the hippos growling in the river. I felt like she could have been talking about Costa Rica.
This week I had conversations… electronic conversations… with two professional teacher friends back in the United States. One teacher friend is teaching in a huge school. He is one of 6 third grade teachers! They have 1,400 students in Kindergarten to 8th grade. I tried to wrap my brain around that. We have 6 teachers FOR THE ENTIRE PRIMARY DEPARTMENT at our school. We have 126 students between Kindergarten and 12th grade. My son is one of two Seniors. We have one lone 9th grader.
The other teacher I spoke with was telling me that her district is starting an new 1 to 1 iPad instruction program. Every kid will get an iPad and the teachers will use technology to teach them. She has 45 kids with iPads and she’s looking for ways to use the technology. She asked if we could set up pen pals for her students. Can you imagine giving an iPad to a Kindergartener? How many minutes will it take for them to drop it the first time? How many will be ruined with spilled juice or sticky fingers? What a waste of money.
So I was talking to my kids about this in the car on the way to school. I explained that many parents in America wish that their kids had smaller classrooms where their kids could get one on one attention from the teacher, not from an iPad educator. Many parents wonder why schools don’t just use books to teach kids. In our school we use a combination of two popular, high quality Christian school curriculums, all book based. Parents are lamenting the loss of a simpler life.
Can you image a world where the largest class in the whole school is 14 kids? That’s our school. Can you picture what a classroom looks like with real books in the desks and on the shelves. Do you wish your kids had one on one attention throughout the day? It happens here. I pointed out to my kids that they have the kind of education that many people in the United States WISH they had for their kids. Sure they have to wear hot, scratchy uniforms every day, but they have small class sizes, personalized attention from their teachers, and real books to use. It’s all a matter of perspective. The simple life can be the good life.
Monkeys in My Bag 