The Future of Education

I recently read an article entitled, "Beyond Technology: The End of the Job and the Beginning of Digital Work." This article is about how education must/should change in the future because of what technology makes possible. While the article brought up many interesting points of how education could change for the better, I must admit that the article left me with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I could not help bu think that If I had been in the kind of classroom that the article described, I probably would have been left behind, or at best would have barely scraped by. The environment described here is one of a large community of students and teachers intermingling by ages and skills, to all pursue their own personally designed homework and assignments, while helping each other and themselves. Young students would be without a teacher of their own, but rather a community of educators to help them help themselves. There is something beautiful and idealistic in this, I will admit, but I am far from convinced that students are capable of interacting and functioning in this way. I can only illustrate this by how I believe I would function in such an environment. I was a quick kid, I can say that without any pride, especially because I didn't really learn to read until 4th grade. I tried really hard and my mom worked with me all the time, but I couldn't get it. If I had been in a free learning environment I probably would have managed to hide my illiteracy for a long time. I probably could have thrived for several years by creating assessments for myself that utilized different forms of media. As I got older and my ability to hide my deficiency became less likely, I would have slowly begun to withdraw from people around me. I would have begun to feel like my failures were obvious to all, and I would have pulled away. I would have just seemed like the disinterested kid who seemed smart enough on many assignments, but just didn't do a lot of the work. This may seem like an over dramatization of what it would have been like, but if I hadn't had a teacher of my own, who saw my every assignment and watched over all of my work and activities, I probably would have slid under the radar. I am almost ashamed to put my reaction to this article in the category of fear, but I think that is what my reaction is. I fear where such a system would have left me, and I fear where it would leave many other children like myself.