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SPITZER: ROBOTS FTW!
Have you been reading Eliot Spitzer's delightful new Slate column? In his latest outing, Spitzer disses Obama's stimulus plan and says we shouldn't be upgrading roads and schools, but instead spending on a new electronic health records system, smart energy meters, and other high tech innovations. (He doesn't mention one of our fave spending priorities here at TAPPED - mass transit.) I guess it seems pretty clear to me that we should be doing all these things. But I disagree with Spitzer that robots are a more promising education reform strategy than clean, safe, modern school buildings. You know, where students will actually want to spend time and teachers will actually want to work. He writes:
Provide funding for robotics teams at every school. If you ever want to see intellectual competition in the arena that matters today—technological wizardry—visit the robotics competitions that now exist in some schools. Make these competitions as universal as football. Make it cool to design the next cutting-edge video game or iPod.
"Technological wizardry" is well and good, but at many schools, kids would just like some new books, functioning heating and air conditioning systems, and qualified teachers. A stimulus plan should address our needs before it tackles our fantasies. Not that I'd really expect Eliot Spitzer to keep his fantasies in perspective...
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (10)
Strange to say, but one of our state's chief higher ed bean counters has floated the idea of the professor-less class with computers teaching college-level courses. I heard the idea and imagined a student taught by a robot.
Posted by: Danton | January 6, 2009 12:43 PM
That is a fantastic cheap shot
Posted by: cycl06 | January 6, 2009 1:14 PM
He's just seen too many movies where kids make rockets or robots and it changes their lives. Policy via screenplay is not smart policy
Posted by: RuthAlice | January 6, 2009 2:10 PM
My 12 yo daughter has been on a first lego league team for 4 years now. There were about 100 kids from 15 different schools at her last local competition and the kids were engaged, enthusiastic and knowledgable. They've got a solid start on STEM classes and they're *not*afraid* of it.
Granted, this is a self selected group, but even the ones in it for social reasons are coming out way ahead of the cheerleaders and football players. And the kids who select this for any reason are a lot nicer than the jocks and poppies.
Posted by: femdem | January 6, 2009 2:28 PM
I completely agree with Dana. Too many children don't have access to schools with decent facilities. Let's fix that first (also a good way to stimulate the economy, since the construction sector is particularly vulnerable to recession).
While we're fixing up school buildings, lets make them energy efficient as well!
Posted by: Robin Ozretich | January 6, 2009 2:50 PM
at some point though, we need to look beyond what students "need" and think creatively about what can make students take an interest in learning. i read a ton of text books in school, nice new ones, cover to cover, and i don't remember much of any of them because in the absence of interaction, the mind essentially goes into sleep mode. of course we need qualified teachers and adequate supplies/buildings, but that's no reason to ignore opportunities to innovate methods, subjects and projects.
Posted by: jf | January 6, 2009 5:53 PM
Look, let's call this what it is -- Spitzer just wants a robot hooker.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | January 6, 2009 6:00 PM
Danton, what state are you from?
Thomas Frank asked whatever happened to Kansas, and I recently asked whatever happened to Minnesota. But now I'm asking whatever happened to my own state, New York. New York governors and senators have long held such promise for national politics--both Presidents Roosevelt were Governors of New York--but this state has had terrible luck with its governors over the past two decades. What gives?
Posted by: mim | January 6, 2009 9:07 PM
Since when is it not cool to create cutting-edge video-games?
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | January 7, 2009 3:16 AM
mim:
Tennessee.
Posted by: Danton | January 7, 2009 12:30 PM