| Home > Technology > The New York Times Ethicist Column puts the hurt on Powerpoint, and other Sunday observations |
| The New York Times Ethicist Column puts the hurt on Powerpoint, and other Sunday observations | | Date Created: 09 Oct, 2005, 11:23 PM |
 I came home tonight after a day doing doggie things.
Took Shrek into the park about 8.30am for his usual run with his mates, then off to training in Malvern where it was a BBQ and fun day. Then off to the 12th "Blessing of the Pets" at the nearby St. Francis Church in Inkerman Street, East St. Kilda where the service was quite ecumenical (both cats and dogs were blessed).
Then off to Mentone for a run on the beach, then back to the park for more play with mates, then, leaving Shrek with his Grandma, we went off to the movies to see "Must Love Dogs".
Getting home about 10.30PM I did my usual shtick and went to the New York Times online for that part not yet behind a paywall: the Sunday Magazine, which I get to read while most New Yorkers are yet to awake. But not before I opened the recently-sold NetNewsWire RSS aggregator and noted local blogger Shawn Callahan's Anecdote blog.
His latest entry, here, links to a terrific machine-gun like talk I saw last week by Dick Hardt, who used a Powerbook and Keynote to give a Larry Lessig-like presentation. It is certainly worthwhile downloading the video and seeing something different for a change, compared to the usual Powerpoint fare, as I have complained about previously in this blog.
Back to the NYT: One of my favourite columns is the Ethicist's regular feature. This week's is a collection of corrections from writer Randy Cohen.
A featured ammendment is one about a young student aged 12 who turned a hand-written assignment into his teacher, rather than one using a word processor, as preferred by said teacher. And he was penalised for doing so. The Ethicist agreed in his original column with the teacher's stance, and apparently was howled down by NYT readers who believed that as long as the assignment was legible, a child should not be disadvantaged by his inability to access a PC:
"The teacher may require legible work - she should - but she may not demand that legibility be achieved via a computer or, for that matter, a chisel and a slab of marble. If the school wants students to develop typing skills, it should teach typing and provide laptops (or typewriters - ah, nostalgia) to those who need them. The teacher's requirement presents an unfair obstacle to poorer kids, for whom the computer lab is an insufficient resource."
What I then read which raised my eyebrows, and is the substantial point to this blog entry late Sunday night, was the further information provided about this 12 year old's teacher. It seems his teacher also demands Powerpoint slides. In Elementary (Primary) school! It seems mine weren't the only eyebrows raised, as the Ethicist continues:
"Since writing that column, I've been told that this teacher also requires PowerPoint for some assignments, melding (if true) bad ethics with worse pedagogy: in lieu of actual thinking, students are perhaps being taught to reduce nuanced ideas to three bullet points."
Is this what it's come to? Is this the slide-show equivalent of choosing Windows because "that's what they'll use when they leave school?" So now we have to also teach children Powerpoint, as if using the same ridiculous myopic reasoning?
Where is Edward Tufte when you need him most?
(The illustration atop is by Christoff Niemann, as used in the NYT) |
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