HAVE YOU EVER...sent a kid to school?

This time of year, everyone has mixed emotions.  We are all going back to school.  For me, I just love a routine.  Some moms need a break from their kids.  I know many parents are busy taking back to school pictures.  I am crying because my son is almost a teenager and going to middle school.  I’ve seen a lot of kindergarten mom’s boohooing too.

We send our kids to school to learn academics, but we know that it is also a social event.  In the mid-eighties, Edwin Hutchins coined the term distributed cognition.  And since the sixties they had been studying how interactions among people in a continued environment; mainly the work place, effect cognition. 

Cognition is socially distributed.  Our environment affects us as a culture and community.  Working with others also affects us.  We learn and solve problems better together.

Now, there are even more ways to distribute cognition.  Phones, computers, and tablets distribute from person to person.  These objects create a collaborative internet world.  We all believe that the internet is the best way to learn because it has become more accessible.  EASY.

I don’t need to give you statistics.  Our kids were born technology geniuses.  They start younger and younger holding remotes and using their little fingers to swipe screens.  Even their school books are online. 

Romans 12:2 says do not conform to the pattern of this world.  We are all addicted to technology.  It is so easy to reach out to someone far away.  It is also too easy for our kids to see or say or do something on these machines they cannot take back. 

This year our entire school district – kindergarten through twelfth grade have been issued chrome books.  I am excited because it is going to be easier for teachers, students, and parents to link school and home learning.  I am scared to death that my kid will break theirs first.  I am also afraid of what kind of trouble they could get into with this type of access.  Just because my kids have chrome books for school does not mean that any of the technology rules are going to change at our house. 

Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.  

Proverbs 4:25

While creating a safe and successful learning environment is a goal for our schools, we still have a responsibility.  Just because our kids say, “I got this,” doesn’t mean they do.  My prayer is that they fix their eyes on Christ and make wise decisions.  I am praying for only wholesome things to pass in front of their eyes and that they see the importance of that too.

HAVE YOU EVER…prayed your kid through school?

  

Proverbs 13:20; Colossians 3:2;  1 John 2:15-17