No Child Left Untableted

This article from the New York Times was written in response to a $30 million dollar program  by the federal Department of Education in an effort to improve education, specifically middle school, by providing a tablet computer for every student and teacher. Although this would make the students more technologically savvy, it will take away from all the useful life skills students on the verge of adulthood should learn from experience. Instead of having more "street smarts" as it's called, they will have more "technology smarts". The real world doesn't work like a computer does, it isn't perfect and programmable. It is random and chaotic. Learning to survive and thrive in the real world isn't something you can just teach with a lesson and homework that reinforces it. There's no puzzle game that stimulates the part of the brain that helps you learn to deal with people. Certain lessons of life need to be learned from experience, and although it is much harder and time consuming, it will be lessons you will never forget. Instead of taking pride in the quantity of graduates, we need to champion the real quality of them. Lets take our time and do this right. It may not be as clean and neat as the digital world, but it has much more value in the end.