Mr. G vs Technology: Volume 1

While the students ushered into my classroom, I erased the whiteboard with the bright blue brush provided by the school. The new brushes were magnetic, which meant that you could simply stick them to the board wherever you wanted. Convenient, I guess, since it freed up the ledge for other useful things like metre sticks, abandoned pencils, and gum wrappers. The brush was a fancy space age design, with crisp lines and biodegradable plastic. Too bad it couldn’t erase a board. Considering how many black streaks were left behind, I could just as easily have used paper towel or one of my shop rags. Progress, my ass!

The bell rang, which meant that break time was over and it was time for physics. I walked over to the door and began to close it, to block out the absolute chaos of sprinting students in the hallway who were screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs. But just before the door closed, fingers from an unseen hand curled around the door like some kind of horror movie.

“Please,” came the frantic voice. “Don’t close the door yet, Mr. G.”

I sighed and opened it back up, sad in the knowledge that any tranquility I might have achieved by closing the door was denied to me. Mark skulked by me, apologizing profusely and thanking me, all in one breath. He was chronically tardy and in serious need of therapy.

“Do you know what time it is, Mr. Prader?” I asked, pointing at the clock above the doorway.

He glanced up and gave me a completely blank look.

“What’s the problem?” I probed.

With a sheepish look, he said, “I cannot read one of those clocks.”

I was aghast. Here was a reasonably intelligent 16 year old boy who was completely ignorant about the function of an analog clock. I was tempted to instruct him right then and there, saying that the little hand was at the 10 and the big hand was at the 5, but today we were wearing pink to help fight bullying in school, and I figured that my actions would be in direct opposition to what the shirt was proclaiming.

“Well, just have a seat and try not to be late again, okay?” I said, all smiles and charms, the great actor on his little classroom stage. Shakespeare would have been proud.

I grabbed my collection of whiteboard markers, all collected in a bundle with an elastic, and turned to the class. “This is a very exciting moment, everyone,” I said. “We are ready to start our study of physics. It is time to understand the very mechanics of the physical universe, from the microscopic to the cosmological.”

I looked around the room, seeking out a smile or a nod or a glimmer in a student’s eyes, but it was an educational apocalypse. None of the students were looking at me at all. About 80% of them were staring into their phones, completely oblivious to the teacher or each other. Some had massive headphones on, large enough to deny students behind them a view of the board, and they were bobbing their heads as if in a trance to some death metal band who was probably screaming out 50 ways to torture and torment a teacher and still get away with it. And there were even a few who wore dark shades, and who were sitting catatonically, staring off into space – they were either dead or under the influence of some serious hallucinogenic drugs, or both.

I slammed my hand down on the demonstration desk in front of me. It was a gentle slam, I assure you. No bones were broken in the process.

“All phones away, headphones off, and all eyes on me, please.”

The groan that erupted from the class was a cross between the sounds of the undead, eager to rend the flesh from my body, and the low frequency rumbles of an earthquake as it shakes apart my school from its very foundations. But it was a reaction, it was a response, which meant that communication was happening and being registered in their video game saturated, sleep deprived adolescent brains.

I took out my black marker, which was my favourite colour for making notes, and began to write on the board. I prided myself on my writing. The words were written in a large font, each letter unmistakable, and I wrote the words in a near-perfect horizontal line, which is no easy thing to do. I was known for highly structured notes, beautiful straight lines, and impeccable circles. A teacher could do worse than to have those things mentioned in his epitaph.

“Uh Mr. G?” came a voice from behind me.

I stifled a sigh and turned to face the class, searching out the source of interruption. It was a boy in the very back corner of the room. I had no idea what his name was. I mean, that was what the seating plan was for, right?

“Yes?” I said.

“Are we supposed to be taking notes?” he asked. A few students snickered.

“Well, unless you have a photographic memory, I would highly recommend it,” I responded.

He then dove into his backpack, which was under his desk, and up came his laptop. Other students, inspired by his actions, brought out various kinds of technologies: iPads, chromebooks, and laptops popped up on desks everywhere. It was a veritable plague of computers, the worst kind of virus. And I was the cure.

“What are you guys doing?” I said in exasperation.

“Taking notes, just like you said,” one student said.

“No, no, no,” I said, waving my arms around like I was being attacked by wasps. “Put those vile things away. They will have no place in my physics classroom. This place will be an oasis in the world’s online desert.”

As the devices were being returned to their bags, a groan emanating from them once again, I opened the top drawer of my demonstration desk and brought out a sheaf of papers. I then opened the middle drawer and brought out an assortment of discarded writing utensils, some chewed, others cracked, but they were all still functional. No batteries or recharging required.

“If you need paper and something to write with, please come on up and grab them.”

The walk to the front of the room was a glacier moving down a slope, a sloth climbing a tree, and the drip of frozen molasses. I could see the small hand of the clock moving far too quickly, and the chances of me finishing this lesson dwindling to a Hail Mary pass and a lottery win. But after an epoch, their butts were back in their seats as they pondered how to hold these unfamiliar utensils called pens and pencils, like they were four-dimensional Rubik’s cubes.

Things settled down as I began to write about life-saving topics like mass and inertia and forces. After one board was filled with the wisdom of the ancients, I figured I would take a break and allow the students’ hands to rest before there was any serious cramping. I certainly did not want any complaints from parents, bemoaning the fact that their precious Sally or Johnny-boy was unable to play volleyball because their fingers were fatigued and sore. An unrivalled catastrophe to be sure, and one to avoid at all costs.

So, I wrapped up my markers with the elastic, and then I went to my demo desk and stacked 8 wooden blocks on top of each other. I then grabbed a wooden mallet.

“I am going to strike the bottom block with this mallet. Can you predict what will happen?”

The crickets were particularly loud this time of year, which was strange since it was the middle of winter.

I shrugged and proceeded to smack the bottom block, causing the block to fly off the desk and onto the floor (and fortunately, not into one of the students’ eyes, which would have been a lawsuit and the end of my career), while the rest of the blocks simply fell straight downward and remained stacked on each other.

Satisfied that physics had worked (since we all know the maxim: if it moves, it is biology; if it stinks, it is chemistry; and if it doesn’t work, it is physics), I said to the class, “Okay, I want you to talk to the partner beside you. Explain what just happened, using the ideas of Newton.”

I then went and sat down in my office chair, happy to take a break while the students shared their thoughts about the demonstration. But, after sighing in relaxation’s bliss, I looked up and noticed that none of the students were doing what I asked. Instead, they had gone into their bags and brought their phones out, and they were showing each other the images these instruments contained while talking and laughing animatedly.

“Hey, G. Check out this video.”

Before I could say anything, the student was projecting a video on the wall, using his phone. It was the very same demo, but with more blocks and a much more attractive teacher. And the teacher was in the process of explaining how it all worked.

“No, no, turn that off …” was all I could say, because in an instant, videos started sprouting up on any bare surface on the walls in my classroom until it was looking like some king of modern museum, where all the art pieces have been replaced with digital media.

“Look, someone is doing the demo at the top of a mountain.”

“Hey, check it out. Look what happens to the block when it gets hits in the International Space Station.”

“Dude, check out this cat video!”

Cat video? Okay, things were getting totally out of hand (or paw, as it were).

“Okay class, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the topic. But I need you to put your phones away so that we can continue the lesson.”

Talk about inertia. Once those phones were out, it was almost impossible for them to be put back into their bags. Once a phone is on, it tends to remain on until the battery runs out.

The volume in the room came down to a dull roar, which meant I could move on the the second phase in the lesson. I began to fill up the middle whiteboard with more nuggets of physics knowledge and things were going smoothly.

Until I picked up a faint buzzing near my right ear. Irritated, thinking a mosquito or hornet had entered my classroom, I flicked at it. I was about to write the next sentence when the buzzing returned, and completely fed up, I turned towards the noise and swung hard, making good contact with the little critter.

It careened off my hand and landed on the demonstration table. Without hesitation, I moved to it and slammed the table as hard as I could. When I pulled my hand away, instead of seeing the guts of a tiny creature, I instead saw a smashed blob with wires and components sticking out of it.

“Hey, Mr. G.,” said one of my students. “Sorry about that. That was actually mine and it got a bit too close.”

“What got a bit too close?” I asked, still breathing heavily.

“The drone.”

“What?” I said. “Why did you bring a drone into my classroom?”

The kid smiled. “Instead of taking notes, I thought I would get my drone to video the lesson. Then, I could watch it later.”

I was speechless for a moment. “I have all kinds of issues with that. First, I am quite sure that it is illegal to record my lesson without my knowledge. Second, there is no way in hell that you will be watching that video later, especially when YouTube and TikTok have so many more that are way more interesting. Stop fooling yourself.”

The kid looked crestfallen. “Yes, Mr. G.”

I felt a bit bad about this, since she was a really good kid. “No worries. No harm done. I am just sad that I destroyed your drone. They cannot be cheap.”

“Actually, no, they are pretty cheap. In fact, I have 5 other drones in the classroom right now, working in sync to get the best possible angles to the lesson.”

“What?” I said incredulously. “Well, call them back in, or however you say it. My classroom is a no fly zone. The only thing that should be flying through the air is my marker when it runs out of ink.”

And with that, I took my fading green pen and threw it across the room and it went straight into the garbage. I was the Jordan of marker basketball. One student gave me a golf clap …. otherwise, nothing.

Sighing, I turned to my third and last whiteboard and proceeded to finish up the lesson. The writing was crisp, the lines were straight, and the diagrams were works of multicoloured art. But I was tired and I did not have the energy to appreciate my accomplishments.

I wrote the homework in the only blank section of the whiteboards, and then I returned to my office chair. I then placed my head down on my desk, wondering how I was going to make it through the school year. I was an analog teacher in a digital world, and I was losing the battle.

As I rested, waiting for the clock to signal the end of the class, the students completely ignored the homework that was assigned. Instead, they brought out their phones and aimed them directly at me. My 30 years of teaching would now be reduced to a meme of a grey haired instructor sleeping in his classroom. #physics from A’s to ZZZZZ

High standards

It happened just outside the science staffroom in my school.

I was walking toward the staffroom door, with my new student teacher in tow, when the door suddenly opened and out came one of our biology teachers. She waved and smiled at me, and then her eyes rested on the person standing beside me.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Oh, this is my new student teacher,” I answered.

“You have a student teacher?” she asked. Although she is Asian, her eyes were big round saucers. Turns out this has been the reaction from a lot of my colleagues. Strange.

I nodded, and I made the introductions. Then, when she was about to go, she said something to the student teacher that has haunted me ever since.

“Wow, good luck. He has very high standards.” And then she was gone.

I remember laughing a bit with my student teacher as we entered the science staffroom, and I think I made some minor quip to reduce the tension, but the statement resonated within me, and continues to do so to this day.

I mean, it is a bit of an ambiguous statement. It could very well be a compliment, for I know that she holds my teaching in high esteem. My colleague might have simply be implying that I would be an excellent mentor teacher who will teach many things, and that my student teacher was in this way quite fortunate.

But there was something about the way she said it that has me leaning towards the other possible interpretation. For that statement could just as easily be an indictment of me, proposing that I am an extremely demanding teacher who is very hard to please, and who will not be satisfied until my lofty ideals are met. In other words, my student teacher was likely facing one of the biggest challenges of her life and that she would have to do her utmost to receive my commendation.

My first thought was “What has she heard from the students?” Teachers are often in communication with their students, and at times, the students will start to discuss what happens in their other classes, under other teachers. I cannot help but wonder if my colleague shares some of my students, or some of my former students, and when she had dialogues with them (she is a very popular teacher with the students, so this would be inevitable), the kids might have told her horror stories about my exacting labs and demanding exams, and how my physics class was more of an ordeal than an education. High standards indeed.

So, as I biked home that day, my mind naturally meandered back to this situation and I began to look on my teaching style with fresh eyes, searching for areas where my strictness happened to be over the top and could potentially hurt my students.

I do not allow the use of cellphones in my class, and I enforce this consistently across all of my classes. This might seem oppressive, but I assure you that I strive to enforce this in a manner that is not antagonistic or paternalistic. When a student brings their phone out, I simply walk up to them and sitting down so that I am at eye level, I whisper to them that they need to turn it off and put it in their bag. Even if they engage in this behaviour repeatedly, I quietly tell them that they are required to stand out in the hallway (without their phone, of course) for a certain period of time. I do not berate them while they are out there, but instead, after the time period has elapsed, I merely open the door again and invite them back in. I assume that the message has been made clear and no additional words need be spoken. I cannot imagine this approach would be deemed dictatorial or even abusive in any way, and there is no doubt that it has led to a stronger, more cohesive group of students.

So what about my labs? They are timed events, which means that they must be completed in class time and handed in at the end of class. Further, they are not permitted to communicate group to group, nor can they look at their notes. But these are not arbitrary rules, created merely to torture my students. The rules, by their very nature, encourage proper preparation by the students before they come in to the lab, and the work that is produced during the lab is a clear reflection of their knowledge and abilities. No, this is not unnecessarily demanding, and for students who dedicate themselves to following these rules, their lab skills flourish.

And my exams? My major assessments tend to be quite long, requiring the full time period of a class for most students to complete, and they have been known to be difficult. But in my defense, the subject of physics is inherently challenging, and the level of my questions is, I believe, consistent with the expectations of the provincial curriculum. Further, my goal is not to prepare them for a diploma exam, but if I do my job properly, then they should be ready for the rigours and demands of a post-secondary education. In fact, if I made my exams too short and too easy, then I would be doing my students a disservice. I would not, and I cannot, change this approach to physics examinations.

So where does this leave me?

I think that this has been a good exercise for me. I was branded as a teacher with high standards, and this necessitated an honest reflection of my teaching practice and my expectations of the students. I am convinced that my approach is not only appropriate, but it is in fact essential for proper student education.

So I guess we are left with the first interpretation of my colleague’s comment. I think my high standards will be a boon for my student teacher’s development, helping her to reach her full potential while she is in my program. I will do my upmost to ensure that when she graduates from her education degree, she will be ready for any challenge that a new school could throw her way and that her students will feel blessed to have had her. This will only happen if I strive to surpass the high standards I have set for myself.

The price of greatness

If I was being perfectly honest, I have always wanted to be seen as a great teacher.

But what does one have to do to achieve such a lofty educational status? I figured, in my naivety, that it would be the natural result of persistent hard work, reflection and revision, learning from others around me, and a sincere desire to serve the students. Given enough years, the threshold to greatness would be crossed and my name would be inscribed amongst other venerable teachers like Feynman, Socrates, and even Jesus.

Now I happen to work in a school that is practically teeming with high quality teachers, and over the past decade, I have been made painfully aware of the high demands required to achieve greatness. I have witnessed teachers who were willing to tutor their students on weekends and were on call through Google Meet whenever their students needed help. I see colleagues coaching sports teams, remaining at the school until as late as 9 p.m. and giving up almost every one of their weekends for training and for the innumerable tournaments available to a team situated in a larger city. I am amazed by fellow teachers who design and organize incredible school plays, and then spend almost the entire year to help prepare the students for these massive events. I have even had the privilege of assisting the endeavours of a leadership team who organized and ran an incredible half-a-million dollar bikeathon event to help support local and international charities.

It is mind boggling the lengths that some individuals go to ensure that their students are engaged in the highest quality educational experiences.

In fact, it reminds me of when I was a young man and I had my sights set on being an Olympic or professional athlete. I had some strong abilities in sports, and I felt I had a strong work ethic, so it seemed to be a reasonable and achievable goal. This is especially so since I lived in a small town where there was little competition available. But then, as I moved up in the rankings, I was exposed to the most gifted of athletes, and not only that, I saw how hard they trained. I worked hard for a couple of hours, taking a couple of days off during the week – leaving me plenty of time for TV and reading – while these exceptional individuals were training for several hours, sometimes multiple times in a day, and they would do this relentlessly for years and years. How was a small yokel like me to compete with this level of prowess and commitment?

So, as with my sports aspirations, I am left with the big question. Am I willing to commit all of my time and energy in this pursuit of teacher greatness? Am I willing to sacrifice biking, family time, and my relaxation time so that I will one day be honoured with an incredible lifetime achievement award?

And the truth of the matter is that I am more than happy to maintain my amateur status. I really enjoy the other aspects of my life, and I know that I need them to remain sane and levelheaded … and happy.

So, I tip my hat to the Olympians, the professionals, and the award-winning teachers out there, some of who are my colleagues at the school. You are amazing and the world is better because of you. You inspire us to do the best we can while we are in the classroom.

But in the end, I am content with being a good teacher. My picture will never be up on the school’s wall of fame, but it is my hope that my teaching will reside within the hearts of some of the students I have taught. That is more than enough.

Questionable mentor health

So, against my better judgement, I have decided to become a mentor teacher again. My reservations have nothing to do with the student teacher that I will be working with. She is a very strong physics student with a hard work ethic and excellent communication skills. She will do well. I am simply haunted by my past.

First, there were my own experiences as a student teacher. Many eons ago, I was a part of the UBC educational program and my practical took place at a junior high in Burnaby. I had to drive my little Subaru Justy every school day, which was 40 minutes of hell in the morning, and another 40 minutes of hell in the late afternoon (being an avid cyclist, need I explain the sheer trauma of having to drive a car so regularly?).

I am a high school teacher to the core, and so having to work with junior high kids was like me trying to communicate with aliens. Any time I tried to be humorous or to add fun to these educational experiences, I was often met with the dead uncomprehending stares that only adolescents can pull off. So I decided to focus on education, striving to help these kids to understand math and to become fit and healthy kids through physical education, but I was met with nothing but apathy and resentment.

It was about 2 months of sheer agony, having me questioning my decision to be a teacher on a daily basis … which is strange, because I had already taught for 5 years at an independent school, and I knew I loved it. That is how powerful a bad teaching experience can be for a developing teacher. I surely don’t want my student teacher to be suffering this much under my tutelage. If this happens, I would never forgive myself.

Second, there were my experiences as a mentor teacher earlier in my career when I taught at Centre High in downtown Edmonton. Centre High was a unique school, where we taught students who were in the age range of 18 to 20, and so it was kind of like a transition school between high school and post-secondary. We helped students who had struggled in high school and needed to upgrade, we helped students who had become young parents and were looking for a way to succeed in an already difficult life, and we even helped students who had no home and were living on the streets, trying very hard to get out of the hole they had dug themselves in or that life had thrust onto them.

It could be argued that such a school was not the ideal educational institution for student teachers. These students were in delicate life situations, which meant that they needed the highest level instruction delivered with superhuman compassion, which is a high demand on a rookie teacher who is still trying to figure out how to write notes legibly while ensuring that students are not poking each other with sharp objects, or even leaving the classroom and committing crimes in a different part of the school. Also, the school did not have extra-curricular pursuits, such as sports and arts programs, which meant that the student teacher was not being exposed to the full breadth of a high school experience.

Be that as it may, student teachers were indeed allowed to be placed at Centre High, and after I had taught at this school for a good number of years, I foolishly figured that it was a good time for me to be a mentor teacher – foolish because at that time, I had yet to figure out how to teach this highly unique group of students effectively. I mean, let’s be honest here. Every year that I taught at that school, I would only have about half of my students remaining at the end of each semester. It was heart-wrenching and soul-crushing, and for some reason, I wanted to pass myself off as an expert teacher, someone who could guide another fledgling teacher to competence and confidence. Absurd!

Now, I had the privilege of mentoring two student teachers, and both experiences were unmitigated disasters. There is certainly no need to go into detail here, and I feel that there is some kind of confidentiality that I must obey as a professional. Let’s just say that my first student teacher was kicked out of the program, based on my strong recommendations which were then ratified by the U of A supervisor. My second student teacher did manage to finish the practicum and passed, but on the last day, she confided to me that the experience was so distressing for her that she would likely never teach in a school in the future.

So, based on my past experiences with teacher mentorship, I think you can agree that I am justified to have some reservations and outright fears. History is kind of against me on this one. There is an undeniable chance that my student teacher could find my classroom a source of anxiety, that she could meet with failure after failure, and that it could scar her for the rest of her life. A sobering thought.

But here’s the thing. This apparent pessimism that plagues my thoughts right now can in fact prove to be a strange advantage. I cannot allow this tragedy to happen, and as such, I will be doing my utmost to ensure that teaching in my classroom is a positive experience for her. I will offer her my best resources, I will ensure that the program is progressive and affirming, and I will always be there for her when she has questions, so that she never feels isolated and helpless.

In other words, I will treat her just like I treat the students who are in my classroom. Yes, I think I can do this. It is time to break the mentoring curse once and for all.

Wish me luck.

Writing on the wall

An interesting thing happened when I walked into the lunch room today. On the whiteboard, someone had written the phrase “Where there is no challenge, there is no change.” It was written large, ensuring that it would get noticed, and in my case, it worked very well. Not only did I notice, it also triggered a memory of when I first starting teaching at an independent school in B.C.

There is no doubt in my mind that I am a far superior teach today than I was when I first started teaching. But it could be argued that I was far more creative in my early years, stretching myself in so many ways by writing poetry, acting out Shakespearean plays with my best friend, and constructing philosophical articles dealing with teaching and education. I hardly had any time, considering I was building lesson plans on a daily basis, and yet I somehow found time to pursue the arts passionately.

And one thing that I did as a teacher at an independent school was to write evocative sayings on my board (much like what I observing in the lunchroom) at the beginning of every day. I remembered sitting at my teacher’s desk on Monday, praying for strength and seeking out inspiration, striving to design an aphorism or adage that would evoke a response in my students. On the top left, I would write things like, “The race is not always won by the fastest” or “Truth is a diamond.”

Often, I would not even direct my students’ attention to what I wrote. Instead, I would leave it in the hands of chance or divine guidance (depending on your own personal philosophy) and I would hope that it would have an impact on at least one person. And sure enough, a student would sometimes come up to me and talk about what was written, sharing their own interpretation and how it relates to their own life and worldview. Powerful stuff.

This has me thinking about my present practice. After being in the teaching profession for 30 years, informed by experience and student feedback and collegial collaboration, I have honed my practice to its optimal level (well, at least for me). I teach the challenging concepts of physics with clarity, and I raise the students to higher levels of knowledge and expertise.

But am I able to influence the students to same level that I did when I first started my teaching practice? I may have ben a poor educator at the time, but I made up for it with abundant passion, religious zeal, and a relentless pursuit of truth.

I feel that the best way to compare my present self with my younger self is through sculpture. I see my current teaching practice as a smooth, polished product that makes a clear message, but that message might be a little trivial or contrived or mainstream. But the rookie teacher that I once is all rough edges and gross approximations, but there is something intriguing there, a depth that is soul-shaking, challenging, and life-affirming.

My contemporaries might interject here and say that I am being too hard on myself, and they are likely correct. This black and white division between my two selves is likely a bit too simple, painted with too broad of a brush, and there should be a certain amount of grey introduced into this picture.

But then, there is this one observation that is hard to refute. When the school year comes to an end, and the last class is taught, almost every one of my students will leave the class without even thanking me. Now don’t get me wrong. I do not expect it, nor do I require it, for a class to be considered successful. Yet I am left with this haunting question: why, despite my clearly subpar teaching performance in my early career, did most of my students emerge from the class impacted?

Should I be reading the writing on the wall?

Modular madness

I was really hoping that I could use this blog to complain about something. I was about to wax poetic with my gripe session, possibly referencing Shakespeare and Einstein in the process. It would have been the absolute epitome of negativity, an ugliness made into a thing of beauty.

But alas, the opportunity has been cruelly taken from my grasp. Why? How? Well, you know the saying … no matter how bad someone’s life is, there will always be someone in the world with a worse life.

Here are the specifics. In recent years, teachers in Alberta have been required to complete online modules to keep us current and up to date on what the ministry considers to be important topics. And I am certainly not going to argue the need to refresh my understanding and awareness of things like administering epipens and battling school bullying. But teachers are already overworked (well, at least the teachers who are truly motivated to providing the students with the best education possible), and adding these time-consuming modules to an already crammed schedule is a surefire way to cause teacher burnout.

Like I said, I want to complain about this. But this past year, my youngest son has had to complete modules as part of his training in health sciences. And he has had to do many, many more modules than I have ever had to do. I only had to complete three, and I was given at least a month to do so, whereas he had to complete dozens and dozens of them, requiring countless hours of his spare time to finish them.

And then I found out that my older son’s girlfriend, who is just entering the work force in the area of banking and economics, was required on the very first day to complete a bunch of modules pertaining to her own career. And much like my youngest son, she was required to do these modules on her own time. I felt so bad for her. She must have been so tired just from doing her job, but then she had to come home and do these additional tasks instead of getting the rest that she needed so badly.

So, you can see that I cannot really complain. My situation is far better than theirs is, and so I will keep my mouth shut about this.

Instead, I am left wondering about this explosion of online modules showing up in various workplaces. It is like the corporations got together (at some fancy conference, no doubt, where they drank cocktails as they considered how to run the future world) and conjured up a plan to make their workers’ lives more miserable, all in the name of education.

There is no doubt in my mind that the inclusion of mandatory modules represents a clear and measurable form of monitoring, a digital checklist that guarantees that the employees are up to date with key policies. Fool proof, right? Well, not quite. The truth of the matter is that most workers try very hard to cut corners, skipping through the required videos and answering the requisite questions as quickly as possible. And what makes this process easier is that if you get the answers wrong, you can simply do the test again until you achieve the expected grade. Not much is learned at all, apart from an extreme antipathy towards modular education.

Which gets me wondering how widespread these modules are going to extend into our culture. In what new areas of life could we apply this modular education? Let’s explore that.

I can imagine marriage modules becoming a thing. Before any couple wishes to get married, they must first go online and complete the marriage course. What kinds of questions would they have to answer? If your partner refuses to help out with household chores, what is the best response? If the partner is often coming home late from work, how should they be confronted? Who takes care of the money? Who cooks the meals? Hmm, this might be really useful.

How about a child raising module? If you want to have kids, you first have to pass these prospective parenting tests. How should the child be disciplined if they are defiant? Should the child go to daycare, or does one parent remain at home? When should the child be allowed to have a cellphone? How will the hours of computer time be restricted, if at all? Do you force your kids into sports, or do you let them make their own choices? Again, this actually sounds promising.

I can even see online modules relating to allowing a teenager to leave home. Before they can abandon their parents, they must first take the Young Adult Independence modules. How will the person make enough money to pay for rent? How does the person shop for food? What kind of transportation will they use? And how will they budget themselves to make sure that they can survive on their own?

It’s funny. I wanted to complain about modules, but the more I talk about them, the more I see their value. Modular education, when done well, could ensure greater accountability and awareness from the prospective citizens. People might be less likely to make foolish decisions due to ignorance.

Hmmm, maybe those corporate types knew what they were talking about. I guess there is a reason why I am just a teacher. Turns out I am quite ignorant about the benefits of modular education. I probably would have had a better understanding of this process if I had done some modules first.