As another month flies past and the season of goodwill looms, it is a sobering thought that these are the final notes before the old millennium bows out to the new. Perhaps even the most objective and rational among us will pause and raise an eyebrow to ponder the fate of the world as Big Ben chimes its final strokes of 1999. Will our computers and precious systems survive the night; will that erratic timing device on the school boiler finally die the death; will we be reduced to writing the next instalment of the Parish Magazine by hand? Can we really be sure that the visionary Janus won't have a tale or two to tell?
Our lives are inextricably influenced and linked by modern technology as we rely more and more on systems of one kind or another. School is but a microcosm of society: computers control our lives - from the school budget to our ability to access information and communicate with others electronically. A recent speech given by David Hargreaves, eminent sociologist and professor of education at Cambridge University, went further as he summarised what he saw as the likely context for learning ten years hence. Children, Hargreaves said, would probably be working in increasing isolation using on-line laptops to plough their way through individual teaching packages, punctuated occasionally by a teacher's on-line comment. A world of virtual social interaction. Bill Gates must be rubbing his hands together with glee!
We are most definitely not reactionary at Ambleside Primary School having done our bit to participate in the information race. Our website has won national recognition and applause, our children are confident, competent and creative users of information and communications technology from our youngest Nursery children through to our eleven year olds and we too have a vision for the future. However, far more significantly, we value the children themselves, the spiritual, the care and compassion that can only go with true social interaction rather than that of the virtual variety. The two faces of Janus must work in balanced tandem, bringing the best of the old into the new, for, in the words uttered by our children at the November Family Service, 'If children do not learn from history, then history repeats itself'. We believe the quality of the ethos of the school to be the single most important factor in judging our effectiveness and the spiritual dimension must rest at the heart of this.
Thoughts apart, the news for the month revealed much activity, from implementing the National Numeracy Strategy to educational visits with the National Trust to starting to practise for Christmas. Do come and join us on December 10th for an Open Afternoon in school.
May we in school wish all readers a very happy Christmas and a new year free of technological hitches.
DRH