Monday, March 2, 2009

Movie Response (Prompt 5)

While watching the film "Crossing the Divide", I was most struck with the atmosphere the students who attended New Technology High were surrounded by on a daily basis. The students were literally surrounded by computers, so many that they had more computers on campus than actual people. Because the curriculum was so focused on computer technology and training the students to become future business leaders and "top of the class" in math, science, and techonology when they graduate and go to college that the school doesn't seem to offer any classes in english or the arts. The school also does not have a football team or any other team sports, a library, or any of the traditional "highschool experiences" that every teen should experience before going off to college and later, the real world.
A second portion of the movie that I found to be interesting was the story of Luisa. She came from a school that was very involved in gang activity, however, she was able to realize that the gang life was not for her and instead channeled her life towards working to learn about the technological world. While working to learn about technology (and falling in love with it!), Luisa must keep a job at a local fast food restaurant and begins falling dangerously behind in her studies. Though I feel it is wonderful that she is so fascinated with computers, I feel that falling behind in her studies and having to graduate late because of this was not a smart decision on her part. Doing well in school should be a priority.

The school images shown in "Crossing the Divide" are extremely different from my high school experience with technology. Though we had adequate access to technology and the internet, the focus of education at Austin High School was not based on technology. A few classes are offered that are solely technology based but most classes were completed without much use of computers. If we did have to use the internet for research most of it was done at home; the schools in the movie seemed to do most of their research and assignments on the computers available at the school. Overall, I feel that a school that was a mix between my highschool and tech high school would be the best place to complete a highschool education.

2 comments:

  1. It's interesting that you mention that although your school didn't focus on technology, it was strong in other points. I think that's something that may go overlooked sometimes--the fact that a city does not have phenomenal computer/internet access does not mean that it is not up to standards elsewhere. The New Tech students would be hard pressed to find a job if they decided not to go into computer sciences/engineering/etc. Meanwhile, the students at other schools would simply have to work a little harder to push their skills as much as they could.

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  2. I agree, if the student decided later down the line that they no longer enjoy computers, they do not have the rounded education needed to be able to other non computer related jobs. I do not feel that the only important part of school is how the computer access is. I think that by having many different strong points students can do just as well.

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