If you are a teacher, imagine you caught your student reading E-Novel on his smartphone he "smuggled" in while you are teaching, how will you react?
A. Punish the student by caning
B. Scold and embarrass the student in front of his schoolmates so he does not dare to do it again.
C. Give him a last warning before disciplinary action taken against him.
D. Reinvent teaching method and do it with fun and creativity to make it more interesting than smartphone.
I am not trapping you all and laugh at your choice. I go with most of you, which i believe is one of the answer in A,B and C. This is what we went through during our school days, and automatically we will do the same to our future generation.
But look, the environment our future generation is so much difference from our times, these modern gadgets were so appealing and early exposure at young age, kids as young as 2 years old is sliding down the IPad/tablets in the restaurant, and we call them "genius". Instead of faulting them not paying attention to the class, maybe we should rethink our pedagogy/ teaching method, to attract and arouse their interest in the field we taught.
The competitors were no longer radio/television, which teachers/parents can monitor their kids. Its now the smartphone, a personal item which is harder to monitor/control the content they are exposed. Time change, shouldn't we change our mindset too?
With due respect to all teachers, traditional teaching and discipline is still a must. Nevertheless, do you always resort to force whenever kids-problem arise, resulting in over-reliance? If yes, its time to rethink the passion of teaching you once had, and do things differently.
