The Mountain View Mirror Newspaper, launched October 16, 2013 (some six weeks ago), reached its 100th published story today.
The 100th piece is a student opinion about online education, by hai345. The 99th piece, a student’s review of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, by chusss.
In the piece about online education, hai345 found it really doesn’t work for them at all. Saying in a manner reminiscent of 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney:
“Maybe I hate online classes because I’m stubborn and once I dislike something I have to put my full effort into rejecting it. One bad experience and I hate the whole system. I hate how everything is becoming dependent on technology. I do not like the direction that online classes are taking education. Being in class is so much better than being secluded at home with no real interaction. Relying on computers for everything is just making our youth less involved in the real world.”
I couldn’t have said it better, and I doubt Andy Rooney could have either.
I’m finding this student newspaper, written by and for students, has ideas from which we can all benefit.
The Mountain View Mirror may be online, and it may be affiliated with a school, but “online education” in the way it is derided by author hai345 it is not.
It isn’t a traditional school newspaper either. It’s something else. “Alternative” might be one word to use.
I gained a glimmer of recognition from J.D. Salinger’s words:
“Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye