David Weinberger blogged the Irving Independent School District Symposium in Texas and included this little eye-opener:
Robbin Wall, the school’s principal, welcomes us. The school is 5 years old. Every student has a laptop… Principal Wall says that this school is focused on training professionals; it offers no extra-curricular activities.
Whoa! Did he say NO extra curricular activities?
So he is training a bunch of professionals who are going to suffer from burnout by the age of 30. Give me a break. Don’t we all need a bit of down time?
I wonder what Robbin does in his/her spare time… more work i suppose. perhaps their curriculum is so all-encompassing that nothing is outside of it… 🙂
I am also shocked by this, but I wonder if the problem might be partially linguistic. Why do we call them “extra curricular” activities in the first place? By definition, they are “extra” and therefore not essential. We argue rightly that they are, in fact, essential. So they really aren’t “extra” (reminds me a little about the oxymoronic look at “self-help” books that George Carlin speaks of).
Would co-curricular work better?