Not so fully formed

Thanks to Scott McLeod for this metaphor:

Most schools currently expect students to somehow (maybe magically?) be responsible, successful digital citizens upon graduation from high school - able to navigate all of the intricacies of a digital, global world - despite having little to no opportunity to learn or meaningfully practice what that means during their 12+ years of schooling. Continuing my analogy from my previous post, we have to stop pretending that students are like Athena, able to burst forth fully-formed from the head of Zeus (or the cocoon of schools), ready to successfully function in a complex adult world without prior practice or experience.

I think it's easy to fall into this trap, especially at the high school level. We think (and sometimes say), "You should have learned this in junior high," and we're put out about having to re-teach/teach something we feel should have already been been taught to mastery. This isn't what's best for kids, it's not research based, but we get so tied to the idea of staying on schedule (especially on the four period day) that we become blinded to that.