I’ve been thinking a lot about old school vs. new school issues in the classroom. 

First, I’ve been re-reading Tolkien, which strikes me as anti-modern/industrial, even though it is very popular with the geek set.
Next, there was  discussion in the lunchroom at my school about calcuators vs. paper and pencil computation. A co-worker felt that students needed to be able to calculate large numbers themselves in case the ever found themselves without a  calculator. I contended that my experience working as a banking analyst in various capacities, including regulatory reports, and reports to the board of directors, was that most computation that people do in the workplace is done with spreadsheets and calculators, BUT the best skill you could have was good number sense because you need to spot errors that crop up in formulas. So you should be able to see if you have a column with 1,200 + 300 + 500 it should not total up to 4,000.  Just basic number sense was more critical in that kind of information based career.

Currently, we are doing a push on cursive writing at my school, which I think is a waste of time and energy. Apparently the students writing is illegible, but I think it would be better to concentrate on printing, DNealian script, and have kids work on fine motor skills by doing mazes, but they’re going into the 21st century learning cursive.

Last, there is TNTurner’s piece on silent classrooms.