Since today is the day after the first round of the French presidential elections, I could just use this as the topic for this first post. I could talk about how the sheer number of people who went to vote today already gives the presidency candidates a legitimacy of sorts : no saying the president will have been elected by a minority. I could tell about how the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal’s runoff might result in very little differences in scores at the second round, which could shake the aforementioned legitimacy. I could add that the score of « troisième homme » François Bayrou, even if it didn’t allow him to go for the second round, will carry on to the élections législatives and maybe (probably ?) change the face of regional politics. But that’s not my…Whoops.
Anyway, today I thought I’d draw your attention to my students (I teach an age range from 11 to 15 in a suburbian high-school near Paris) who never fail at providing me with funny things to talk about. Heard today as I was clearing shelves and sorting books, between two kids sitting in front of the computers, Internet Explorer window open and ready to Google, however…
« So how do I do the Internet now ? »
As I was picking up from the floor the books I had dropped, I pondered about this cliché that « young people today, they know everything there’s to know about these computers ». If you’re in your mid to late-twenties and have parents with a computer, chances are you’ve heard it before. Many reasons come to mind as to why this can’t always work, though : social and economical background, interest in and availability of technology, and of course wanting to learn how to use a computer. If a high-school pupil that doesn’t have the stamina to open a book and read a few lines has to do something that’s not related with the highly-simplified habits of instant messenging or visiting a friend’s weblog, will they make the effort to learn ? I’m not convinced, and I’m curious. I’ll try my best to help them figure out how all this works.
And until then, I’ll try not to drop books when something I hear makes me laugh that hard in my sleeve !
