GV Open Mike
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The Open Mike is a forum in which anyone may post a comment on any topic of interest to the Vassar community.
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The Open Mike is a forum in which anyone may post a comment on any topic of interest to the Vassar community.
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Technology and the Efficient Family
The family is a sphere that has long remained untouched by the advance of technology. Parents today use the same labor-intensive techniques of dealing with issues of family life (e.g., homework, television-time, the facts of life, etc.) as their great great … grandparents did, generations ago: They sit down with their children and have a face-to-face talk. What’s more, parents throughout the world are all having essentially the same conversations with their children: (Parent: Eat your peas. Child: I hate peas. Parent: Children in country X are starving. Child: Send my peas to X. Parent: Eat your peas. Child: Why? Parent: Because I said so.)
This is an enormous waste of parental time. With today’s technology, it’s completely unnecessary. Here is an alternative: Massive Open Online Parenting (MOOP). Create an on-line video database of parental talks on a wide range of issues and make it available to all families on demand. Now a parent can just put Johnny or Sally in front of a computer and click on the relevant video. The child gets a talk from a world expert parent. What’s more, while the child is watching, his/her own parent can spend that time on high-value activities.