Keeping up with Apple

Past: Human Touch        Future: Human Crutch

In less than 8 months, my daughter Chloe will be starting school. Yikes! One day she's visiting Pretendville with her imaginary friends, and a week later she's visiting elementary schools for her future! Time really does fast-forward when we'd rather keep it on pause. So much has changed since my first day of school. Back when I was 5 years old, we went to whichever school was in our neighbourhood. Today, you can go private, public, bilingual, French immersion, international, and more.
As her name sits on a private school waiting list, I decide to explore other options and bring her along. Let me tell you, times are changing faster than ever and I'm not sure it's for the better. Some schools have replaced chalk boards with interactive screens, loose leaf paper with Ipads, and text books with the Kindle! We went from keeping up with the Joneses to keeping up with Apple. It seems as though a pen will become obsolete and our cheque books will be preauthorized with personal QR codes.
I'm definitely concerned about our future. All this technology is devoid of human character and begs me to wonder what will become of social skills. My daughter adores verbal communication. She gets excited talking to human beings of any age, race, or gender. I highly doubt she'll be as excited chatting with others via Skype. Without the human touch, we lose ethical values. And with religion out of most school's curriculum, how can we guide our children on a path of goodness?
Being raised a Catholic child, my faith deepened through regular religion classes. My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Rita, remains my religious guru. Through her teachings of God, she taught me the power of kindness and to trust in the process of life. Every meaningful lesson I was taught, was reinforced in my household. But as I researched schools online, I didn't catch these valuable principles on any of their websites.
'Balance' was such a key word ten years ago. 'Work-life balance' was all I heard. After having visited a few elementary schools, the right balance of sociological and technological needs is shifting. Technology is taking over our children's lives at full speed. I'm realizing that my decision in selecting the right school for Chloe, will be based mainly on balance. Perhaps a high-tech school is a better choice, since that's clearly where we're headed. However, I can't seem to accept this digital force on our children, at an age when their self-esteem needs developing instead. We're so busy hunting down apps to make life simpler, that we're failing to simply live wholly. What are we teaching our future?
We're teaching our kids to live in the future so they can keep up with the present; to talk less because we're too busy to listen; and that the human chip has been reformatted by Microsoft. C'mon human race! Swim out of contaminated water and come up for air. No digital device can ever replace the human touch. Write a thank you note, hug your kids, plant flowers, have a snowball fight. Keep it real while you still can. And for my part, I hope to find an educational environment that's founded on the fundamental principles of humanity. PS: The beauty of handwritten words on a 3-holed loose leaf can never be replaced - even by Apple!