Labor Day

I hope everyone had a good Labor Day. I grew up knowing that Labor Day was a day to labor. On the farm in Ohio, hay season was still going strong at this time of year. Labor Day was another day that I could help in the hay field, because I didn't have to be in school. This year, I labored again. My wife has been wanting the garage cleaned out for over a year. So I agreed to help her do it today. By the time we were done, we had 12 lawn and leaf bags full, plus a pile of scrap lumber that wouldn't fit in a bag. I'm sore and tired, but I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed doing the physical work.

As technology has created new ways of working which require less physical exertion most of us don't do as much "work" as we used to. My kids have no concept of how hard I used to work, and my parents thought I had it easy. Technology does so much for us, but we can also become overly dependent on it. This is true in education too. Much of what people used to have to learn has become unnecessary because we now have computers and other gadgets to do things for us. My daughter took a practice ACT test today and she had to take a break to go get her calculator to do her math. As I am typing this post, my word processor keeps correcting my spelling and my grammar. People used to have to do these things without the aide of technology.

We need to make sure that we use new technologies to help us become stronger and smarter as opposed to the other way around. I love technology, but I want to be careful that it doesn't make me lazy (physically or mentally).