Stretching Education

Stretch means to broaden or extend, to push something to it's limits and beyond. Most of the time stretching something to it's greatest achievement is seen as a positive thing where one would be getting the most out of something and trying to get more.
Applying this notion of stretching to education means that, in learning, a person should be stretched to their potential, or the person should be working hard to stretch past their previous achievements.
I agree with how education should be stretching students in order for them to reach their full potential and maybe allow them to achieve more than they thought they were capable of. I think that education needs to be a challenge in order to give students something to aim for. When you improve on something it spurs you on to try harder, a bit like being rewarded. This is obviously a positive thing and allows students to have something to aim for.
However, it could be said that students with little motivation for education could be put off by being stretched and won't rise to the positive challenge. Many people who struggle in school environments get easily disheartened when they see peers around them improving. However, personally I feel that each individual has their own personal potential which they should aim to achieve by stretching themselves. For example, in life there will always be those who are not as bright on a particular subject as others, or those who are more intelligent than others.
In this case I feel each student should hold their own idea of how far they can 'stretch' in education.
Prensky's theory of the digital divide brings about his idea's on education. Prensky feels that because the younger generation or 'digital natives' are so advanced in the digital world, they are not being stretched enough at school. Prensky believes the education system should reform to able students to have a larger technology based education. However, does this mean his ideas are suggesting that the entire education system is weak? Maybe, technologically, students are more advanced than teachers but because so much of their free time is spent using new media technology, perhaps they are learning and teaching themselves and therefore stretching their knowledge of technology outside of education on their own.