[Mark] Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, says Generation Y, ages 16-29, has been shaped by exposure to computer technology since elementary school.
The cost, he says, outweighs the convenience. Kids are writing more than ever online or in text messages, but it’s not the kind of narrative skill needed as adults, he says. “Those forms groove bad habits, so when it comes time to produce an academic paper ”¦ or when they enter the workplace, their capacity breaks down.”
Social networking sites can give young users “the sense of them being the center of the universe,” Bauerlein says.
That gives them a distorted understanding of how the world works, he says.
[blockquote]Social networking sites can give young users “the sense of them being the center of the universe,” Bauerlein says.[/blockquote]
It’s not the technology. To borrow a phrase, “it’s the teaching, stupid.” Kids recently have been taught since kindergarten that they’re special and that competition is unfair. You can’t have winners and losers in sports, for example, because that puts down those who lost (I’m thinking recently about the school that apologized to the losing team in a 100-0 basketball game and that school’s coach who was fired for standing up for his winning team!). You can’t say that a child’s answer to a math question is wrong either. That puts them down, you see. No, instead, you need to ask them why they arrived at the answer that they did and affirm their thinking. All this results in a child whose attitude is me-me-me.
These kids get out of college and into the workplace and wonder why their bosses demand results, why their peers got promotions and they didn’t, why their answers are being questioned, etc.
It’s because our educational system has stopped teaching right and wrong, success and failure. It’s all about the student feeling good and not about results.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? – Nicholas Carr, July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly
It’s an article that goes along similar lines as it discusses the effect of the Internet on young and old. Personally, I fall into Generation Y (I’m 28) and I never had any problem writing narrative. Generation Y as a whole as usually defined is a bit too broad when it includes those of us who remember no cable TV and waiting for the phone company to send a man to install the phone.
Response of a longtime professor to his colleague at Emory:
Amen, and amen.
It’s getting harder and harder to teach students to write, and the reason is–
Technology, yes, and the schools–yes, no. 1–but the deeper reason is structural and ethical related to technology and the schools; and Jacques Ellul would understand. We–meaning society at large–have succumbed to a functional reason according to which we say, If we can do it (the latest technology), then we should do it.
The church schools and the state schools are no different: Go interview for a headmastership at a top-tier school. I guarantee that they will want to know how you will keep the school technologically advanced. They will show you a computer-science curriculum that starts in Lower School and goes thru Upper School.
At this point, I am not criticizing this curriculum or practice. I am simply saying that this practice–this commitment–is assumed; it’s a given; it’s not debated.
But what if–what if–Bauerlein is right that the cost is greater than the benefit?
Have you ever thought about the following question: What technological skills (computer) do students need when they start college?
I’ve talked with colleagues, not just in the humanities, about this. An additional question: What skills do these students need that would not otherwise be obtained by them on their own; i.e., what skills do the secondary schools need to teach?
Compare the answer to the question What skills do students need when they start college? with the answer to the question What skills are the top schools teaching (based on what they assume students will need)?
Hypothesis: Answer to the second question will be a big pile of stuff; answer to the first, a very small pile.
How much do students need to know? Well, not much that they can’t get on their own. They will know word processing. They will know their way around the Internet better than most adults. Etc. They will not be good at research and discrimination among sources. Too often they will think that research = downloading data. They will have to be broken, in college, of the habit of thinking that “analysis” = “summary.” They will think that their instructor is one mean son of a bugger for awarding D’s on their papers. Yes, I still give D’s and F’s, even to vulnerable freshmen. (Student: “But I have gotten A’s on all my other papers [for other professors]!” Me: “Then why didn’t you write an A paper for me?”)
And: their reading and critical thinking skills will not be good (on average, I mean).
Bauerlein: “Those forms groove bad habits, so when it comes time to produce an academic paper … or when they enter the workplace, their capacity breaks down.”
That’s right on the money.
Imagine a candidate for headmaster at a leading Episcopal school: “Technology? Let’s first look at the schedule and students’ needs. Time = a zero-sum game. More and more demands. Let’s look at what students know in technology and see what we can do to enhance their skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking–and numeracy.” That candidate could be absolutely right; but he might not get very far in the search process. Trustees–asked to decide crucial educational questions but drawn from corporate boardrooms, where conformity, not creativity, may be the order of the day–are typically reluctant to think outside rather small boxes.
Don’t get me wrong: computers can be terrific in mathematics, in science, in seeing things like the functioning of the internal-combustion engine: how could we ever have imagined it from a textbook picture?
But look at how much money and time schools–not all of which are wealthy Episcopal schools–put into technology, soon obsolete, and IT staff. How much do they question this practice? How much is it simply keeping up with the educational Joneses, much like building a new basketball palace because the competitor across town built one and Gladys Gotrocks just gave $25m for a new one?
What students need more of when they start college: patience, discipline, respect, tenacity, reading and writing skills, a willingness to work hard, a basic sense of honor and integrity.
How much does current technology aid and abet the development of those capacities, and how much does it thwart their development?
Students come to college already possessing the rudimentary computer skills they need to get started, skills they’ve largely acquired on their own. Even in a college lab-science course, students will be led thru whatever technological applications they need to know. In the humanities: students come in able to word-process their papers. That’s not the problem. The problem is getting them to proofread their papers, to read with acuity, to relate one idea or fact here to another idea or fact there, to organize their prose so that transitions exist between paragraphs, etc., etc. These are rudimentary skills that–yes–I fear are being lost. And, no, they’re not being replaced by more-important skills. As far as I can tell, they’re being replaced by nothing.
That’s the discussion that someone needs to start–’cause it ain’t happenin’ now–and maybe Bauerlein is on his way to doing that.
(I believe that there was recently–a year or so ago–an excellent article in The Atlantic about changes in physical brain patterning owing to extensive use of the new technology.)
“In some ways (technology) is hindering, in some ways it’s advancing” education, he says. “It teaches our brain a different way of processing things.”
It may be teaching the brain a different way of processing, but it seems to be providing zip when it comes to substantive material for that brain to actually process.
Vatican Watcher, to embed the hyperlinks, you need to use [ ] instead of < >.
Just sayin’.
No. 4: Can you amplify?
“It may be teaching the brain a different way of processing, but it seems to be providing zip…”
To what?
“…when it comes to substantive material for that brain to actually process.”
E.g.?
5…
I noticed after the fact unfortunately. But the full cite is there. The article can be easily found.