When I saw this short article asking the question “Does social media make us lazy?” I felt affirmed. One of the topics I can get really heated up about is the educational system. As a teaching assistant at a university, I get to answer students’ questions and mark their assignments. This gives me a front line look at what skills (or rather the lack thereof) that four years of high school have instilled in these kids. Supposedly, the students that come to university are the cream of the crop (lowered admission standards are another whole topic). And yet, they can’t think…and they certainly can’t express what they are thinking in any coherent form of writing.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve marked papers that have been lifted from Wikipedia or have basically been pieced together bits of other people’s thoughts without any traceable theme running through them. And when students come to office hours and I try to help them reason through a question to find their own solution, they look at me blankly, baffled as to why I’m not simply telling them what the correct answer is.
As the article I linked to above states, it seems like information is viewed as enough. There definitely seems to be the perspective that if you can just get the right piece of information, you’ll be good to go. Add to that the growing trend towards evaluating information based on ‘likes’ and the responsibility of the individual to critically assess the information, compare differing views, and come to their own conclusion becomes viewed as a quaint hobby from a bygone era.
One of the biggest issues I have with the education system is that they are still teaching content. The model still seems to emphasize providing kids with facts about history, science, literature, etc. (Granted, I haven’t actually been in a high school in over a decade, but that is my impression and was my experience.) While its possible one could argue that the information imparted in schools is more reliable than information imparted via other sources, it is still just information, and we are drowning in information.
What schools don’t seem to be providing is training on how to evaluate that information. Don’t ask kids to memorize a list of facts about an historical event – instead, teach them about the process of reconstructing what actually happened in history and how to determine the reliability of sources. Instead of having them memorize a bunch of chemistry formulas, let them use a cheat sheet and instead give them more time to grapple with the scientific method. The information is never farther away from us then the nearest cell phone (why store it in our heads), but the ability to critically think about that information seems to be an elusive art.
I think it used to be that going to school and having access to the information imparted there was a privilege. There was no easy way to get access to expertise other than to sit under the tutelage of a teacher. Today, that is no longer the case. Today, I think the model of passively consuming the information of a supposed expert is actually detrimental. While teachers may in fact be more reliable imparters of knowledge than other sources out there, this pattern establishes an uncritical acceptance of information.
When was the last time you heard of a student challenging a teacher’s opinion? On the rare occasions that it happens, it seems to cause an uproar and the student is punished for being rebellious. Oh, I think there are some teachers who try to implement carefully controlled projects where a certain level of challenge is okay, but outside of those, I believe challenges are still viewed negatively.
Instead, I think school should be very much about challenges. I think students should be encouraged to question everything. But, you say…if they did that, nothing would ever be accomplished in the classroom. Every discussion would take forever. So? As I said at the beginning, they can get the information on your teaching checklist anywhere (in fact, its probably in that cell phone in their backpack that has been banned from the classroom). In my opinion, the critical thinking skills that would come out of such discussions would be so much more valuable and would serve them far better in the future. Note: I am not criticizing teachers. I think they are doing their best and probably share many of these same opinions. I am critical of a system that is way too slow to change with the time. Also, I am not saying to get rid of classes such as math and English – in my opinion, those are about skills, not just information.
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