Technology Thoughts
July 23rd, 2007“And now you stick on your CD.”
I spent the afternoon trying to talk one of my former students through the installation of iTunes of the new laptop mom and dad had sprung for college. Like many of my kids, this one had received a new computer and was also leaving in the fall, so digitizing the large archive of music CDs was a vital necessity. 1
“Oh my God! That is so cool!”
Like every person I’ve ever met, this kid was fascinated with technology. Also like a good chunk of the kids I’ve met, there wasn’t a clue how to use it. If it didn’t come pre-installed, pre-set, and ready to go, there was no hope it could be done.
We like to think kids will grasp technology easier than adults. Maybe they do—but there are many who haven’t the foggiest idea. Sadly, it’s an area schools are not at all prepared to really help them with. More disturbing, there’s a good chance this generation will need those skills more than any other, and won’t have them.
It’s also basic knowledge they’re missing. From the New York Times:
While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are “scientifically savvy and alert,” he said in an interview. Most of the rest “don’t have a clue.” At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people’s inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process
(…)
Dr. Miller’s data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
This should frighten us, both it doesn’t seem to make much of an impact. Humans tend to make predictions based on past events, and even though we know the pace of change is accelerating and things will not be like they were when we were young, we continue to imagine they will. The individual who believes the education they received was sufficient for their success will still believe it will be sufficient for the coming generation, even though if s/he were to stop and think about it for time, they might reconsider.
We’re training kids for a world which will be completely unlike the one we live in today. Worse, our educational model will open a huge gap between those who are prepared and those who will lack the skills.2 Part of this is what drives the cost of education so high.
A little over ten(!) years ago, when I graduated, I had one of the first internet accounts in the building. I had internet access before there was the web, and I came late—this was 1994. Nobody had ever heard or mp3s, or Wikipedia, or anything like the technological infrastructure we have in place today.
It was easy for me. I watched it happen, and dunked a toe in when I wanted to (Ahh, Napster…) and refrained on others (Myspace, LiveJournal, Facebook), but it was easy for me—I was around at the start. It’s easy to understand something which you watched grow. My parents, on the other hand, still have issues with the DVD player and their cell phones.
So do my kids. They face a bewildering world of technology, which has all sorts of rules. Who is going to explain to them the need for two email accounts—one for all the websites which will want one to authenticate and one for the real mail? That they’re fools if they are still attempting to log into each one separately…and many are.
Let’s not even discuss we’ve never spoken to them about net etiquette. I cringe every time I type in some of my kid’s email addresses. ItsHotInMyShorts@hotmail.com may be clever when you’re 14, but I don’t want to send grape reports to it every week.
When my English teachers taught how to write a research paper, there was no need to worry about the veracity of the information. It came from a book or magazine, and it could generally be trusted. Now I have kids who consider this an acceptable source. I have people who complain “teachers in my day punished cheaters” and all I can think is, “Obviously. There was no Wikipedia, no CliffNotes, no online discussions, and no places to buy a term paper.” All there was to worry about was Timmy copying Billy’s papers.
Never mind having to teach them how to write a paper on a word processor (lets not get into why word processors aren’t that great to begin with. A discussion of typesetting is well beyond most of them.) or to find information on the web, or to evaluate it.
In short, my job is more complex, contains more layers, and will require more time and resources than it did twenty years ago. Schools need to deliver this as well as act as surrogate parents, meet state test standards, and keep taxes low.
We might want to rethink some things—or at least, create a place where every student spends some time in a science classroom with a lab, a lab with a computer, and a computer which does more than send an instant message.3
1 Yes, this is legal. Sharing them is not.
2 I think this was best captured by the science fiction of the 1970s and 1980s. When computers were difficult to operate and required a great deal of knowledge in order to work properly, writers imagined worlds where those with the skills to operate them would dominate and those without would serve. The arrival of the GUI made computers more accessible, but there’s a rift gradually opening between those who know how to do what they need with a computer and those who do not. Sadly, many girls and most of the poorer students fall into that class.
3 This is not to say there’s anything wrong with text messaging. I know several people who use commercial services to communicate inside their business. I’ve often thought it could be useful inside a school, though the infrastructure in my building is so old that it couldn’t handle the bandwidth. On the other hand, too many kids just accept the technology which comes with the computer, and even though half their friends run AIM while the other half use Messenger, they use two clients rather than combining them. We need to teach people to search for solutions to problems, rather than accept what they’re given.
