high tech saturation
damage done
"We are born scientists," Dr. Kaku says. "When we're born, we wonder what's out there. We begin to wonder about the sun, life, the stars...and then something happens." We're forced to learn all sorts of facts and figures - and we're left to think that memorization is science. In this very brief clip, I think he touches on the heart of our education problem in America - and about what the various authors we've been reading these past few weeks have been trying to say. In watching this video, you might understand why he is one of my heroes. (See week one.) And I didn't want to put this video clip off to the side where it might be missed, as it is at the forefront of my thoughts on education and society this week.
When we approach the years of junior high and high school - we're taught to "think that memorization is science." While his daugher was studying for a geology test one day, he discovered the test was nothing more than the memorization of facts and figures, lists of crystals and minerals; and 
mentioned nothing of the true driving force of geology - continental drift - geology's fundamental, organizing principle. Later she came up to him and asked this question:
"'Daddy, why would anyone want to become a scientist?' That was the most humilitating event in my entire life. I felt like taking that book and ripping it apart. Because that exam was crushing, crushing, curiosity right out of the next generation. And then we wonder, 'Hey! How come people aren't more interested in science?' Duh!"
chillaxin' and gettin a little riled at the same time...
While I'm reading through this week's literature, I'm at a hotel in Austin, Texas at a convention: HighEdWeb2011. The weather is beautiful, and I'm surrounded by fellow college and university employees, all fueled with Red Bull - er, I mean, the drive to help our universities, our students and their families succeed. We talk about our faculty and staff, our students and campuses, and for some of us, the love we have of learning. But all around me, at every single event, every table and at every meeting, smart phones, laptops and iPads divide and conquer. I haven't seen anyone not check there phones through a single meal. Or during a single presentation. Yesterday afternoon, one young woman sat next to me, with her laptop in her lap (inches from my own laptop-free lap - mine was still up in my room waiting for me), alternating between her Twitter/Facebook posts and watching re-caps of America's Next Top Model. I didn't see her so much as glance at the presenter. I can't help it, I'm old school. I just like taking notes in longhand, and transcribing later into my laptop. It's just the way I roll. (And, yes, I admit to feeling slightly virtuous here. But it's a sad fact that my penmanship has deteriorated significantly in the last few years. I wonder when my doctor's handwriting morphed into my own...?) But I try to give her the benefit of the doubt: perhaps he's a co-worker, and she's heard it all before? Or maybe she's a multi-tasker extraordnaire? Or maybe like millions of the twenties-and-under crowd, life without constant connection to technology is no life at all.
During meals, I found myself looking at my own iPhone several times, compelled to look like I fit in. Trying to play the game, but without my heart in it. It just makes me angry. When did it become etiquette to ignore your current companions for those in the electronic palm of your hand? But I digress - public actions aside, my real concern is how this behavior affects our ability to learn. Or to think. I know from the research I've read that perhaps Reader's Digest wasn't necessarily the worst thing to happen to literature in recent history. This compulsive need some have to skim through literature, linking and multitasking every moment of the day (in the case of a "technology-themed" conference, this is clearly intensified - maybe even encouraged) is undermining the deep focus required to really listen. It's been made clear, from reading assignments in previous classes, (from authors like Nicholas Carr, Steven Johnson and Clifford Stoll), that this addiction to the Web promotes only distracted, disconnected and rapid bits of information. This style of reading, when compared to the reading of a printed book (continuous pages of text without soundbytes and bullet points and links to immediate access of other sources and/or distractions), doesn't promote creative, or even deep thought. How could it? How would you find the time to reflect on it? Why would you, if you weren't allowing yourself time to digest the information? Would you even hear the author's voice in a story delivered in bits and bytes?
I connect with how Smith put this idea in his book, regarding reading: "We can also employ authors as guides to help us learn new words, to sharpen our skills of reading and writing, and to augment our abilities in the expression of ideas, in argument, and in thinking creatively...The prime value of reading and writing is the experience they provide through which we may constantly and unobtrusively learn (p. 24)." I just don't feel that divided attention serves anyone well - the woman missing information the speaker is trying to share, or the disrepect it shows to the speaker himself. Sure, we are becoming ever more adept and skimming and scanning through information, but how does that enhance our ability to contemplate or reflect on the knowledge being shared? Sorry if I'm on a pulpit here, but this behavior isn't limited to web folks at a higher education convention. If it's practiced in public, it's done in the classroom.
