Even before reading Nicholas Carr’s poignant article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the Atlantic, I have been struck with the gnawing realization that we are slowly but surely degrading critical thinking skills through technology. This is not the fault of schools or parents or even kids. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is both insipid and insidious.
When I was a child in the 60s (born in 1958), technology was pretty limited. We had 3 channels on the TV (sometimes 4 if you count the local UHF channel), a radio, and a record player. Yes, those were the days when kids played outside with one another and the ear bud, if thought of at all, was a gnat that flew into your ear canal.
Kids had imaginations. They thought. They figured things out.
Think about it in terms of music alone.
When I was young, music was something we heard. We had to use our minds to imagine what the band looked like. We made up mini-movies in our heads that went with the lyrics. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had a different video for each mind that hummed it.
Then came the Midnight Special and MTV. Suddenly, we weren’t forced to make this stuff up any longer. The band was in our living room in all their sweaty, long-haired, torn-clothes glory. Video Killed the Radio Star didn’t just kill a star. It killed our need to imagine a story. And our brains got stupid.
Today, we have no need to commit facts to our brains. Let Me Google That For You is not only a modern catch phrase, but a fantastic site to use for those too lazy to even look stuff up for themselves. 6th graders arrive at middle school with few, if any, multiplication facts committed to memory. Why would they? They have calculators (or WolframAlpha). There is no need to remember important dates or historical facts. Wikipedia stands at the ready.
Henri Nouwen, my 2nd favorite author behind Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (what a combination), wrote that all decisions are laden with life and death. The key to successful living is to make decisions that contain more life than death.
Technology comes with life and death. We must integrate technology into the classroom. It is the future, and the future is now. We cannot ignore it. But we must also realize the death that comes with it and be prepared to combat that with every sinew of our educational beings.
We have to find a way to allow the technology to spawn creativity again (see Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on how education is killing creativity). It is through creativity that critical thinking is born, enhanced, and maintained.
Is Google making us stupid? Is technology destroying critical thinking? What do you think? Leave me a comment.
