We’re Living in Their World Now
June 5th, 2007
Academia is not traditionally considered to be on the cutting edge of new trends and methodologies. I’ve never really understood that—it seems logical to me that the place where new ideas and mechanisms would be tested out would be in the classroom-cum-laboratory. I would think that young people, not set in their ways, would be the perfect subjects for immersion in the new.
Something I witnessed yesterday opened my eyes.
A faculty member came into our office to ask for some help with her computer. I usually tune these conversations out, but for some reason I caught myself listening to this dialogue, and I’m glad I did. I could barely believe what I was hearing.
“It’s so hard to get the students’ attention nowadays,” she was saying, her voice tinged with distress. “They used to bring their laptops to class, and I thought that was okay because they could just take their notes on their computers. But you know what I found out was they were using their computers to surf the web!”
I chuckled to myself. Sounds like something students would do.
“And you know what else?” she continued, her voice thickening with incredulity. “I found them using email. One of my students was emailing another professor during my lecture! Can you believe that? I said to her, ‘How can you email another professor in my class?’”
My co-worker sighed. “Well, that’s how it goes. What do you do, y’know?” It was a rhetorical question.
“Well, that’s when I banned computers from my classroom,” she said smugly. “That fixed that problem up right quick.”
I stopped chuckling. I sat up straighter. I couldn’t have heard what I just heard, could I? She banned computers from her classroom?
“It’s probably inconvenient for them to have to use pen and paper but it’s just so rude for them not to be focused on my lecture!”
No, I hadn’t heard wrong. This professor, a professor in the College of Communication, banned computers form her classroom.
I wanted to get up a shake her, maybe jolt some reality and sense into her. Banning computers isn’t the answer. Finding a way to incorporate new technologies into the classroom is the answer. Finding a common language with which to speak to these kids who grew up in the digital age is the answer. Seeking out ways to bridge the divide between the archaic method of teaching ubiquitous in liberal arts education and the way these kids actually spend their time—blogging, instant messaging, contributing to MySpace and YouTube, etc. These are people who live and breathe digital communication and digital culture. They have grown up with media at their fingertips. If liberal education is going to make progress and be of any value in this culture, it has to embrace the way people actually learn and consume information today, not they way they did in the days of Socrates, or even our parents. Or even, truly, us.
I recognize that professors don’t always know how to reach their students on this level. At the university where I work, the beginning of each school year begins with the faculty gathered in the auditorium to hear a speech from the president reminding them of their students’ cultural experiences and knowledge. Perhaps this year his speech will begin something like, “This year’s freshmen were born in 1989. They don’t remember the Berlin wall coming down. They didn’t watch the Challenger explode. They didn’t make fun of Nancy Reagan and her “Just Say No” campaign. In fact, they don’t know Ronald Reagan, and the Cold War means nothing to them. They were five years old when Quentin Tarantino gave us Pulp Fiction. They’ve been using the internet since elementary school. They’ve never seen a floppy disk. They barely remember VHS tapes, and have never gotten tangled up in an overly long phone cord because they grew up with cordless phones. They’ve never recorded songs off the radio: they’ve always been able to download them. These are this year’s freshmen.” I’m sure that hearing this, many professors will balk and stammer, and many will think, “God, what do we have in common with these kids?”
What we have in common with these kids, of course, is the camaraderie of change. Times are always changing. Our culture is always moving. We have to accept that the world we lived in as children is not the same world our parents lived in as children, nor the world our children live in now. Change is constant: the mission of educators and imparters of information needs to be aligned with the spirit of change, embracing the good it does, and finding ways to incorporate the true nature of this culture as it is—not merely as we remember it—into the classroom.
I’m not sure there’s a good reason to ban computers from the classroom. In my world, it indicates pedagogical laziness, a lack of creativity, or at least a stubborn denial of reality. The computer and the internet are absolutely central to our culture and zeitgeist. They should be central to the liberal arts classroom as well. If educators are unable to themselves think of ways to utilize students’ penchant for digital media, perhaps they should seek out help from professors who daily incorporate new technologies, and who take pride in encouraging their students to use the internet in their studies. Whatever they do, they shouldn’t be allowed to ignore the direction education must take in order to succeed. The kinds of information we give students must change with the time, but so must the method of delivery. Liberal education will never be relevant if it fails to remain rooted in reality.