Education-Fast Food vs. Home Cooking

    

 

“You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.”

                                                     Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

     IPhones and adolescence do not mix well.  Sponge-like brains are being fed a constant direct flow of social media, streaming, and gaming, allowing for no time off, and filling in gaps of time like water fills in gaps of space.  This is especially true at night when sleep, increasingly important to brain development, should be occurring.  Instead, what we are seeing are sleep-deprived students with incredibly low levels of interest and problem solving in anything they don’t find entertaining.

     This is like unlocking a 24/7 McDonald’s and telling them to help themselves to unlimited junk food.  Fast food should be the occasional diversion from home-cooked, healthy meals. It should not be the norm.  Yet, we give these devices to young people who do not wield the self-control to own and operate unlimited access to unlimited information.

     I was not a great student.  I was hyper, not focused, and impossible to keep seated or quiet. My brain needed constant input through physical play, watching TV, or just looking out the window, and when it lacked the required stimulus, I grew bored quickly. I would not have done well in a world that included IPhones.  Boredom sucked, but If I’m being honest, has been my greatest ally to any success I may have had.

     When I began teaching in 1992, the biggest obstacle to any given class was staying interesting to the students.  When you lose their attention, they grow bored, and then behaviors take a sharp turn to the south.  Talking during class, asking to use the bathroom constantly, throwing things, working on homework from a different class were all things that would drive a new teacher crazy. (Strangely, the same loss of attention today would lead to an eerie silence, as every face is looking down at their devices with little interaction with each other). Boredom was my enemy.

      But boredom is also a strong ally.  It can cause people to gravitate towards inputs that they would not normally have bothered with.  If there is nothing on TV, I might go shoot some hoops, or grudgingly read a book, or, God forbid, sit with my own thoughts.  A student who finds time on their hands might walk around town and get to know something about their home.  They might talk with each other (texting doesn’t count).  Or watch their classmates in a game. Or watch the news.  Or catch the President’s State of the Union.

      My own journey as a social studies teacher can be traced back to my sixth birthday, where (in one of my earliest memories) I watched President Nixon speak to the country.  I didn’t understand Watergate or the importance of it, or that he was currently making history by being the first president to resign, but I could feel the uncomfortableness of the situation, probably from my parents.  As I grew older, and started to understand politics and elections a little more, the gravity of that moment became somewhat clearer.  While at Westfield State College, Professor Koenig furthered my enlightenment, and interest.  Teaching at UHS forced me to learn more so I could answer student questions.  I watched All the President’s Men, and then finally read the book. I even got the chance to meet and listen to a talk by Bob Woodward, one of the architects of Nixon’s downfall. 

 

      This very long, arduous, often unpleasant path allowed me to have an “earned” knowledge, a term I use for anything we learn through time, effort, and experience.  I firmly believe that this style of learning is responsible for a greater appreciation and much greater understanding of the events.  The downside is that it took many years and some uncomfortable times in front of my classes to get to the point today that I feel very capable teaching the subject.

     If you want the best product, make it from scratch.  Compare a store-bought apple pie with a homemade pie made by Grandma.  It’s no contest.  Education is the same and the recipe is easy;

         Boredom leads to exploration, which leads to analysis, which leads to progress with understanding.

     Fast forward to present day.  Ask any student about Nixon and Watergate, and they can take out their Google machines and read any number of answers.  Ask them to follow up, giving some form of interpretation or opinion, and they struggle mightily.  The deer-in-the-headlights look has become too prevalent in the classroom, due mainly to an insecurity in their depth of knowledge.  They can find the answers, but they just don’t have any concept of their meanings.  This fast-food knowledge feels good at the time, but ultimately leaves you empty.  It is here and then gone.  It doesn’t stick.

     I have had numerous conversations with two of my colleagues in the math department.  Chris Prior and Dave Balunas have been Uxbridge High School treasures for many years, and are fighting the good fight to get students to “earn” their answers to a math problem. Show your work, find the step you made the mistake, fix it.  Understand how you got the answer.  But, how do you get investment from a student who (rightfully) holds up their phone and shows how they got the answer in seconds instead of struggling for an hour with paper and pencil?  Why do they have to understand it?

     Teaching used to be about providing a framework of content, and then facilitating conversation.  Now, the expectation is to give them the information they need, tell them how they should feel about it, create assessments that do not challenge too much, and not expect it to be remembered at a later date.  After all, they can find the answer any time.

     Which brings us to AI.  This is currently taking another layer of understanding out of the equation, because you don’t even have to have a minimum of an idea of what you are talking about in order to achieve an amazing essay on any subject, written at any grade level, with some spelling mistakes to throw anyone who might have suspicions off the scent.

     One thing I need to make very clear, though; THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THESE CURRENT STUDENTS!!  Any generation put into the same environment with the same technology would have similar results, and I’d be a hypocrite if I said my kids didn’t have IPhones.  Hell, this whole blog may be just the grumblings of a middle-aged man who has been doing this too long and is mourning the way life used to be.  But, I don’t think so.  We are increasingly witnessing what happens when people can routinely skip to the end of the book to see how it ends, but have no idea what the story is.  This eats away at important characteristics such as problem-solving, perseverance, pride in good work, and working through failure.  It leads to people in important jobs without the skills needed to do them well. 

     Which leads me back to Dr. Malcolm.  Just because we can give our young people access to the most powerful technology in the world, doesn’t mean we should.  These devices wield huge influences over the adults of the world (just go to any town meeting, faculty meeting, movie theater, professional sporting event, etc, etc. etc.) They also have addictive qualities. What are we doing?

     Surveys of parents have shown a clear majority want their students to have access to their IPhones at all times, mainly because of emergencies such as school lockdowns and shootings.  That’s understandable, and there is an easy answer.

     Get them a flip phone