Here at Chatterbox, we’ve talked about the many things that technology has given us, and they’re not all bad; we’ve also talked about the many things that technology has given us that are not all good.
When we discussed phasing out cursive in many schools and why proponents still defend that choice, we discussed essential reasons to learn script far past simply being able to read and write it. Sure, script is beautiful, defines us by our signature, denotes parts of our personality, gives us opportunities to share our inner flair, and is faster than printing. More imperative and important, we discussed several inherent disciplines and developmental processes that are linked to perfecting script.
In that same way, we should acknowledge that we’re losing other perks to technology. For the most part, around the world, we are now at a place where technology is attending school with each of our students. Most people think it’s a real gain, but there are negative aspects of it, and we should use whatever opportunities we can to replace the important things we’ve lost to the convenience of it all.
Obviously, kids bringing cell phones into school is technology that isn’t serving their education or anyone else’s. That remains a whole topic unto itself. For now, it suffices to say, we would do better keeping them off campus.
As for computers, they need to be better monitored on campus, but they serve us well. Having the world at our fingertips is a magnificent thing. We gain time, efficiency, and truly have access to endlessly more research than we could find in countless hours at a library. Still, like script, we also lose some great skills and perks in the absence of all that research by hand and page.
Before clicking became a thing to expedite everything including all manner of term paper writing and research at large, we were given “term papers” that truly took the whole “term” to complete. Each one started with numerous trips to the library, armed with pencils (remember those?), index cards, and a keen knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System. Perfecting that index system was a research necessity, but it was far more than that. Like perfecting penmanship, it came with bragging rights; it was a rite of passage. Like learning to drive or traveling to a big city alone, it marked earned accomplishment and was a reward of discipline. Sure, it sounds corny now, but we have rites of passage today that will seem corny to the next generation. In short, it made us personally proud, and that’s always a great marker in life.
Without a click, we learned to find the right research sources, glean the right information from dozens of books and, after investing dozens of hours into choosing the information that we believed best pertained to our topic, we copied information by hand, organized, edited, recopied, typed, reread, rewrote and retyped. Again, like Dewey and cursive, it was discipline, accomplishment, and was necessary to achieve familiarity with our topic before the agony and accolade of our presentation.
All of these things were imperative parts of long delayed gratification for our effort; each was a learning process in and of itself, a sign of maturation, and included the perk of the Zen that came from hours in a quiet library alone, working, thinking, processing and producing.
Yes, there are still some of those elements at play while we are researching on a computer and sailing the information galaxy. Still, many of the working parts of too much technology have given way to something else. The convenience doesn’t result in just perks; a young parent pushing a toddler in a carriage ends up reading a phone instead of showing his/her child flowers and birds. Peek-a-boo is becoming a lost form of “face time” that taught the essential life skill of reading actual faces.
When we learned to put slow time into things like research, mentally making change of a dollar, perfecting multiplication and penmanship, teaching fundamentals to the baby and, yes, slow research, we learn things we don’t even know we’re learning. We’re also teaching things we’ve forgotten were important to teach – patience, tenacity, dealing with repetitive action, slow resolution and actual social interaction.
My first assignment in honors history was to discuss how the world’s newest technological advancements affected everyday living. Those advancements dissolve in the mere dust of today’s technology. Still, slow learning and study sure was a great chance to perfect introspection ... another skill jeopardized by today’s newest technological advancements.
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