It is now both a truism and a cliché that we are immersed in an incessant stream of information provided by rapidly evolving technology. As we begin a strategic thinking process to answer the question, “What should a 21st Century Education be for SFDS?” this change in the availability of information is a key parameter.
Consider the following: When I first addressed the upper school students about the earthquake in Haiti, I posed the question, “What are the causes of poverty in Haiti?” I really hadn’t thought much about intractable poverty and international aid policy in quite a while. I sent my daughter a copy of David Brooke’s editorial in which he compared how many people died in the San Francisco earthquake with the tens of thousands who died in Haiti. My daughter was outraged and commented that this was just more of that stupid neo-liberal, IMF, capitalist economic theory. And that Jeffery Sachs was an apologist for an international economic system designed to maintain the dominance of first-world capitalist powers and the exploitation of developing nations.
I had no idea what she was talking about. However, Wikipedia – only two clicks away – had a very extensive entry on neo-liberal economic theory with several scholarly citations and references.
With just another hour of reading I learned about the only successful slave revolt, over 100 years of reparations paid to France, the impact of over-harvesting of sugar cane on soil erosion, and Dr. Paul Farmer.
Two more clicks and two days later, Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer was delivered to my front door.
Today when I Google, “Why is Haiti” immediately Google provides me with the following choices in its drop down menu:
why is Haiti so poor
why is Haiti a failed state
why is Haiti in such bad shape
why is Haiti cursed
why is Haiti a third world country
why is Haiti important
why is Haiti poorer than Dominican Republic
Clicking on any one of them provides me in less than 0.5 seconds tens of thousands of links. In less than a week an overwhelming amount of data, a crowd of facts, opinions, and arguments, has been accumulated. From an educator’s point of view, this raises many questions.
While access to technology means I don’t have to invest the same kind of time and resources to collecting information, movies, stories, and other educational materials, it necessitates that I must teach a new set of skills to help students navigate the mass of data offered by the web. I have to help students identify reliable information; distinguish information from opinion and argument; establish criteria for scholarly resources; and analyze the assumptions, values, and political point of view of authors.
Perhaps the most challenging situation for an educator, a parent, and our students, is the allocation of our most precious and diminishing resource: our undivided and sustained attention. Are you surprised to learn that I have not even started reading Tracy Kidder’s book? The lure of checking my email, of reading the newest headline, or of viewing the hottest YouTube video is hard to resist. My brain just craves another dopamine fix.
But without time devoted to in-depth learning, I won’t be able to determine how my small contribution to Haiti relief might actually help alleviate intractable poverty. The instant availability of a wealth of information is both a benefit and a liability. Our challenge as educators is to embrace the benefits and safeguard our children from the unintended negative consequences.
