The other day I was reading an article about electronic media and how it affects the education of people today. It immediately made me think of the movie Idiocracy. For those who haven't seen it, it is about a guy who, through a failed experiment, ends up 500 years in the future. In the world he arrives in people have basically evolved to become stupid. The movie is pretty funny for those who like stupid comedies, but it does address the same topic of the article I read, is technology causing people to become dumber? One can argue that there is an increase in laziness caused by technology, but I don't think this means people are getting dumber.
Every time I hear someone say people are getting dumber, it makes me a little confused. I guess it depends on how you define intelligence. Some people base it strictly on IQ scores, but I'm sure the average 10 year old today knows more than a "smart" person 200 years ago. Some people base it off of whether or not a person knows specific facts that "everyone should know". If someone doesn't know who the sixth president was or what the capital of Nebraska is, does that make them stupid or just bad at Jeopardy? Some may base it off of literacy, but there is no solid evidence to suggest that the literacy rate has declined in America, and it would be nearly impossible to do a study accurate enough to form a realistic opinion anyway. So why is it so many people think Americans are getting dumber. To me, I think it has more to do with people feeling that their generation is somehow better than the next. Each generation will (hopefully) always be more technologically advanced than the last, so one would think that people would continue to advance.
Technology has decreased the need to memorize information, but has also given people access unlimited knowledge. I still think of myself as young but I am old enough to remember having research papers in school that I had to read through 10 different books and surf through a bunch of outdated encyclopedias just to find enough information to compile a mess of a paper on some lame generic topic because that was all of the information available at the time. Last year my daughter did an assignment in Spanish for her kindergarten class on the clouded leopard. When I was younger my school would not have even thought about having an assignment like this. Knowledge is more readily available now than at any time in history which is a good thing. The only problem with it I see is that people are so quick to form opinions based something they see on TV or the internet that they lose sight of what is truth and what is persuasion. There are always two sides to a story, but the first persuasive thing you see is the easiest to believe I guess. Rather than blame technology for causing these problems why not embrace it for its benefits and focus attention on teaching kids to think for themselves, research both sides of a story, and form their own opinions. I may not be smart enough to memorize the directions to someone's house or memorize a person’s phone number but I am smart enough to know that I don't need to. If that makes me dumber then I am happy to be an idiot.
I think you're right about generations thinking their 'common' sense outweighs the modern-sense of younger generations. Especially, with the world changing so fast, it's easier for a gap to form between parents and children. I do think that drugs (prescriptions included)create less smart people, because of changes in brain chemistry and, therein, rationale; However, we are overall getting smarter. We will always have to adapt and live in the present; and if we were getting dumber, we wouldn't still be inventing things and technology wouldn't still be accelerating exponentially. It's like that Einstein quote, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go through it's whole life thinking it is stupid." Each generation has their own intelligence.
ReplyDeleteKinda off the subject but that quote reminds me of the animal school story. They told that story at Alyssa's preschool graduation thing. It really makes you think. I guess a lot of other cultures focus on people's strengths rather than trying to improve their weaknesses which I wish would happen more in our school systems. Why make a kid that sucks at math do 15 years of it just to get a degree in a non-Mathematical field and get a job that requires doing no math at all. If a kid is not good at something or doesn't like it, they most likely aren't going to choose a career that requires proficiency in that area. But kids are still tested on overall knowledge in a bunch of different areas and individual school funding is largely based on the results of those tests. Those are the types of areas where we are getting dumber.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's a TED talk on how our school systems and ideas about education are sort of broken. The speaker gives an example about a child who excels in Subject A and does poorly in Subject B; so, rather than recognizing and investing in Subject A, the parents get a tutor for Subject B. This is backwards.
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