Said article references TED talks as a key educational element in future classroom lectures, as broadcast by "super-teachers", which is similarly ridiculous. TED talks are roughly as informative as NPR programs which are roughly informative as the back of a cereal box, and they function mostly as infotainment for educated people so they feel good about being educated and conspicuous consumption thereof signals to other citizens that you are in fact, educated and modern and know all the right things. It's the intellectual version of keeping up with the Joneses'.
So how can I dismiss TED talks and NPR (just to pick on a couple) as not educational, when they are clearly given by well-educated people on very thoughtful topics? Because they demand almost nothing of the listener is my response, and as such function more as brain candy than brain food. Or at best, a brain bite, rather than a full meal. It reminded me of an article I read earlier this week from Robert Twigger on Aeon, talking about polymaths. Specifically, the section on the importance of the Nucleus basalis on learning. This is the portion of the brain, if I understand correctly, that generates acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter in memory formation and learning.
In his article, Twigger asserts that:
Between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the nucleus basalisis is permanently ‘switched on’. It contains an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and this means new connections are being made all the time. Typically this means that a child will be learning almost all the time — if they see or hear something once they remember it. But as we progress towards the later teenage years the brain becomes more selective. From research into the way stroke victims recover lost skills it has been observed that the nucleus basalis only switches on when one of three conditions occur: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application.
The third, aspect of what activates improved memory is what interests me the most: "intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application." Which is not something I'm convinced that the modern emphasis on tech and tech products is actively fostering in the world. When you see people addicted to their phones and their computers, and complaining about their use of such, what are they typically complaining about? In my experience, almost universally their reduced attention span, their constant need to be dividing their attention between this app and that app and this other thing. To be sure, the highly motivated can mostly likely minimize distractions and focus heavily on learning through apps and computers, but what about people who are constantly asking, like the over-used acting joke, "What's my motivation?"
Ideally, this is where a teacher comes in. Again, the answer I'm being given from the Atlantic is that kids are just naturally drawn to tech because it is it, and now and modern and shiny and why wouldn't they learn when given a computer? To be sure, children are drawn to computers, but what app inspires them to focus hard on a topic and learn it well in a virtual environment? It brings to mind another article I read this week, via @shelske. In it, he outlines the key factors in motivating change (from the book Change or Die by Alan Deutschman), the first of which being:
"a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that you can relate to who inspires the possibility of change."
Isn't that what we want a school to be? A community that inspires students to the possibility of change? Moreover, can we ever realistically expect machines themselves to be the sole motivator for learning? If human relationships are one of the key motivators for change, and I suspect they are, does it not make the role of responsive, interactive human teacher irreducible in education?
So as far as I can tell, if it is indeed true that intense focus is required to genuinely learn, and human relationships are key (be it parent, teacher or more likely some combination of the two) in providing the inspiration and willpower to focus and learn anything well, then any tech solution that diminishes either one of those two elements of education is either misguided at best or actually harmful and counterproductive at worst. So while tech and tech promoters do seem to answer the questions of, "is it new, is it modern, is it shiny, do people want to fiddle with it", it seems important to point out that these are not really important questions in to how to best serve students in their education.
A better question might be, "How do we get students inspired and focused in a world seemingly hell-bent on distraction and entertainment disguised as education?" Hint: the answer is NOT, "disguise our own education as entertainment and distraction."
As bastions of education and learning that have existed for centuries, the universities needed to do nothing more than provide the materials and space for focus, and the human beings, or "teachers" as I like to call them, to inspire students to take advantage of it. Embracing the attitudes and equipment of universal distraction as a way of keeping up with the times and appearing modern is not victory for education, it is the surrender of the timeless necessities of human learning to the fickle consumerism of the present moment by the strangely weak-willed guardians of institutional power and as such, in my humble opinion, is a gigantic mistake.
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