University of Google

I got in a debate with a student the other day over an item on a standardized test in my mystery state that involved reading a somewhat obscure form of reference material.  It wasn’t a chart of planetary viewing times, but let’s say for laughs and fun that it was. 

The student’s contention was that this test item was basically B.S., and that not only did it test knowledge of how to read a reference material that a minuscule percentage of the U.S. actually uses on anything remotely resembling a day-to-day basis, but that he would just use the Internet to look up this information (should he ever find himself in need of it) anyway, and you didn’t really need to know a lot of stuff because — again — you can just use the Internet to look it up.

 Everyone’s a genius graduate of the University of Google.

I find this attitude frustrating, and I said so.  To him, which is nice.  I told him something that, as an educator, I profoundly believe: that the only real knowledge you possess is the knowledge you possess between your ears; that the only knowledge you really own is the knowledge you have when you have no resources around you; that the only knowledge that’s yours is what stays when all the lights are off and the electricity is gone, and you’re just left with yourself.

I realize I sound like I belong to a somewhat ancient culture in saying that — a culture that would say, “Yes, Adso, you will only really know The Odyssey when you’ve memorized EVERY WORD OF IT,”  but part of me (the survivalist part who believes that at some time, society will collapse) feels very profoundly that we can’t count on the University of Google always being there. 

There’s a line from Dune I’m reminded of just now: Never make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind.  

When you effectively make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind, you no longer have a man with a mind.  You have a thinking machine, and you have just taken one of the key elements of that human being — the element that elevates that human somewhere above the level of the amoeba or people who buy trucks needing very, very large tires — and have rendered it effectively impotent.

Yes, I have heard the arguments along the lines of, “You don’t have to teach people facts; you have to teach them to look up facts when they need them.”  Often, these arguments come from teachers — take that how you will — but I find them unpersuasive. 

For one thing, I don’t find those ideas to be mutually exclusive: clearly, there are too many facts about any given discipline for them all to be memorized, but clearly, without facts acting as the fundamental basis of what we know, we’ll barely be able to apply anything at all, particularly when (or if) we have no access to the University of Google.  And again, it’s all very well to argue that you don’t need to know something – you can just look it up – but my counterargument would be that if you need to do that, you don’t really know it at all.

As a homeschooler, I believe in memorization.  I’ve seen it train the brain, both mine and my child’s, and have that act of memorization make other ideas, other concepts, easier to “stick.”  I’m fond of mnemonic devices and learning chants and other ways of retaining those fundamental pieces of information on which ultimately more important ones are built.  And once they’re in your head for good, they stay.  They’re yours.

Anyway, the student listened to me politely, which I appreciate, but I know he left unconvinced and unconverted.

Am I the only one out there who thinks this?

~ by adsoofmelk on February 3, 2008.