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About the Author
Mark Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997) and Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (2001). His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, TLS, Yale Review, Partisan Review, Reason Magazine, and many other national periodicals. Topics he will cover include the ideological climate of the campus, knowledge and skill levels of U.S. students, and technology in the classroom.
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Recent Posts
For Millennials, College and Learning Are Not the Same | Comment [19]
The War on Drugs From Left to Right | Comment [114]
Dropout Rates, Arts and Humanities, Graduation Numbers | Comment [23]
Another Problem With Texting | Comment [29]
Books, Libraries, Kids | Comment [4]
Featured Articles By the Author
The Myth of the Techno-Wizard Freshman
There is no shortage of reports on the knowledge deficits of entering students, such as NAEP history and civics scores for 12th Graders.
Against the tide of criticism, however, runs a consistent strain of praise for a supposed mental strength: the digital savvy of the kids. Here, for instance, the president of the MacArthur Foundation wonders whether this generation’s digital know-how is changing the very nature of learning. “Might it be that, for many,” he waxes, “the richest environment for learning is no longer in the classroom, it is outside the classroom — online and after school?”
It pays to look at some sound evidence, though, and put these rosy speculations to the test. One such examination came out a year ago, conducted by Educational Testing Service. The report is here, and the Chronicle write-up is here. The study had 6,300 students take a 75-minute test that asked them to complete 15 Web-based research tasks, the kind of things they have to do in college courses, such as determing bias in Web sites and finding relevant Web pages.
The report concluded: “Few test takers demonstrated key ICT literacy skills” (ICT is short for Information and Communications Technology). Only 35 percent of the subjects could narrow an overly broad search properly, and only 40 percent of them chose the right terms to tailor a search effectively. In constructing a slide presentation, only 12 percent of them stuck to relevant information.
The report is part of a body of discouraging findings and outcomes regarding the academic benefits of technology. Unfortunately, those reports are pretty much swamped by the flood of enthusiasm (and money) pouring over newly-wired classrooms and campuses. Given the enormous cost of technology, we should pay more attention to actual results and give less credence to airy predictions.
Posted at 11:20:13 AM on January 18, 2008 | All postings by Mark BauerleinComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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Mark, not all have boweed the knee to Baal. See my “Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet Is no Substitute for a Library.” I mention some of the same reports you do as well as examine the decline in literacy as hastened by the Web’s ‘snatch and grab’ mentaility.
— Mark Y. Herring · Jan 18, 12:16 PM · #
This summary just goes to show that just because the next generation of students are scoring higher (only an indication of being good test takers), does not mean that this skill translates to technological savvy or even academic excellence. Just because I-pods, Apple I-phones and Facebook are popular among the young, doesn’t mean that these skills translate to being prepared to do well at the university. Our response to the myth of the technologicall savvy freshman is more of an indication of where previous generations are with respect to their comfort level with new technology. Money for education is scarse and becoming more so every day. We need to be careful not to throw money at technology in the hopes of drawing the best and brightest. The money would be better spent on developing a Writing/Research Center to help students develop the skills they will really need to succeed in college.
— Marie Nubia-Feliciano, M.S. · Jan 18, 01:04 PM · #
As a 51 yr old tech nerd (not as advanced as a geek), I find that young folk may be very comfortable with a remote control or digital camera, but really know squat about computers. They all come to me for help! See my Toys column in LA2DAY.com.
— Peter Basch · Jan 19, 06:27 PM · #
I have my own personal technology-as-basis-of-an-educated-mind assessment procedure: Can this young person shape the world to whatever aims and goals he has the ability to develop and maintain? Are the aims and goals that this person shapes the world to worthy and safe for many others and all others alive with him? But most fundamentally—is this person more interesting than the food when we have lunch together?
I have tested, thusly, approximately 1700 undergraduates and 400 graduates in this way over the last few years. The answer is 3.
However, 30 years ago, a very similar test applied to appoximately half as many students and proportionately fewer grad students produced the answer 2.
Neither non-technical life experience, instruction of any sort in college, nor technology-savvy-ness produce much in the way of educatedness of person as outcome.
I find it amazing that grown adults actually operate day in and day out using such tiny, happenstance, stunted, belittling, pitiful operative definitions of education and educated-ness of person. With such base criteria, who cares who meets them? Does it matter if piddling little amounts of educatedness are best obtained by computer literate people as opposed to romantic sublime dwellers in out of date poetries?
With the professoriate manifestly uneducated and unable to propound and elicit a robust definition of educatedness of person and of society, we all get subjected to heated discussions about whether pitiful amounts of “educatedness” are best achieved by Windows-literates, Linus-literates, Edgar A. Poe-literates, Goethe-literates and the like.
The MacArthur foundation, worshipped by academics because of their lust for its money, is absolutely filled with amateur random images of what education and educatedness consist of. No one criticizes it because everyone wants its money. A wonderful quintessential academic phenomenon of our time. That foundation’s eloquent waxings about digital youth culture’s possibility of making “a rich environment for learing” that is “not in the classroom” come straight from the most pitiful stunted illiterate incompetent definitions of “educatedness” thinkable by the mind of man. We lust for money from such sources!!!!
I like Hannah Arendt’s distinction between educating someone and someone learning—people can learn all their days without for that reason in any way becoming the least bit educated, she said (in rough paraphrase). The MacArthur foundation and others enamored of “rich environments” for learning and “alternatives to classrooms as loci” for learning, make two mistakes—one, the environments that elicit large and important types of educating and learning kill people in not a few cases, and wimpier environments elicit exponentially less educating and learning; two, the idea that much educating or learning somehow come from the “richer” environments outside of classrooms” is belied by the billions of businesspersons, in even richer info environments than kids or professors, who, after decades of exposure, cannot compete with your average chipmonk in lunch conversation interest-ability. Lust for money is such an enobler of the mind (and of the lunch conversation). Just ask French grande ecoles grads suffering an American guest for lunch—ever got a decent comment on Althusser, Kristeva, Barthes, etc. from such a guest?
From time to time the MacArthur foundation reveals the dirty linen of the vast incompetent machinery of persons choosing its grants and making its decisions—how embarrassing!!!
— Richard Tabor Greene · Jan 21, 05:08 AM · #
Ah, deja vu! At 75 and retired since 1998 I have a feeling I have seen this stuff not twice, not thrice, but even more often before. As I recall, when computers were first introduced into the library and elsewhere on campus administrators were so eager to get With-It that they spent as much as they could on it. When bothered about the need the students had for help with the computers they replied that the students all knew far more than they did (true enough) about computers and needed no help (untrue), taking care not to check on it and find if was true.That is where even minor myths come from – the need to believe something so that you can do what you want to do. I spent so much time helping with simple computer problems when I would rather have been doing reference work I became discouraged, though others just loved it – you hardly ever had to leave the room and only had to provide the same help
over and over, often with no need to even get out of your chair. Of course lots and lots of people in education believe the students know it all already
for it is so overwhelmingly convenient.
— Roger Horn · Jan 21, 10:22 AM · #
Technology is not the problem. Many students do not put enough time or effort into their work. Many do not listen or don’t care to follow instructions. I begin teaching web-based research to my students in 4th grade. Yet, many students still have difficulty with this skill in 8th grade. If we were to return to our old methods of doing research, the above mentioned Educational Testing Service report would have similiar results.
I am not worried about the cost of technology to our schools. My main concern is the lack of respect and concern that parents and students have towards education and learning. Learning can take place online or offline. If a student wants to learn, he will find a way.
Yes, technology has a big cost to our schools. Technology is here to stay. Schools have to have it… just because… technology is part of our everyday lives. I for one, would rather use a computer to assist me in finding information than going back to the card catalog or microfiche.
— Marie · Jan 21, 02:06 PM · #
My goodness,
I feel like I’m back in the teachers’ lounge listening to people whine about their students. Get a grip. Of course student know very little about the infrastructure of technology. They know what they know; what they teach themselves and each other!
They get almost no ethical/practical instruction about communication technologies in school, because everything is shut down and teachers get next to no professional development that has to do with learning and technology.
Their parents (beyond the 3% of early adopters) have been made so worried about privacy and safety issues that they are reluctant to allow their children to teach themselves at home. Students do learn, however, what they learn at their friends’ houses under no supervision.
Our goal should be to pay very close attention to the actual literacy & research practices of our students: Learn From Them, Respect Them. Our subsequent goal should be to intervene by making the practical, ethical, and disciplinary attitudes and approaches that a Humanistic education provided us relevant to them.
Is it easy? No. Is it going to get harder before it get better? Yes. IMHO this is because of the testing culture that is ubiquitous in our schools. So suck it up and get ready to do some teaching. No one else is likely to do it.
— Richard Selfe · Jan 21, 08:41 PM · #