Once again, an armada of boxy, yellow torpedoes will be making their way through the streets at dawn, transporting legions of young people to . . .
the area’s schools. They will line up in hallways, file into classrooms and the assumption is that they will absorb mountains of useful information like good little sponges.
It’s now, in the tumultuous wake of summer and dawn of the new scholastic year that it would be prudent to think about what our children should be thinking about.
(To the teachers reading this, please wait until the end of this layman’s analysis of your profession before pelting the office with rotten tomatoes.)
Our systems of learning are set up to give a basic understanding of the world as efficiently as possible, to a broad range of students. However, among the obviously useful nuggets, like basic math and spelling, there are some subjects that are harder to square with everyday life.
Many readers will remember taking hours of lessons in cursive writing, a skill that’s no longer mandatory for students in many provinces.
I distinctly remember one of my teachers telling our math class that we wouldn’t have a calculator with us at all times when we ventured out into the big, wide world. A little more than a decade later, (yes, I’m very young) practically everyone carries a fairly powerful computer in their pocket.
This is not to say there is no value in these “old” skills, they can really come in handy when your phone’s battery dies or when you have to read a letter from your great-aunt. But rapid changes in technology, or more accurately, the changes in lifestyle that they bring about, have had huge impacts on what, and how we learn.
The sheer amount of information available through the internet is the biggest technological change that recent generations have grappled with, and while the benefits are numerous, so are the downsides. In the midst of being bombarded with megatonnes of information at all times of day, we’re also stuck with the task of determining which skills will be useful when children reach adulthood, and which ones they can just look up on Google or YouTube.
As the British author and philosopher Aldous Huxley wrote, “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” Children that grow up in the present day have no conception of the analog world and its various skill sets, just as their parents had no experience with the telegraph or the horse and buggy.
Not only has technology become abundant, but the rate of change has increased as well. There were slightly more than 100 years between the invention of the land line and the invention of the cell phone. There were less than 50 between the first cell phone and the release of the iPhone. This stuff snowballs quickly, and the next big shift is just around the corner.
Will it be 5G internet? Artificial intelligence? Lightsabres? There’s no way of knowing (but you can probably guess what I’m crossing my fingers for).
That is why the most important skill for young people to develop in their time at school is the ability to adapt to change with critical and independent thought.
Teaching kids how to think is easier said than done, and I’m sure our local educators have a better handle on the subject than a 20-something with too much caffeine in his bloodstream. But it takes a mind that’s been carefully honed to discern what information is worth keeping and what should be thrown away.
We can’t possibly imagine the future that this new generation will inhabit, but we can give them the skills, both ancient and new, to make their own way.
Caleb Nickerson
