The “look it up” generation
When I was younger (i know, I’m not even 25, whatever, just run with it) and had to do language or literature work for school, my classmates always thought that I had the upperhand. My dad used to be a teacher of Romanian and French and was part of the literary world. They believed that it was a walk in the park, that I would basically ask him for answers, or even worse, sometimes they would suspect that he did my homework. But it wasn’t like that at all. I would go to him to ask for help, but his answer always made me mad. He would always say, “here are these 5 books, look it up here and then come to me and we’ll talk if you still have any questions”. For a long time I would complain that instead of helping this would add hours of trying to find answers which he could’ve told me from the begining. As a result, my homework would always be a bit more complex, and this, obviously led my classmates to their beliefs that my dad was doing my work.
The reason I shared this story is that today’s generation of students (pre-college students) have the idea of “look it up” embedded in their culture. The mass appeal and dissemination of consumer technology coupled with nearly ubiquitous internet access, and the growing interest in social networking led to this paradigm shift. When they hear a word, a name, or anything that they don’t know, they look it up. While some can claim that it’s shallow and inconclusive (they don’t open the books, they go online click on the first link of the search, most of the times this being wikipedia), one has to see that the glass is actually more than half full. The reign of ignorance has passed, no longer do young students remain untouched by new information, they “look it up”. There still are enough people that think Rome is the same thing as Romania, but the downward trend in their numbers is picking up speed.
In short, there’s still hope for the future. 