Recently a tinnitus meditation
friend & I were talking about the near impossibility of finding certain bits of hardware and electronics gear in the retail market. We’ve both been involved in electronics, chemistry, ham radio, and other activities since we were kids (was it that long ago?). I was in the process of rebuilding a 12 volt relay for another guy’s car — a skill that’s practically vanished in today’s disposable world. It occurred to both of us that a large percentage of kids in more recent generations aren’t actively involved in hands-on hobbies that have the potential to teach them any basic science, much less inspire the fragile blooms of curiosity and analytical thinking to grow. But they can all text at the speed of sound and beat any Xbox game to smithereens, so I guess that’s something.
In some cases, truly educational toys (read: erector and chemistry sets) have been practically legislated out of existence by our paranoid, litigation-mad, safety-fanatical society. When I was a kid, my dad brought home electrical components, chemicals and gear of the type found in typical Gilbert chemistry sets, and other interesting devices. He’d hand these to me with the suggestion “make something out of this.” I invented a latching photoelectric relay, a mechanical counter, and an absolutely amazing flare powder that could melt Pyrex glass. If he gave me things like that today, Social Services would throw him in jail for child endangerment. There’s something wrong there.
In other cases, changes in technology have led to a lack of availability of certain very basic components. I needed a roll of magnet wire for the above-mentioned relay work, but no one in a 60 mile radius of my house had it in stock because it’s become such an unnecessary item in the modern world. But how will kids learn the basic building blocks of electricity (electromagnets, motors, coils, solenoids, etc.) without access to this most fundamental component? And are any of them even interested in such projects?
Curiosity is something that is acquired at a very early age, or not at all. How many kids in our Xbox generation develop that basic level of curiosity unless their parents somehow instill it in them? And how many parents actually have the time, not to mention the willingness (and ability) to teach these basic skills? One can’t pass on skills one doesn’t possess, which suggests that we’re on a downward spiral of sorts. The characteristics that built modern society — curiosity, critical thinking, and analytical skills — are becoming endangered species. This is, as others have noted, killing our ability to compete in the global market.
This is not just about science, either. History is another area that’s lacking, and my impression is that it’s because of the boring way in which the subject is generally taught in public school. In many cases history is presented as “names, dates, and places” — in other words, as dry memorization of facts with little context around them. Other writers have commented on this (see James Loewen’s excellent Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong for examples) and it’s definitely a problem. Students who aren’t engaged, who can’t find anything interesting about the subject under study, are not likely to continue reading about it after class is finished. Thus we have generations of students whose only exposure to actual history are the often badly written, boring, politically correct, sanitized textbooks found in public schools. These are also, in my experience, the folks most likely to freak out over new discoveries that threaten what they were taught. They see history is some immutable, set-in-stone thing that can never be altered as the result of new evidence.
This isn’t an indictment of teachers or the educational system as a whole. With the ongoing doubling of human knowledge in ever shorter periods of time, today’s students need to learn far more in far less time than any previous generation. But I wonder if basic skills aren’t being sacrificed for the sake of passing tests, of showing “progress” that can be measured in a grade book and transformed into the electronic equivalent of a gold star.
The question is whether a downward spiral is in effect. Is each generation less “capable” than the last due to the loss of certain core skills in favor of others more necessary for survival in the modern world? Are we in the process of giving up basic curiosity and critical thinking in favor of relying on technological tools that answer our every question at the touch of a few keys? In other words, are we becoming, as some suggested years ago, a nation of technically competent barbarians?