2010 Free Response Question

In the 1950s consumer culture in America boomed. This brought on the advent of televisions and radios. New forms of communication that would continually get expanded upon to the point that they are at today. Before the radio families would spend their evenings reading books together and would go to bed earlier before electricity allowed them to continuously have light. Although technology allows students to connect to teachers and their works in new ways the negatives outweigh the positives in school.

Technology negatively impacts students life by removing imagination from work this effectively automates the children into robots. It also makes students have short term attention spans. I am currently at an Art festival where we were told to draw a Form line design on a skateboard. As we began I realized that 90 percent of the students had, without even trying to form an idea of their own like good little robots, immediately whipped out their phones to gather information and designs off of the internet.

            Schools must regard the fact that although technology is the “modern” way of learning a deficiency of valuable skills is formed due to the ignorance and unproductivity, formed by technological advancements. As a result, students have grown less cultured and less intelligent. According to David Gelernter, “Our skill free children are overwhelmed by information even without the internet.” (Source E) The rise of technology has not improved the quality of schooling. Children have begun to play more and more video games (which is very unproductive according to Dyson in Source C), develop a lack of skills. Just because kids have the opportunity to utilize technology does not mean that it is beneficial.  Gelernter notes the irony in Clinton’s argument that technology can give kids access to worldly information, unable to be achieved without things like the internet. Kids are falling behind due to technology, don’t let schools do the same.

            Furthermore, technological devices have been known to distract children, causing a lack of imagination due in part because of the lack of nature around them. In Source C Esther Dyson believes that  the rite of technology in school curriculums is not necessarily a good thing, but that it is a significant “social problem”. He argues that in today’s children live in an “environment that often seems to stifle a child’s imagination rather than stimulate it” (Source C) The “over-feeding” of information causes children to easily lose focus and causes shorter attention spans. If schools were to adapt and bring new technologies in they would be fostering an unimaginative and robotic-like mindset in their students.

            In addition, due to the increasing power of technology children are spending less time in nature. The cartoon in Source F depicts situational irony by depicting a child inside, watching the nature channel, instead of playing outside. Students should learn from experience, not simply watching a screen.

            Before schools fall into the trap of electronics they must consider all of the negative side effects of removing that experience and connection that student shave when they actually have hands on work rather than stimulations. By taking a 3D experience and converting it into a flat screen you remove all of the valuable lessons that students learn by doing. Technology, although easy to use, teaches students to not think for themselves. However, school is all about teaching students to think for themselves.