Yeah, I’m not really addressing the benefit of technology when it comes to eliminating unnecessary “fumbling” with the known. My comments were part of my take on the the overall import of the thread. Students in schools used to be taught in ways that developed critical thinking skills (at the grammar school level this meant things like rote learning, for example). For centuries, this is the way kids were taught. For centuries, thinkers were produced. But now, this type of teaching/learning is dismissed. We have pundits and politicians but not sages and diplomats. The outcome of eliminating these developmental steps the education process is clearly apparent in classrooms today, where students, who can access an answer via Google, for instance, cannot always articulate the reasons why the answer is correct (or any other higher-level thinking on the matter at hand).
As to the issue of recent candidates and the lack of quality among them. The re-election of Obama goes far in making my case. We have a populace of, what are they called, “low information voters” who had no problem sizing up his first term and thought, “Let’s do it again.” Are these folks who didn’t know? Perhaps some. Are these people who just prefer lib. policies? No doubt a large portion of his base was made up of life-long lib losers. Are these people who cannot adequately examine the available information and recognize that we are not being taken to “the happy place” with Obama? Probably more than a few. These are folks who can access information, but not make heads or tails of it. Is this a blip on the radar or a trend? Do you find yourself talking to folks that are simply incapable of reasoning, discussing, disagreeing even without quickly hurting for thoughtful responses?
I see this in the school where I teach all day long. I have many students who are smart, can figure out technology (some develop their own games), they know how to get around the district’s filters so they can Facebook all day long, but what they can’t do is make sense of academic material. And when the material is explained to them, they cannot see how it might affect them. And when suggestions about how it might affect them are brought up, their response is to say, “So what?” I know a lot of that is just teenagers struggling with their education (the same as it ever was), but this “issue of life”—the inability to think is reaching critical mass. I often nudge my colleagues with, “We’re teaching them what to think. Instead, we need to teach them TO think. But I don’t know if my colleagues give this notion too much thought.
Look at your own suggestion: “...but maybe it’s a good thing, maybe all the smart people have figured out that politics is a terrible job and are in the work force actually producing....” Those smart folks who have figured out that politics makes for a terrible job, haven’t been able to figure out that, while they may choose to leave politics alone, politics will not necessarily reciprocate. What will happen when their short-sighted view of politics leads to an ever-increasing confiscation of the goods and capitol they have produced with their own hands? Will they (we) suffer the consequences of such choices with the lack of sufficient critical analysis?
Sorry for the lengthy response. I realize that you and I aren’t necessarily talking about the same thing. And I do realize the advantages of time-saving technology (Hey, I’m uploading on my computer here, aren’t I?) I have seen the substituting of technology for teaching/learning in the classroom that, I fear, is heading us in the wrong direction and, as August approacheth, I must begin to get my game face on to let friend and foe alike know the way things ought to be!
Your interpretation of the elections is just plain wrong. Once anybody starts throwing around “low information voter” they’re blaming the wrong side, look at the “low quality candidates”. Who should people have voted for instead of Obama? Romney who is just as big a socialist as Obama? Bachman who’s clearly a loon and lacks a lot of critical thinking of her own? Ron Paul the Truther (talk about critical thinking issues)? The only one of the candidates I liked at all was Caine, and his bailing once things got tough he fled thus showing his candidacy was actually a book tour. There were NO quality candidates, same in 2008. It’s not the voters fault nobody worth a crap ran, they get to vote for who runs, they don’t get to CHOOSE who runs.
The vast majority of what I learned in school I’ve never used, it doesn’t apply to me, it doesn’t apply to most people. When teenagers are complaining about that they’re probably write. Probably the single most useful class I ever took was typing, math was useful through algebra but nothing after that has ever applied, Latin was probably my second most useful class taught me more English than English class ever did. Probably the least useful class ever was free enterprise, it actually made me dumber, no really the teacher gave a bunch of us the final on the first day of class as an experiment, then we took the same final at the end and I got 4 fewer points.
If you want smart people in politics go ahead, join the race. No good blaming other smart people for choosing productive lives over politics while you yourself produce rather than rule.
And truthfully NOTHING in that test is about critical thinking, we could teach critical thinking just fine in the modern curricula, any problems there are with the method not the content.