It was not long ago I remember
someone saying that he had to stay back at home since he was expecting a phone call!
It is not long since someone asked me to go ahead while he jotted down some
points from the references in the library! I remember how we would eagerly wait
for weeks till the postman shows up with the letter we badly wanted to read! And
I know how it feels to not be able to share with friends the news about a new
acquisition just because schools were closed for vacations!
Being sandwiched
between times when technology was more mechanical and when it evolved into more
user friendly and activity engaging gadgets, I understand how liberating it is to
have a phone that goes with you rather than you waiting alone for it to ring! People,
like me, enjoy sharing a cup of coffee with our best buddies while ‘wiki’-ing on
our notepad the info we need for an assignment. We find it enjoyable to have
another browser tab to share a photo we just clicked. And it is ecstasy when we
read a comment posted by a long lost common friend.
Those who were born in
and around my times are the blessed few who witnessed the transition from the
magnetic tapes to i-pods. We have been the change from those black, big, finger-busting
landline phones to the 4G enabled touch screen smart phones. We have been part
of shifting the old B&W CRT televisions from our living rooms and fixing
the Internet Enabled 3D screens on our bedroom walls.
I bet you will all agree
that this has influenced our thinking, our behavior and even the way we use our
brains. Being able to check for info on a website, talk about it in a phone
call, send an instant message to another and in the meanwhile glance at the
channels being flipped on the remote is just the convenience and comfort
technology brought into our lives. Being able to do this all at once is just a way
of life to those who were born into a world full of such technological
conveniences. Paradoxically, to some others, this is sign of the disturbing
times that lie ahead! Time when our planets future is at stake since the
younger ones are so much hooked up to technology that their brains are growing
smaller.
We conveniently place these
cohorts at the other end of the ‘gap’ in the generation timeline. We treat them
as the ones who never tend to understand the trends. And ever since the pace of
growth and development gained unprecedented momentum, there has been a tug of
war of the generations at either end. Ironically the growth of any society lies
in its willingness to accept and collaborate the generations at both ends of
the ‘gap’.
Before we declare war
with those on the other side, have we not experienced the fear of our parents
in sending us out of our homes alone or talking to a stranger by the gate? Yet
we inherited the courage to post our personal moments on virtual timelines and
we even went ahead and exchanged comments with the stranger’s friend! For
someone who has led a sober life and gained respect from peers, can you blame
him if he thinks it is brutal to walk around shaking your head with wires
hanging out of your ears right to your lower abdomen!
In the first place, I
wonder why we get so concerned about the brains. Hasn’t life been all about
this? Lesser space to live, smaller families, lesser forests, smaller gadgets,
lesser water to drink, smaller skulls, lesser ozone layer, smaller words,
lesser ice in the arctic. Isn’t it just in sync to have smaller brains!
The funny thing is that
technology is only what came after you! How many of us would consider
electricity as technology. Or for that matter the water that flows through the
taps, the fuel that goes into your car, an asprin, a house, a shoe. Isn’t all
that just how things should be? Do we really use them as technology?
What was new technology
to us is way of life for the newer generation. The young of today have been
accustomed to the world being constantly inter connected. Right from birth they
have been exposed to multiple gadgets and multiple media that constantly
interact. To them things are never done one at a time. There is always a multi
tasking angle to everything. Time and place is no more a constraint.
Our children are
developing greater digital literacy than our previous generations. They now
have hypertext minds that leap around. They are able to respond quickly when
needed and are better at shifting their attention from one task to another.
They are much more capable to read visual images and have better visual-spatial
skills, probably derived from their gaming expertise. They are able to imbibe
technological innovations much quicker than any time in history.
I’m sure there are
quite a few good old things that are lacking. But has it not always been like
that with the human species? Rather than checking out on what they lack, we
need to concentrate on their capacities. Rather than trying to align them to
what we think is the right way of life, we need to fine tune our life skill
embedding systems to match their expectations. Just as we expect a lot from
them, I bet they do have pretty high expectations from us.
Against common belief,
our newer generations believe in experiential learning not by choice but by the
way they have been experiencing their environment right from birth. They have already
seen how places from Algeria
to Zimbabwe
It should not be astonishing
that they can no longer be inspired by the “Talk, Text, and Test” philosophy
still being followed in our schools? Children are just not interested in being
told what to do and how things should rightly be. They have an inherent urge for
experience. And no matter what barriers you put in front of them, they surely
will find a way to go the experiential way. The in-class lectures and
ill-printed texts can no longer impress them. And by how they have been
bombarded with information since birth, they have developed an instinct to
ignore what does not interest them.
An alternate “Interact,
Inspire and Instill” philosophy of embedding life skills might help in spiking
the interest levels. We need to focus on designing systems to motivate our
teachers into this new way. Considering the fact that we happen to have most of
the teachers by chance and not by choice, the task at hand might seem herculean.
The pace at which the world is moving ahead and the technological conveniences
our younger ones are being born into only makes things seem more challenging.
Our teachers need to
have multiple skill sets. Besides being content experts, they need to be
experimenters, researchers, psychologists, motivators and parents and they need
to be able to use these skills simultaneously. In the process, the focus needs
to shift from knowledge assessment to skill nurturing. The sooner we realize
this and the faster we act, the better our future would be.
The younger generations
are much more informed than any of our species in history. They do not know the
barriers of time and space. And they are not the ones who would sit back and
think of the loss that might be. They would rather go ahead and experience the
loss. And in the bargain some might end up winning in a way the human race has
never really experienced. And that thought is what brightens up the future of
the human species.
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