A Boston Globe editorial concludes:
[A] good education still requires an active exchange of information between professor and student. It’s harder for that to happen when one of them is cruising Craigslist. Wary of seeming behind the times, some colleges have encouraged the problem by extending Wi-Fi to lecture halls. This was a mistake. If students won’t unplug on their own, colleges should do it for them.
How was that again?
[A] good education still requires an active exchange of information between professor and student. [Yes. The paper is right to stress this primary point.] It’s harder for that to happen when one of them is cruising Craigslist. Wary of seeming behind the times, some colleges have encouraged the problem by extending Wi-Fi to lecture halls. [UD thinks something dumb like this probably was the original motivation. Since that time, she’d argue, some professors have grown quite, quite fond of a technology which removes students from their teachers’ sphere of responsibility. In many cases, a student with a laptop is essentially a student who’s absent…. Laptops make it so that professors don’t have to teach – especially if the professors are themselves using PowerPoint. They walk into a room and read slides aloud while students do fuck all on their laptops.] This was a mistake. If students won’t unplug on their own, colleges should do it for them. [This last statement will bring out all the I’m an adult and can do what I want; don’t talk down to me language from students and their cynical, laptop-lovin’ profs. How dare a university have codes of conduct!]
April 26th, 2011 at 6:34AM
ha, just imagine our culture/political-system if people understood the limits of their knowledge and all of the implications of such, if only there was some place where they could learn/experience such values…