Developing lifelong learners has been the mantra of politicians, administrators, and teachers, but are we? As a parent, teacher, and tutor I cannot help but observe a rise in the numbers of unmotivated students with an increasingly growing dislike toward school. How did this happen? Well, for one thing, digital media drastically changed our lifestyle. It gave grown-ups a lot more to keep track of, in an always-on-call-type environment, and released a bombardment of genius-marketing to create distractions and desensitize adults and children to the dangers of unlimited sources of free information at the click of a button.
This distraction and desensitization is directly related to why children have so much unsupervised time to explore the Internet, learn more rapidly about “off-the-wall phenomenon”, overindulge on celebrity stalking, build unrealistic expectations for life, expose themselves to influences not quite appropriate for their age, and mix up the developmentally appropriate progress of children as compared to the way we old-timers grew up.
The laptops started it but were not as big of a threat as the Smartphone. Now that the majority of people in the Western world, including many children as young as five years of age, own a Smartphone, everyone can have the same access to the infinite stream of information available on the World Wide Web. I know, you will say, “But what about parental controls?” All I have to say is, “What about them? Have you ever tried to install these?” You need an IT degree to figure that out. Hopefully, while my children grew into adults, there now is an App that will supervise your kids’ Internet access on their phones and other Internet devices and automatically text the parent for permission to enter a specific website. Even though we might not like it, realistically, it is hard to keep society and digital media out of childrearing. So, are we doomed?
Mmmmm, let’s look at it objectively. Students might not be overly interested in what they are expected to learn at school, but boy oh boy are they learning a lot! They learn how to tackle complicated tasks by Googling step-by-step directions, they compare what is happening in other countries to what they experience in theirs, they find information in different languages and can immediately translate them, they communicate with each other daily and plan and schedule get-togethers, sleep-overs, and carpool rides like logistics experts. Can they separate fake news from great news? Probably not, but I have a feeling they will soon come to an awakening, apply some common sense, and adjust their beliefs to more realistic ones. This is not too different from previous generations.
As I see it, students are not unwilling to learn, they are just not interested in how and what we are teaching! For educators, it can be quite a challenge to stay current with the latest gadgets and technical developments and figure out how to implement these in the classroom to motivate learning and prepare students for the 21st-century workforce. Rumor has it (Carr, 2017) that businesses are unhappy with many of our graduates for several reasons. Just graduated college students come across as lazy (maybe the work is too boring for an intelligent human and needs to be automated), they are not willing to work very hard (maybe they have learned to self-preserve and avoid early heart-attacks), they do not take enough initiative (making choices that can have severe consequences should always be avoided by rookies), they do not stay in the same place long enough (places to go, and people to see!), and they expect decent wages (what are they thinking!)
So, what do businesses want, and are these expectations realistic? I suggest it is time for the business world to make collaborations with educators a common practice. This way they can give schools insight on how to better prepare the professionals they need, to successfully run their businesses and organizations. Criticizing the new generation might give some temporary satisfaction but doesn’t change things. Instead, let’s put our energy into doing something that develops young people into assets to our society. Look and observe, our children are lifelong learners. As a matter of fact, they are learning 24/7, just different from the familiar ways. In the end, we have to evolve and it’s the elders’ job to help young people make the choices that will improve their lives and equally benefit the workforce and improve society.
References
Carr, F. (2017). A third of employers are unhappy with graduates’ attitude to work. Retrieved from The Telegraph: https://www. telegraph. co. uk/education/2017/07/11/third-employers-unhappy-graduates-attitude-work.