I’m sure you’ve heard by now that the University of Toronto conducted a study on Toronto teenagers, the results of which proved that electronic messaging devices like Instant Messenger do not erode the grammar skills of teenagers and may, in fact, improve them. (You can read more at the University of Toronto’s website.) While this seems to be breaking news across the nation, it comes as no great surprise to me. What does surprise me is how many people, having lived through similar experiences, have forgotten then so quickly.
Paraphrasing Santana (the philosopher, not the rock star): don’t learn history and you’ll repeat it within your lifetime.
I recall my father’s horrified face the first time he saw me using a calculator to complete my geometry homework. He stood in the kitchen doorway, staring at me, hunched over the kitchen table with my four pound geometry textbook, the inevitable pad of graph paper, a pencil, and, of course, my cool black Texas Instruments scientific calculator.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, staring at the calculator. If I had been having a beer with my homework, I don’t think he could have looked more surprised.
I told him it was my calculator.
“It’s your what?” And then, before I could answer, he added, “You’re cheating.”
Now it was my turn to look surprised. “What?”
He came over and snatched up my calculator. “You can’t use this to do your homework.”
“What do you want me to use?” I fired back. “A slide rule?”
“I want you to use your head!” he yelled.
I assured him that not only was I expected to use it to do my homework, I was expected to use it in my class.
Strangely enough, my father truly believed I was lying. He refused to return the calculator and so, on that night, my homework did not get done. The next day, I had no choice but to offer up the situation to my geometry teacher as an explanation for why my homework wasn’t done. My teacher, more interested in my mind than my homework, kindly sent a note home to my father explaining, yes, the students were expected to use calculators both in class and at home.
When my father got the note, he called my teacher. At home. At night. If I recall, he was probably a few beers into the evening himself. What followed was condemnation of the educational system, in general, and this teacher’s skills, in particular. Using calculators in school, my father cried to the skies. What the hell is the world coming to?
The truth is, I barely made it through calculus and I assure you all the supercomputers in the universe wouldn’t changed that outcome. I’m just not good at math. I can learn it, but I don’t like to. My skills and interests lie in another direction. And to this day, my wife will not let me manage the checkbook.
My lack of basic math skills cannot be blamed on a teacher’s decision to allow students to use a calculator. This was a truth I thought an entire generation learned, back in the day when Texas Instruments stock still ruled the NYSE.
More importantly, as the years passed, I realized I did learn something in my geometry class.
What I learned, what stuck in my mind when the math did not, is an understanding of basic geometry as well as an organized manner of thinking that I put to great use when, as a philosophy major in college, I came across Augustine’s theorems. The basic building blocks of geometry allowed me to climb higher intellectually and learn more about the world and the people who live in it. In short, I may have struggled with the actual mechanics but the principles I learned have served me well.
Today, teachers like my geometry teacher are taking advantage of technology to help teach students principles of reading, writing, and math (what my father’s generation casually referred to as readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic). How could we learn to survive in a our modern world without computers in the classroom? How could we function with research aids like the internet? And, as unwilling as we are to admit it, how many computer games have inspired writing and other creative skills?
To blame technology for what may be nothing more than the evolution of language is not only short-sighted, but it’s actually a false theory. After all, the English we us in the best colleges and universities across the world is not the same English Dickens or Shakespear used. Languages, and language skills, evolve—just like technology.
And you don’t need a geometry class to understand that.