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IT: Intellectually Taxing?

by KENNETH J. COOPER , March 20, 2009

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At least one professor worries about the intellectual impact
of some student-directed uses of technology.

Dr. Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, says overuse of technology stifles intellectual growth.
By the professor’s rule, students in the English classes of Dr. Mark Bauerlein at Emory University must take notes by hand. Laptops must be turned off, he says, to ensure students focus on what’s happening in the room, rather than on what’s floating around cyberspace.

“In half of those screens, they’re on Facebook,” Bauerlein says of the situation in other college classrooms. “They’re not taking notes, they’re doing e-mail.”

Note-taking is not the only low-tech learning in Bauerlein’s classes. He requires students to write the first draft of papers in long hand. He guides them in poring over the text of literature, one paragraph and one sentence at a time. He makes them memorize a sonnet by Shakespeare or a poem by Emily Dickinson and then recite the verse out loud — a throwback to old-school lessons in elocution.

In an age of instant communication via computers, cell phones and personal digital assistants, particularly among members of the millennial generation, Bauerlein contends slowing down learning on campus is “good for their mental equipment.” He says memorizing and reciting poetry, for instance, makes students pay attention to rhythm, tone of voice, metaphor and imagery.

Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, is a leading campus critic of the overuse of technology — particularly for social networking and research — and says it hampers the intellectual growth and emotional maturity of college students of traditional age. He lays out his argument in a provocatively titled book, published last year, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).

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Comments posted here may be reprinted in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education magazine, and may be edited for purposes of clarity and/or space.



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