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I watched the first 50 minutes of “The Dark Knight” on Friday in my political science class. We were supposed to be learning about Chicago Style footnotes for our upcoming papers, but some bored student with a shoot-me-right-now expression on his face and a small puddle of drool accumulating on his desk opted to watch a movie on his computer, instead. I don’t want to point any fingers, because I happen to know our professor reads this newspaper, but as I sat behind this student, I found it impossible to look away from the screen. I didn’t learn about how to write a proper footnote, but I did learn why Heath Ledger won all of those posthumous awards.
Every semester the incessant click-clack of students tapping away on laptops in class gets worse. It seems as though every section has a few students who are unable — or more likely unwilling — to scribble notes in a binder the good-old-fashioned way. But it isn’t merely the irritating and distracting clacking I take issue with, it’s the fact that this technology can get in the way of education — and not just for the user.
My qualm with the advent of so-called education technology is that having access to Google and yes, even the dreaded Wikipedia, at your fingertips in class negates any need for recall or mental availability — two of the most important aspects of a true education. Part of the reason we are in school may be to use the tools of our age, but we are here primarily to learn the actual class material. If all a student has to do is type a question into Google or Yahoo Answers, why should he or she bother to learn the answer at all?
Having laptops in class provides the obvious potential for students to distract themselves and others by goofing around on the Web or otherwise. “The Oregon Trail” may be a fun game, but it is certainly no substitute for History of the American West 101.
Furthermore, I’m a fairly responsible student with a decent attention span — or so I like to think — but if someone in front of me is playing “Bejeweled” or watching a movie with captions, how am I supposed to focus on class? Am I really supposed to choose Honore de Balzac’s “Pere Goriot” over Heath Ledger’s dynamite performance in “The Dark Knight?”
Even when students use their laptops to academic ends, they are doing themselves a disservice by not bothering to commit information to memory. Students may be doing this with the best intentions, but they still create a distraction for others in the room.
I have a hard time listening to what professors have to say when, every time they start to speak, they are immediately drowned out by an orchestra of students, typing away at their computers.
It would be a different story if laptops were a necessary evil — if Stephen Hawking ever wants to sit in on a lecture and take notes on his computer, I’d happily oblige — but for the average student, laptops are just superfluous, perceived conveniences that actually interfere with students’ ability to learn. Let’s keep classes about actual subject material and leave the computers at home.
James Jelenko can be reached at
jjelenko@theorion.com
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Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada