I-pods and Education: The Effect of Noise on Intelligence
Posted: Friday, February 15, 2008
by Joel Black
Education Leadership Dynamics
When Einstein was asked how he came up with such earth-shaking ideas, he stated, "I thought about it." Edison often stayed all night at his lab, sometimes for days, as the night afforded a quiet place for thought. Every guru in history has had his silent retreat. But today silence is no longer golden. In fact, it is downright distasteful.
As a teacher for over 30 years I have watched with fascination as technology has surged, and with horror as people have crumbled. I watched the biggest problem in school go from chewing gum to rape and assault. I watched the scores on tests plummet, despite more teachers, smaller classes, more support, more money, lower standards and easier tests. And as I enter the second generation of teaching, now addressing my students' students (and my students are now my colleagues), I am ashamed at what has happened to thought. It is lost in a swirl of platitudes and slogans.
In my day students and faculty both could give you 25 reasons why they preferred the governor they preferred, or the car, or the sports team, or even the cuisine. Now it is tough to find even one. The only thing students seem capable of doing is repeating propaganda from MTV. But what was worse occurred during a parent meeting. In answering a question, I mentioned I had never seen a single episode of a single "reality TV" program. The place froze. Horror shone on several faces. Adults began to define their very values, their very lives, in terms of popular media. They began to scare me. There weren't three or four adults in that room who were thinking in that moment. In fact, half of them seemed incapable of actual thought. Instead of being frustrated with their underachieving and woefully ignorant progeny, I suddenly felt pity for the children.
What have we done to our children, and to our future? We have surrounded ourselves with noise, from machinery, to appliances, to media, not from sun-up to sun-down, but from midnight to midnight. Some kids even sleep with the radio on, while Mom sleeps in front of the late-night TV. Monitors beep, fans hum, traffic cruises past, and I haven't heard a single summer cricket in at least 15 years.
I traveled through Europe last summer, and every student on that bus, with the exception of my son, and one other intelligent young man, a former student, had the earbuds in the ears. So did the adults. One little sweetheart had turned hers up so loud that I heard it five rows away, and I asked her to turn it down. She explained she couldn't. She was nearly deaf, and needed it loud to hear it. I quickly phoned my broker. We are now heavy into hearing aid companies, and will make a fortune as soon as today's teens turn 25.
But the problem runs deeper than deafness. Thought is crowded out by noise. Daydreaming used to be a "problem" in school. Not any more. We were such fools in the 1960's. Daydreaming was a blessing. The dreams of students, many of them low-performing students, gave us the automobile, the airplane, the computer, and the whole advanced civilization we cherish and take for granted. But no one has any daydreams any more. I ask my students what they think about when they don't have anything to think about, and they don't understand the question. I ask them what fantasies fill their spare moments, and they ask, "What spare moments?" I ask them what they see themselves doing at age 40, and they ask me, "Do you think I will still be alive then?" Medical research may as well throw in the towel right now.
Any kind of noise compels our attention. Whether it is discordant, symphonic, intentional or ubiquitous, our mind tunes in, and our thoughts follow the stimulus. It is a rare individual who can tune out and drift away on his own flights of fancy. Even listening to instructional or inspirational material fills our hours and our minds, and keeps us from meditating, pondering, puzzling, stewing, cogitating, and eventually from solving any problem-our own, or mankind's.
In short, we have forgotten how to think, how to analyze, how to synthesize, how to evaluate, how to do any of those things that produced greatness or advancement in this society. Our students are not as educated as their parents, and they know it. Their parents are not as educated as their parents, and they don't know it. Our businesses, by and large, are not as progressive, as honest, or as useful as they were just 40 years ago. Labor is moving overseas not due to some huge political conspiracy, but because the foreign workers simply do better work. They do not walk around with i-pods in their ears. And I can promise you, when they do, the jobs will all come back home, but you won't be pleased then either, as the products won't be worth buying.
Our species MUST think. If we do not take time to ponder deeply, we are dead, if not today, soon: economically, socially, morally, spiritually, intellectually. Our cerebral cortexes have few, if any, instincts. Our survival is contingent upon innovation, rising above circumstances, overcoming ourselves. The traditional virtues derived from thought, and years of experimentation. "In the quiet moments," says the poet, "one comes to know. . ." Therefore, the i-pod is equivalent to not knowing. Socrates noted that he who knows not is of no value, either to himself, nor to anyone else.
I have no objections to Apple Corporation, or to their neat, little tool. Some day I'd love to own one, to play music, or record lectures, or to do all the cool things it can do. But can I trust myself? Would I leave it alone? Would I still think? Or would I, too, sink back into the slimy, and densely inhabited abyss?
We must turn off the noise and think. My students scream (a sure sign of addiction) when I force them to do so, by making their grades contingent upon it. They tell me how they need it (addiction again) to get through a cruel world. They tell me (over papers dripping in red ink) that it helps them do better work. They tell me, with some heat and passion, that it helps them stay calm. What right have I, they ask, to force them to relinquish a hobby? "Addictions are NOT hobbies," I tell them. But thought, that stranger to American politics and government, that long-abandoned curiosity of a by-gone age, is still the key to success, to happiness, to progress. We simply must take time to turn off the noise, to wrestle with ideas, alone, in silence, as we tend the tulips. Otherwise we are doomed.
(Other ideas on gardening and education by Dr. Black can be found at http://www.educationleadershipdynamics.com/education/ )
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