Aaron J. Brenner
The newest generation has more immediate access to a larger body of knowledge than any generation before it, all in the palms of their hands, and yet, if you ask any honest adult tasked with educating these kids, they are quite possibly the most easily distracted, the most illiterate, and the most ignorant generation in the history of the world. Of course, a similar sentiment has been felt (if not always openly expressed) by almost every aging generation (i.e. “cranky old fogies”) about the youthful population (i.e. “kids these days”) that was rapidly displacing it. Somewhere in France, waiting to be discovered, is a cave painting clearly depicting a tribal elder’s absolute exasperation with the kids of that day and their incorrigibly unhealthy obsession with fire. And, of course, none of those older generations has ever been proven wrong by time (as far as I can remember); which is why I am perfectly justified in lamenting that modern technology, and especially cell phones and social media, is an unmitigated disaster that has destroyed whatever little progress humans have made with regard to our social and cultural evolution in the last few centuries.
Anecdotally, over my twenty-three year teaching career, I have observed diminished attention spans and declining social skills. I don’t know that students ever did all of the assigned reading – Cliff’s Notes were a big part of the success enjoyed by many of my contemporaries in high school – but my students now read even less of what is assigned, and with less understanding, than the students I had when I began teaching. Getting and maintaining their attention is also a far more laborious struggle than it was in the past – to say nothing of how poorly they comprehend what is being said to them when (and if) I do have their attention. Over the course of my career, I have taught in four different school systems, and the pattern can be observed regardless of socio-economic or cultural factors – in every case, my students seem to have grown (though “grow” may not be an appropriate term) more emotionally volatile, more self-absorbed and incurious, more distracted, less self-reliant, and less creative. Perhaps I have unwittingly succumbed to the age old and old age tendency of waxing nostalgic while disparaging the socio-cultural evolution of younger generations . . . or perhaps, this time, things really are getting worse. The Invisible Gorilla, a fascinating book about our perceptions and misperceptions by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, does an excellent job of showing us why we maybe should mistrust our recollections of certain events;1 on the other hand, there are also plenty of research articles listed in the bibliography below suggesting the anecdotal memories of old teachers bemoaning the loss of attentive and aware students are not entirely inaccurate; of course, on the third hand (and if you are a successful veteran teacher, then you have certainly developed one of those to help you juggle your myriad responsibilities), a very readable article by Rachel Becker argues that much of the data on the effects of technology comes from self-reporting by users who, going back to the premise of The Invisible Gorilla, are not the most reliable sources of unbiased information.2 Given all this foggy uncertainty, you (as well as your students) must become adept at navigating the myriad articles and the data they provide before it is too late and our worst fears are realized and we become digital zombies.
To help your students practice and improve their understanding of the complex relationships we have with social technology, this unit consists of four parts. In the first part, students read (and perhaps watch) and work on rhetorical analysis of various texts that explore the effects of cell phones and social media technology. Having completed this reading and discussed their findings with the class, your students will (if possible) begin writing letters to middle school students, offering them sound advice on how to develop their own relationships with their cell phones and social media. Ideally, the initial letters may spark a pen pal relationship or mentorship between your students and their younger peers, all of whom may benefit from such connections. Next, your students will be reading and analyzing the predictions of Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 (or a similar work of dystopian fiction) regarding how technology affects our lives, relationships, and communities. The goal is to determine how closely his vision matches our reality and to explain why. Finally, using all that they have learned in this unit, your students will make predictions of their own about the future. This can take the form of a poem, short story, video, editorial, or some other expression of their ideas about where we are headed.