In the latest outpouring from our technology-enslaved culture, growing numbers of middle and high school students are trading traditional classrooms for Internet-based “cyber schools.” Instead of engaging in healthy scholastic social interaction like adolescents have for generations, they learn English and Algebra II by staring at computer screens.
Earlier this week, the Chicago Tribune reported that a million students took the online option in 2006, and that number is expected to increase in years to come.
As members of a group that solicits dates via Facebook and broadcasts life milestones in Gmail Chat status, this news is hardly surprising. But hopefully it’s upsetting and a much-needed wake-up call: Hello, Generation Text, the same devices that advance productivity also inhibit our common-sense – things like social skills.
I don’t mean to sound like Henry David Thoreau. This isn’t about retreating to Walden Pond.
But if we don’t take the time to understand our obsession with technology, we become so immersed in it that we lose our foothold on reality.
Parents and teachers in favor of virtual classrooms justify their support with a litany of complaints about real-life schools’ nasty traits: They’re violent, overcrowded and understaffed. Dealing with these challenges, it seems, has become too overwhelming, so why not just avoid them from behind computers?
One virtual school principal bemoaned the absence of such a cop-out in his day in the same Tribune article. “When I was a kid, if I didn’t like high school where I was at, what was I going to do?” he asked. The words “deal with it” come to mind. That’s what most of us have to do when it comes to the difficult things in life.
The same run-from-your-fear rationale underscores our obsession with cyberspace. Too chicken to confront someone about a problem face-to-face? Duke it out over AIM. Afraid you’ll actually have to catch up with someone if you call to wish her “Happy Birthday?” No problem! Send a text message, or, better yet, add to the 103 generic posts on her Facebook wall.
But nothing encapsulates the easy way out more than away message stalking, a practice I happily embraced for most of college. With AIM, there’s no need to call or see friends to find out what’s going on in their lives. All it takes is a click to learn that they’re “stressing” or “date-partying” or “reading, running, going to class and the libes, ALL NIGHT.”
The more we allow ourselves these shortcuts, the easier it becomes to accept them in lieu of face-to-face interaction. And, the more challenging such interaction becomes.
Sure, a little Facebook poking is harmless, but we must set boundaries on technology’s influence. Or, before we know it, we’ll all accept cyber saturation, such as the virtual classroom, as perfectly normal.
At that point, it’ll take a punch, not a poke, to make us realize otherwise.
