The Day The Class Of 2016

It was mid-morning when I pulled up to school, still wondering if I made the right decision by enrolling. Instead of feeling calm, cool, and collected the only thing arriving early did was increase the feeling of impending doom. My mind was racing a mile a minute. Am I going to be able keep up to the bright minds fresh out of high school? It was time to find out.

The classical Greek philosopher once said that the new technology of writing “will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls because they will not use their memories,” from “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr. The species known as the homo-sapien now have the power to learn about anything, talk to people from different countries, and at the blink of the eye, get a response through the power of the internet. If the students here at Montesano High School take part in “Washington Screen Free Week,” the learning experience will be going backwards in time in the wrong direction.

In this new age of technology, information is becoming more readily available to practically everyone. This revolution has raised one major concern for the students of our generation: that we will not be able to think at all. That this generation will rely so heavily on the ability to access information immediately that we subsequently lose the ability to think for ourselves. This will not happen, however. Although many believe the internet is spoiling our generation, the fact of the matter is that the internet actually enriches our education and aids us in coming up with more educated solutions.

In the article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, one could see that there is an issue at hand. With the growth of technology since the early 2000s, the use of the internet has been our, as a culture, source for information. There is so much information that people could not possibly be able to sift through it all. This metaphorical mound of information has occupied our minds as humans, jumping point to point. With the accumulation of data that is at our fingertips, people are being challenged to think, reason, and to read. How then, can we achieve this with all the information but without the ability?

In the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr expresses his beliefs and personal experiences on how the internet has altered our brains and how we think. He addresses the fact that, although our brains’ abilities to deep read and concentrate are suffering, the internet is extremely beneficial and convenient. Because of the easy accessibility, it takes little to no effort to find information, and therefore, a minimal amount of thinking is required. Carr highlights that people are more impatient because of the internet and that our minds are becoming more erratic. The author used research, conducted by a U.K. educational consortium, to show that a new form of reading is developing over time; rather than reading every word on a page, it has turned to more of a skimming method. Nicholas Carr realizes that we may be doing more reading than ever due to the internet, but it is different in the way that people have to interpret the text. Reading, unlike talking, is not a natural ability. One must learn to deep read, make connections, and translate the underlying meaning. Overall, Carr believes it is a mistake to rely fully on computers because in the end, it will just be our own intelligence that morphs into artificial intelligence.

There is no denying the incredible library of knowledge the internet has made readily available for all to use. Having such a resource is transforming modern society in many ways, as it brings insight and news across the world at a moment’s notice, all the while enhancing educational and technological advancements. However, according to Sven Birkets, an American essayist and literacy critic, in his essay, “The Owl Has Flown”, it is not without fault as observations are to be made on how this new resource has transformed people’s intelligence and wisdom. The author theorizes that the large, almost unlimited, library that is now being offered by services such as the internet, reshapes the public’s knowledge. Knowledge is transformed to be horizontal or insubstantial compared to the much deeper lateral understanding pertaining to older generations because of the amount of time they spent dwelling on a much smaller set of resources. This observation made by Birkets in the late 90’s is expanded upon, and modernized by Nicholas Carr, an American writer and author, in a more inflicting and self-reflecting article for The Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains”. Carr does not just blame the Google search engine in this claim, but the internet as a whole on how it impacts concentration and our ability to contemplate. These cognitive impacts are observed and explained in more scientific terms by Eric Jaffe, a regular Observer

According to the United Nations Agency, approximately 3.2 billion people have used the Internet since 2015, which has made a drastic increase since 2000 with there only being 738 million internet users then. That is almost 43% of the world's population that uses the internet. A controversial topic that is commonly being brought up in today's arguments is the use of the internet and how people believe it is becoming such a detriment to our society, because nobody in this generation acknowledges the value of books, or even prefers to use an actual copy such as a paperback. The internet, such as Google, is being classified as lazy or ignorant, but reading a book is labeled as literate or being knowledgeable. Thesis:“Teaching in the #Age Literacy” by Jennifer L. Nelson and “Is Google Making Us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, both analyze the pros and cons to having the internet and information at our fingertips, how it is affecting the way we read and analyze text and different scientific experiments that have been put to use to decode why we think the way we do now and how to improve our intelligence.

“Just as a car allows us to move faster and a telescope lets us see farther, access to the Internet’s information lets us think better and faster,” says Peter Norvig, Director of Research at The New York Times, in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Internet access is both something very few and very many people have. Some, who live in rural areas or cannot afford it, yearn to have the privilege that comes with the internet. Why deny students the privilege many people hunger for: the privilege of knowledge? Many people fear technology will make the world stupid, such as Socrates feared the written word would make world forgetful. But writing “has improved our law, science, arts, culture, and our memory” (Norvig), and Google will not make our brains rot from under-usage; it will help our minds flourish with new

As any other freshman entering high school it can be a very nerve racking situation. On September 8, 2015 I Chelsea Gonzalez was entering high school in Thurgood Academy Of Learning And Social Change , my mind was going crazy and I didn't know what to expect. I have always asked myself whether high school would be similar to what appeared in movies; people dancing and singing on top of the lunch tables or, was it going to be a 4 horrible school years in which I would never make friends. I clearly remember seeing kids running toward their group of friends, as I walked down the lunchroom. My hands were sweating and it felt like a million butterflies in my stomach. The room was filled with cries of laughter, kids running back and forth asking each

How many times per day do you use the search engine “Google.” According to, statistics.org Google had about 7,766,000,000 searches daily in 2015. What made people use Google instead of opening a book? The real question is, how does google impact our self-education? The answer is quite simple. Google decreases our ability and motivation to self-educate. Although it can be argued that google makes learning easier and faster, what are we really learning from Google? The article “Is Google Making us stupid” by Nicholas Carr explains how we no longer think about what we learn. Carr believes we rely more on quick facts opposed to critical thinking or research.

Every day the world is changing and things are done differently. Technology has also affected the way students are taught and in which they learn. It has changed the classroom. Technology saves us time and allows us to access material in only minutes. “The Internet and online subscription databases, even as a supplement to the printed works in the library, allow students to see, and force them to consider or reject, points of view that they might never have encountered in decades past” (Gow 4).With all the time technology produces, it also has downsides and it also may have created a less intelligent society.

Are computers going to replace the human thought? How many times do you see yourself going to www.google.com or some other search engine to find even the simplest information? In the educational system more and more courses use and require some form of computer activity. One of the main concerns is that education used to be about research, problem solving, critical thinking, and human analysis. Now with the implication of computers, education is not about the research, it focus is how fast can you find the answer. The lazy point and click approach may have the answers, but has no real meaning to it. Computers are taking away not only basic skills, but the need to develop them at all.

Over the last two decades’ technology has had an important role in the world. We are living in the time of new technology, smart phones, iPads, and laptops are used as providers of digital information. The Internet has become a main part of the advances around the world, connecting networks the information is transferred in seconds to any digital device. Internet is the modern way to develop learning in different matters such as politics, science, social activism, and personal relationships. However, there are others who disagree like Nicholas Carr that believes we are all being spoon-fed and are not absorbing information in the right way. In his article “Is Google

Did you know that the RATE of new information is DOUBLING every six months? Did you know that MOST of what you learn today will be OBSOLETE in two years? Human brains are boggled by the deluge. So are file cabinets, magnetic tapes, research papers and encyclopaedias — all bursting with billions of bits and pieces of information, none all-inclusive, none the first and last words on anything?"

Yet, the education does not stop at middle school, for high school really puts all the basic skills from elementary and middle school to work as the assignments and the exams become more challenging. We do not only learn about reading, writing, history, and math, we learn about the people around us as we associate with different personalities, and as we see what we have grown up to be and what we want to be later in life. Accordingly, the high school years are a time when teachers emphasize the importance of graduating and attending college in order to have a “succesful future.”