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Undergraduate Essay: Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Digital Age?

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By Caroline McNair

We’ve heard about the dangers of the Internet so much it’s beginning to sound like a broken record: it’s a mecca for pornography, a catalyst for narcissism and an invasion of our privacy.

Despite the big bad threats of the digital age, the Internet is also being used as a tool for education, to the displeasure and distress of many. This raises the question: why are we so afraid of technology intermixing with education? Prior generations used typewriters to write all of their academic papers, or wrote their assignments using paper and pen. Word processing allows for more prolific writing and makes the editing process more efficient. E-readers allow us to use books in different ways; highlighting, making notes and searching for a particular place more quickly and neatly. Despite all of the alarm bells, we see benefits to the Internet in academia.

According to EdSurge.com, a website giving information about technology in education, the number of universities across the United States offering some kind of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) doubled over the course of 2014 to more than 400 total, including 22 of the top 25 universities in the country. The primary reason for disapproval seems to be motivated by fear—a fear of change and what it means. Nathan Heller’s piece in The New Yorker, “Laptop U,” expresses these fears in the voice of people like social scientist Gary King, who is concerned about the depersonalization of education and the conglomeration of learning by organizations like The University of Phoenix. He also fears the use of prospective students as subjects of a “randomized experiment” as they are amalgamated into a large pool of data collected over time (which the internet makes free and accessible).

If education is about knowledge and knowledge is fostered through dialogue, doesn’t the mass proliferation of knowledge through the internet accomplish this? According to EdSurge, much of the learning that MOOC seekers are searching for is in the humanities, computer science, language, and business management courses. These people are looking to potentially acquire knowledge to improve their job performance or satisfy a personal curiosity.

It is important to make the distinction between learning and earning a degree. The Internet is a tool, just like a sharp kitchen knife—it can be used skillfully to prepare a meal or if one is not careful it can cut off one’s finger. With regard to higher education, the Internet has surely made changes and will continue to make them. But an internet education will not replace the prestige and credibility attached to degrees from an accredited institution.

In Woody Allen’s critically acclaimed Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson’s character Gil Pender is transported back in time to experience the city in the 1920s, his favorite decade. He has a deep longing for the past, believing it to be a more romantic, creative, and overall happier place. However, as he comes to know a woman of the inner circle of artistic genius, (including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, and Picasso) he learns that she also yearns for a different better time: the 1890s. Pender realizes that disillusionment with the time in which one lives is not an objective measure of the time itself, rather a subjective dissatisfaction.

There’s a word for romanticizing the past: nostalgia. But is nostalgia a good enough reason to fear the change in higher education caused by the internet? Before the worldwide web was even a thought books were the primary resource for learning. Before the printing press, books and even literacy itself was a highly prized commodity. If we long for old methods for the sake of old methods, we are subject to an infinite regress that robs us of an educated and moral society at all. If we are truly an egalitarian (and entrepreneurial) society, we cannot fear the proliferation of knowledge—instead, we ought to rejoice.

Improvements in technology might not make higher education more robust. But those pursuing free online coursework are not earning credit toward an actual degree. The motive for taking such a course is not for the betterment of credentials—rather it is the desire for personal fulfillment and betterment. The internet has undoubtedly had a sociological effect—it’s changed everything. However, when it comes to change, the Old Guard has a tendency to work itself into a tizzy. We should relax and allow progress to settle before we jump to conclusions.

Caroline McNair is a senior at The King’s College in NYC studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She wrote this for an in-class essay contest.


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