Silent Menace Essay

1936 Words4 Pages

A silent menace is creeping into the lives of America’s youth. It can be found on the streets. This addiction-creating snare is passed around at the movie theater when nobody seems to be watching. Paranoid teenagers sneak time in with it in school bathrooms and parking lots. Once-innocent kids are fully ensnared until the early hours of morning. Their red eyes and blank stares note a problem, but only after it is discovered, it is too late. This menace is not reefer or any other drug. It is technology, a new threat. No field advances as rapidly as technology. The newest iPhones and tablets are being introduced into many individuals’ work and personal lives. The most natural progression seems to be the integration of and focus upon technology in public schools. However, a hasty transition into a tech world may be dangerous. Technology use produces a number of negative consequences in the classroom because it enables students to become dependent, prevents effective reinforcement of topics taught in class, and places both societal and classroom minorities at an extreme disadvantage. Despite the advantages of having the extent of man’s knowledge at one’s fingertips, technology is not the best learning tool within the classroom. On a university-sponsored TEDTalk, Stephen Tonti said “We have to teach kids to teach themselves. It’s the best things we can do for our kids…. Our society has to embrace cognitive diversity.” There are three major types of learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. If one places the three types of learners in a science lab course, they retain information very differently. Auditory learners thrive when the teacher describes with brilliant imagery wheat happens when muscle fibers contract. Visual learners w... ... middle of paper ... ...ryone in a poor position. Another problem on the productivity side deals with the teachers instead of students: often times, technology gives the educators a way to pay less attention to students and do less teaching. Instead of explaining a lecture, it would be just as simple to send the students links to a YouTube video that covers the main topic. The greatest teaching tool would be a downloadable app instead of the marker on the board. Technology would begin to replace human interaction in the classroom. Even more troubling, a number of students would begin to “act out” in a negative, attention-seeking manner. Technology is simply less personal. An unspoken focus of school is student-teacher interaction. The teachers become trustable authority figures and example setters. Many kids crave emotional connections at school because they are unable to get them at home.

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