It was a straightforward task I had set - students, who had just collaborated on strengths and weaknesses and were now looking at how their ideas could be structured into paragraph format, had to read an exemplar paragraph and categorise the components of it. They would colour the text according to whether it was evidence, explanation etc. The combination of an astute student, ample time to do the task, and a finite chunk of text made what happen next surprising. Upon questioning a student as to why a certain section was green instead of blue, the response was “well Sir, you know when you are really rushed you just need to, you know, get through it”. “Rushed how?” was my reply, to which there was no response that the student could elicit. The low stakes nature of the environment, which I consider the previous description to not really do justice of, got me curious as to what the student was really thinking. Or perhaps to be more accurate, how they were thinking. There was something in the background for this student; concurred by the student sitting next to her, that I was seemingly unaware of (and I thought it was meant to be me, the teacher, who had the background urgency brewing.
We of course know that the world that our students live in is full-on, from constant access to people, media, and almost any other form of content through to a bombardment of these same things without doing anything (push notifications anyone?). And whilst we may not have quite reached the level of saturation described by Hyper Reality (yet), there comes with it all the expectation to be able to digest it. The problem is, when you feed yourself faster your digestion system does not learn to digest faster, rather it just becomes selective and less efficient. Looking at the typical YouTube video format which, thanks to the homogenisation created by globalised access, is now everywhere, we see this exemplified. It includes fast swooshing sound effects, quick cuts, thumbnails with a plethora of bright colours and bold fonts, and even the pauses between sentences edited out for maximum punch. And minimal digestion. It almost serves as a justification for thinking, like if somehow by not being given the chance to think you are relieved from any responsibility of doing so.
“Thinking time”. It sounds a bit lame, even to an adult, not to mention hard. When Henry Ford said that” Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it”, he reminded us that without it being made explicit and given the space, it simply will not happen. For as long as there is something to distract us, something else we could do, or a justification to why it is not necessary, then it will take the back burner. I can think of countless times when I have fallen for the trap set by my students and have done the thinking for them. Yet it is not only the physical space and time for thinking that I fear is becoming eroded, but an appreciation for why it is such an important component of learning and understanding and perhaps, what it even is.
Perhaps I am drawing links here where none exist, or perhaps I am being a bit apocalyptic or paranoid, after all generations adapt as their environment changes and, despite people throughout history claiming otherwise, young people always seem to figure it out and be fine. But the question nonetheless remains, could they do better? Could we do better? I am not building a case for change here - for banning all those repetitive YouTube videos from existence - but for simply lifting the level of metacognition in our students and perhaps in all of us so that when we are not thinking, at least we recognise that we are not thinking. That would be a start indeed.