Ever since I decided to become a teacher, this is the question that has most consumed my passions. In the early years of my career, I imagined that the most fully educated person was a well-rounded one, someone both broadly exposed to the humanities and knowledgeable about the sciences. Such a person was as apt to understand the aesthetics of music as the mechanics of sound, as attuned to the biodiversity of life as to the meaning of life.

This proved to be a useful guiding principle during the years when I was honing my craft as a classroom teacher.  If well-roundedness was indeed an overarching virtue, my job was to nurture in my students both a mastery of basic competencies and a capacity for self-expression.  Indeed, in my doctoral dissertation of 1984 I emphasized the mutual interdependence of logical thinking and socially constructed knowledge.

During the next phase of my career I was influenced a great deal by the emergence of the personal computer and the organizational capabilities that it offered.  No longer was it sufficient merely to strive for well-roundedness; in addition to the knowledge acquisition and intellectual flexibility that was already important, now it was necessary to become proficient in an altogether new set of technical competencies: cutting, pasting, copying, and saving.

A Mouse?

Today’s generation may be surprised to learn that the computing skills of this early period predated the graphical interface now known as the mouse.  It’s true: neither the Apple IIe computer that I purchased in 1984 nor the Hyundai PC that I purchased in 1988 were capable of accepting instructions in any way other than from a conventional keyboard.  As primitive as this must seem by today’s standards of advanced technology, what emerged nonetheless was a sea-change in our understanding of what it meant to be a well-educated person.

Looking back, I believe that the impact of these early technologies was even more disruptive than we had then realized.  If huge volumes of multimedia knowledge could be digitized and accessed through CD-ROM’s (remember Encarta?), what was the value of conventional books and libraries?  Similarly, if computer programs could crunch numbers and formulate equations, what was the relevance of traditional mathematics for the ordinary citizen?

As much as I and my fellow teachers found great excitement in these technologies, they proved insignificant as compared with the onset of the Internet in the 1990s.  The emergence of digitized information had already introduced strikingly new elements into the relationship between teacher and student; now we were faced with the knowledge that information could be easily accessed by anyone at any time and from virtually anywhere.

Information Literacy

In a sincere effort to cultivate the well-educated person, teachers devoted great effort during these years to ensure that our students knew how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources of information.  Indeed, the movement that was spawned during this time is as robust as ever: Information Literacy, defined long ago by the American Library Association as the ability “to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.”

Just imagine how fully this notion of literacy has challenged our assumptions both of teaching and of learning. After many generations when teachers were regarded as the primary keepers of knowledge, it is pretty clear that the teacher’s proper role is more that of a Guide on the Side rather than a Sage on the Stage.  Less clear are the implications for learning or for being a well-educated person.

The magic that takes place in the education of a child is a testament both to the human brain and to the human heart.

My guiding thesis is that some of the emphasis on Information Literacy has been misplaced and that the information revolution itself has created some confusion about what it means to be well-educated.  As the Internet has taken a seat in our classrooms, and in recent years as teachers have struggled to understand the classroom implications of Web 2.0 technologies, we have focused too much on knowledge and not quite enough about judgment, too much about information and not quite enough on transformation.

The magic that takes place in the education of a child is a testament both to the human brain and to the human heart.  It may soon be possible to upload limitless information into the circuitry of a robotic machine, but one wonders whether or not that storehouse of information will ever be able to appreciate a Mozart sonata.  Though supercomputers have now been programmed to defeat the world’s greatest chess champions, great controversy surrounds the relationship between artificial intelligence and judgment.

Judgement Still Matters

Faced with the distinct possibility that social media will soon dominate the communication landscape for children, the primary challenge for teachers today is surprisingly not so different from what it was prior to the digital revolution.  Adult nurturing makes a huge difference in the lives of children.  Developmental readiness remains the engine of cognitive growth.  Equity and fair play are inextricably connected.  Judgment still matters.

Looking back at the changes in education during my years as a teacher, I am still convinced that the well-educated person is one both broadly exposed to the humanities and knowledgeable about the sciences.  The context in which these mandates have developed is no doubt different, but the result is similar.  Truly transformed by experience and by information, the well-educated person is discerning, literate, well-rounded, and socially adaptable.

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