Shows such as 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?' exist and appear on television often proving that 5th graders know their history and simple facts better than the average adult in the U.S. Adults in the U.S. should definitely re-read their 5th grade history books and flip on the news slightly more often. Why are these 5th graders appearing smarter than the average adult? What is the difference between how children today grow up and how their parents grew up? The availability of information on the internet.
If anyone has ever tried to set their grandparents or even parents up on AOL Instant Messenger they know that the internet is teaching our children many technical skills. Both of my parents are teachers and use computers quite often yet I am still the go to person when it comes to using the computer for anything other than the basic word processing and excel. Adding attachments to e-mails and imbedding objects in word are still not fully in my parents repertoire while it comes second nature to new generations. I first got AIM when I was in 7th grade and as years go by children are getting connected much earlier.
The internet is comfortably placed as a resource for information. Home pages make it so that it is almost impossible to ignore everything going on in the world. Headlines catch your eye and you want to learn more. In order to get information from the newspaper, you have to deliberately pick the newspaper up every day. However, the internet is used daily and users can learn information without going out of their way or taking time out of their busy schedules. The internet and computers ARE today's culture. Children have been blessed with new fun ways of learning. All you need to do is set a child at a computer with Mavis Beacon and they get to learn to type while playing games at the same time. The internet is helping children today learn more about the world instead of holding them back, what other way can you explain 5th graders beating out adults in trivia questions?
2 comments:
I agree, the internet has expanded my knowledge of what is going on in the world. I don't read newspapers because all i have to do is log onto googlenews, and get all of the info i want or need. My parents though, would rather still read the newspaper every morning because that is what they are used to, but i wonder if they will ever surrender to the e-news world.
P.S. - The Triva Questions on Are Tou Smarter Than a 5th grader are highly addicting
I definetly believe its a generational thing. Even though most of my family has adapted pretty well I have had to try and explain the concept of social networks to them and it is virtually impossible (no pun intended). Its not easy teahcing old dog new tricks and the internet is proof of that.
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