Psychology
I Don't Care, Just Tell Me the Answer!
How On-Demand Culture and Metric-Based Thinking Hijacked Knowledge
Shourya Arashanapalli - Fall 2020
In an ever fast-paced lifestyle today, there has not been a greater demand for the agility of informational access and retrieval. When it comes to needing a piece of information, “we want it all” and “we want it now”. As described by Andrew Yang, the world is in the midst of what he refers to as the 4th Industrial Revolution—an event that marks the rapid innovation in technological advancement.1 Yang alludes to the depletion of manufacturing employment due to technological and mechanical automation, but there is another facet to this draining effect: a mental and sociocultural depletion where patience has become not only a virtue but a rarity—an on-demand culture.2 In the words of comedian Ronny Chieng, “There’s so much abundance… In America, there should be no lag… Oh, same-day delivery? Un-American. Same-day? Now Prime Now”.3
It is not easy to confront this reality—the dark age of information. It is remarkably tempting to tell ourselves that “it’s not all that bad.” After all, it is no secret that life has become more efficient than ever. The ease of availability of any information that we desire lies only beyond our fingertips, literally and figuratively. Not only can the average American sit on their couch and barrage their front porch with as many purchases as they wish, but smartphones today are also more advanced than ever, able to search any factoids that the human mind may crave.
It surely begs the question, what could possibly be wrong with this?
Life sounds awesome.
But is it though?
The pervasive nature of the internet, and its diffusion into our daily lives, spanning from tablets to whiteboards to refrigerators, also has rendered a type of dependency within the human mind.4 The memory of an individual morphs due to the mere awareness of information. Namely, when an individual knows that a given unit of information is available for their access, their recall is significantly lower from those who did not expect to have access to the information.5 Even if it were the case that the individuals who expected to have the information at a later point in time were perhaps less motivated to retain the information fed to them, the result is nonetheless groundbreaking. In essence, the result provides a tangible instance in which the mere presence of technology can impair cognitive functioning, a phenomenon informally called “digital amnesia.”
This cognitive burden is only far heavier on the shoulders of students, who are up to date with the latest tablets and smartphones of the day. Teenagers take their devices to the place where they spend the most time outside the home: school.6 Several educational boards are transitioning curriculums and lesson plans to meet this transition and now with COVID-19, modern education is becoming increasingly predisposed to incorporating technology in the classroom.7 As students are more reliant on their devices, teachers must be fully cognizant of how the ubiquity of technology affects student’s academic performance.8
While technology has introduced its own set of problems into the academic environment, its exclusion should not be seen as a silver bullet. For instance, it is typical for high school students to prioritize a worthy grade over the experience of learning for learning’s sake. This can be partially attributed to the stress-induced anxiety culture of modern college admissions. Students are pit against their peers in an atmosphere where minor setbacks can rise to deciding factors towards their acceptance to a particular school. Numerical grades also diminish student interest in learning, reduce academic risk-taking, and decrease the quality of thinking.9
A study from the University of Michigan showed 80 percent of students based their self-worth on their academic success, leading to low self-esteem and other mental health issues.10 Within the past 30 years, feeling overwhelmed and reporting psychosomatic complaints have continued to increase among Western youth.11 Despite the increasing use of antidepressants and therapy, the incidence of youth mental health problems remains unacceptably high.11 At any rate, the immersion of technology into modern education has accelerated these preexisting complications, few of which are directly addressed.
When the grade one achieves at school is not only a driving force behind a student’s psychological stability but also their perceived self-worth, the consideration of a student’s attitude towards their assessments within the broader context of overlapping technology with education becomes paramount.
Technology is a gorgeously wonderful tool, but it also is an insidiously deleterious one. The effect it has on students, however, can be controlled by the students themselves, since that is all technology is: a tool. Technology is meant to make connections more productive and efficient; but the on-demand culture of today has injected itself into educational administrations, where the aim expires only with the tool, the metric, the instrumental value.12 Students rarely find themselves working solely for the beauty and satisfaction that can be found in knowledge for its own sake, its intrinsic value; instead, they allow the expectations of the education system and a technologically-driven society to erode their physical and mental health. This does not flourish because students are helpless and ignorant; it flourishes because they are convinced that they are doing something worthy.13
Students are not given the time of day to grapple with these concerns, as almost every action of consequence is ultimately recorded to maintain a strong academic presence, steady involvement of extracurriculars, all of which are meant to carry them to a prestigious college, all to provide numerous branches for job opportunities. The absurd element is that this behavior is not only limited to high school students but is also common among Harvard undergraduates, arguably one of the highest achieving cohorts of students in the nation.14 It is the incessant obsession with protocol and urgency, as well as the unflinching adherence to a metric-based way of life that has let this issue drag on unattended.
As students are minors, there is a built-in expectation to heed the instructions of those in charge. And this mindset is prevalent even among college students, who feel their time is better spent standing in line with fear of losing course within the highway that is higher education. A common area of confusion amongst the ethics boards of universities and the administrations of secondary education is why students resort to cheating. In some cases, the educational apparatus of a given institution, be it a university or a middle school, seems better equipped to catch and exterminate academic dishonesty than to breed and nurture academic zeal.15 The explanation is relatively elementary: as soon as students are made aware that their thoughts and choices are to be ultimately represented by an array of numbers on a transcript, they will not hesitate to seize any possible opportunities presumed to be in their favor.16 This is not to defend academic dishonesty but to produce an example of how an on-demand and metric-based culture has allowed technology to join unyielding attitudes about the nature of education to create unfavorable circumstances for both student and teacher.
With the religious importance given to testing and quantitative student achievement, the bigger picture is lost. The purpose of the establishment of the educational system is thus tarnished, as the prioritization of grades and data supersede the breeding of mastery and comprehensive based learning.
The demonstration of this affliction, vice for Americans as citizens of such a culture that prizes a steady, lucrative job as the backbone of our identity, is one that marks a greater statement to be made of contemporary education.
A culture of absurdly permeated on-demand commercialization and metric-based productivity brings along with it the anxiety and expectation that we should be steps ahead of it at all times. When it comes to technology and education specifically, our already unconscionable negligence has only deteriorated with the onset of COVID-19. Students are reliant on their devices more than themselves, and acquaint their identities in the statistics they are compelled to slave after, and the precarious handling of educational matters solely drives students into a ghost-shaped abyss of burnout and debilitated dignity.
References
[1] Manchester, J. (2019, March 22). Andrew Yang says “Fourth Industrial Revolution” fueled Trump’s election [Text]. TheHill.
[2] Weissmann, J. (2019, October 18). What is this “Fourth Industrial Revolution” Andrew Yang keeps talking about? Slate Magazine.
[3] Chieng, R. (2019): Asian Comedian Destroys America- Transcript. (2020, October 10). Scraps from the Loft.
[4] Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. science, 333(6043), 776-778.
[5] Kaspersky Lab. (2016). From Digital Amnesia to the Augmented Mind. [online] Available at: https://media.kaspersky.com/pdf/Kaspersky-Digital-Amnesia-Evolution-report-17-08-16.pdf
[6] Institute of Education Sciences. (2018). State Education Reforms (SER). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_14.asp
[7] Bonk, C. J. (2010). For Openers: How Technology is changing School. Educational Leadership, 67(7), 60-65.
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[9] Kohn, A. (2011). The Case Against Grades. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 28-33.
[10] Crocker, J. (2002). The Costs of Seeking Self–Esteem. Journal of Social Issues, 58(3), 597-615.
[11] Twenge, J. M. (2011). Generational Differences in Mental Health: Are Children and Adolescents Suffering More or Less?. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(4), 469.
[12] Holtgreive, J. (2016, August 16). Students Focus Too Much on Grades to the Detriment of Learning (Essay) | Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/08/16/students-focus-too-much-grades-detriment-learning-essay
[13] Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2017). 50 years of “Obedience to Authority”: From Blind Conformity to Engaged Followership. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 13, 59-78.
[14] Lambert, C. (2010, March 1). Nonstop. Harvard Magazine. https://harvardmagazine.com/2010/03/nonstop
[15] Anderman, E. M. (2015, May 20). Students Cheat for Good Grades. Why Not Make the Classroom about Learning and Not Testing? The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/students-cheat-for-good-grades-why-not-make-the-classroom-about-learning-and-not-testing-39556
[16] Goldman, Z. (2016, July 19). Why Do Students Cheat? Harvard Graduate School of Education https://www.gse.harvard.edu/uk/blog/youth-perspective