I take much of the blame for the decline in the quality of student research in my classes. I need to teach students how to read, to take time with language and ideas, to work through arguments, to synthesize disparate sources to come up with original thought. I need to help my students understand how to assess sources to determine their credibility, as well as to trust their own ideas more than snippets of thought that materialize on a screen. The placelessness of the Web leads to an ethereal randomness of thought. Gone are the pathways of logic and passion, the sense of the progress of an argument.
Chance holds sway, and it more often misses than hits.
Judgment must be taught, as well as the methods of exploration. I'm seeing my students' attention spans wane and their ability to reason for themselves decline. Knowledge does not emerge in a vacuum, but we do need silence and space for sustained thought. Next semester, I'm going to urge my students to turn off their glowing boxes and think, if only once in a while. David Rothenberg is an associate professor of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.