IT vs. Humanities – The Great Battle In Modern Education

Educational programs have faced a significant number of changes on all levels of education in the recent years. Most of the novelties, of course, are inseparably connected with constant technological development. And, as it often happens when it comes to changes, there are people who tend to support them and those who are completely against them.

The debates about implementing digital technology to schools were especially severe, and as a result, schools seem to be evolving in two polar directions. Some believe that it is crucial to adjust common school subjects so that they could be taught with the help of modern gadgets and applications, while others are convinced that people are overwhelmed with technology in everyday life and, therefore, scholars should be able to go without it in their academic experience. Both sides make some strong points to support their opinion, so it is quite engrossing to give them a closer look.

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How Technology Changes Our Perception Of Life?

Those in favor of increasing the number of computer science lessons and switching to the newest methods of education often claim that there is no need to waste time on humanities. They believe that in order to move forward, society needs to invest more time in perspective fields of research such as engineering, programming, computer science etc. Undoubtedly, their assertion is substantiated with strong evidence: as humanity sets new goals, one even more ambitious than the other, it needs experts to fulfill these goals.

[pullquote]Having some technical savvy is not enough anymore, one must be a truly experienced and dedicated specialist to gain success in such complex fields of study, thus people are trying to minimize their time spent on other “unpromising” subjects.[/pullquote] It is important to keep in mind that improving technical skills at the expense of liberal arts will inevitably have some negative influence as well.

Unfortunately, some students who show brilliant results in technical subjects can struggle with simple tasks in other disciplines. For example, essay writing, although sounds like an effortless thing to do, can be a lot more difficult with little or no previous experience.

Regardless of cheap or free easy access to an enormous and ever-growing flow of information, many people fail to orient in it, unable to derive what is truly important to their field of interest.

Exploring huge amounts of information, dividing it to narrow the search and structuring to make it logically sound, is a necessary skill for writing an outline for an essay, research paper, coursework etc. Consequently, skilled tech specialists are pushed to seek for a paper writing service that would help them with their writing challenges.

Any Reasons To Boycott Technology In The Education Process?

On the contrast, there are people who think that traditional methods of education have proven themselves throughout many generations of students and granted a decent number of extraordinary scientists. Some schools choose Waldorf education and refuse to use any technology at all, trying to appeal to students’ natural curiosity and emphasize creative thinking.

It is also known that leaders of famous and successful IT companies prefer submitting their children to technology-free schools and establish strict rules for using phones, tablets, and computers at home. They explain it with a simple fact that their companies are working constantly on making their products as simple as they can be so that one would not need to have much of educational background in order to use them.

At the same time, some important personal skills, such as critical thinking, analyzing data and ability to negotiate cannot be learned on short notice. Recent studies have also shown some surprising findings: people are more likely to remember information read from traditional sources in comparison to what they had read from screens.

The same principle applies to notes and academic writing: individual, hand-written notes are more likely to be remembered than anything typed and saved on a digital source. Moreover, modern technology is gradually changing the way our perception works: after being regularly distracted by incoming calls and messages, people are becoming unable to focus for long periods of time even if all the gadgets around are turned off.

[pullquote]Recent research has shown that it takes up to twenty minutes to get back to a normal rhythm of work after each of these distractions.[/pullquote] Many people notice that they can no longer consume big bulks of information as they feel the constant urge to check their phones or accounts in social media; they got used to reading short articles, and now anything more than two or three paragraphs seems like a burden.

So, will there ever be a winner in a controversial battle between IT and humanities? The sad truth is that in order to make it to school’s curriculum and syllabus, any innovation should be thoroughly investigated and approved by numerous governmental institutions, and that process is never easy and never is it fast.

As a result, when modern technology is implemented to the educational process, it is not that modern anymore, and therefore students are doomed to deal with outdated sources and methods anyway. Thus, the primary aim of education is to teach people how to learn, as there is no matter how many more cons and pros people will come up with regarding methods of education, in order to be successful, one should be a fast learner and a well-rounded person who is capable of handling different types of intellectual activity.

If you are interested in even more technology-related stories and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.

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