Social media posts are peppered with teachers’ comments about disengaged students this past year. We frequently blame remote learning and COVID protocols, two obvious targets, but I must observe that frustrated posts about student apathy predate COVID. COVID makes an easy answer; that does not make COVID a correct or complete answer.

I’d like to put out an alternative for consideration: SEARCH ENGINES. Cell phones are ubiquitous in high school and are becoming so in middle schools. Fears of school violence contribute to the proliferation of phones. Parents are afraid to be out of contact.

But what is the effect of having Alexa or Siri always at your fingertips? The phones obligingly answer any and all questions. I can find out in seconds when Queen Victoria reigned in England. I can find out the size of the Philadelphia police department and get a list of all Spike Lee movies. An obliging source will tell me most cats have between 6 and 8 nipples, and it’s uncommon for cats to have more. I can find the chemical formula for formaldehyde, shown in pictures if I choose.

Here are my own questions: Could search engines be killing curiosity? Yes, those engines satisfy curiosity and make it easy to learn new facts of interest. But they also change the classroom dynamic.

MORE SPECIFICALLY, WHAT IS THE EFFECT ON STUDENT BEHAVIOR OF MAKING ANSWERS TOO EASY TO OBTAIN?

We might expect easy answers WOULD FEED CURIOSITY because arcane questions are NOW so quickly put to rest — bUT THAT’S A BOLD ASSUMPTION. hUMANS tend not to VALUE EASY WINS. sOMETIMES THEY DON’T EVEN NOTICE EASY WINS.

When I was young, students often memorized facts, filing away “truths” from various disciplines. Having no Google, we engaged with new material in real-time. The price of ignoring teachers’ explanations was high. A unit test was certainly coming, and we didn’t have a back-up learning option other than reading a textbook, going to the library, or finding a teacher who would repeat what we had missed. Back-up options were untrustworthy, too. Sometimes that test was based almost entirely on lecture that barely touched the content of the book.

Here’s a rough description of today’s problem: Xavier tunes out the day’s discussion on the Industrial Revolution because he wants to text Laura. Or he has any of a number of alternative interests that have nothing to do with the Industrial Revolution. Xavier knows he can catch up later. If he doesn’t, it’s likely his school requires his teacher to give him a retake when he fails the upcoming test. Depending on the topic, he may be certain a good Wikipedia article or two is all he will require to stay afloat.

In this scenario, we should be asking: What exactly is Xavier’s motivation to listen to classroom instruction?

Experienced teachers know that we always had those kids who tuned out the teacher; I’m sure those kids were once sitting in one-room schoolhouses on the prairie. In my school days, these were the kids who blew off their lessons and then crammed the night before the test, burning through textbook pages and friends’ notes. “Can I borrow your notes?” they asked, sometimes before suggesting a study date.

Cramming has simply gotten light years easier. “Hey, Siri. Tell me when Richard Nixon was President?” “Hey, Siri, get me information on Stephen Hawking.” “Hey, Siri…”

Here’s where the scenario goes sideways for the whole classroom. In the past, Xavier might have listened with a sense that listening now could make for the most efficient use of his time later. And when Xavier actively listened, he became curious. He became engaged. He wanted to fill in the holes in his understanding. He asked questions. When he asked questions, he inspired others to raise their hands. Sarah might add a new question to the discussion, and soon questions would be popping out all over the room, becoming part of the automatic flow of that classroom. That’s maybe the greatest fun of teaching: Inspiring and answering student questions — inspiring the fun of learning.

But cramming itself has gotten so much easier that I believe we are sometimes witnessing what happens when students decide to put off learning new content today because they are certain they can pick up that content tomorrow. They don’t engage in real-time. (Or maybe they never intend to engage at all, but that’s another issue.) They only half-listen in class, doing the school equivalent of distracted driving. They are present enough to notice red lights and make turns in proper places, but mostly… they are drifting. Maybe it seems more important to learn when Laura’s parents will be home than to understand the Industrial Revolution.

Eduhonesty: What happens when there’s never a sense of urgency about learning because Siri or Alexa is always there? That’s a topic I might choose to research if I were selecting a research area today. The ultimate study buddy may be no buddy — nobody — at all.

But Siri is so convenient. How do we manage this problem? I honestly have no answer yet; I wanted to write this post, however, to identify and put a face to the problem. Our distracted drivers are driving off the road all over this country, leaving their classrooms behind. We have to help them find their way back to the engagement and enthusiasm they lost.

P.S. Whether for academics or distractions, research into use of search engines also must take into account that we are talking about children and adolescents. Kids are not little adults. Some typical middle school questions: How do I become one of the richest gamers in the world? How can I make millions in cryptocurrency? What is a cryptocurrency? Can you mate a horse with an elephant? Is it dangerous to drop your TV in the bathtub? Here’s a favorite: If I eat myself, will I get twice as big or disappear completely? If you put this last question into a search engine you will get pages of answers, most of them sarcastic or crazy, but a number with a genuine scientific bent. I don’t know the origin of the question, but it honestly sounds like something one of my students might ask. The what-if-I-eat-myself question was even posed on Quora.

“Hey Siri” is a marvelous shortcut when seeking new knowledge, but concerned adults have to make sure that an overarching plan — a curriculum — is at least sometimes guiding Siri’s choice of direction.

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