My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol.3 #17, October 24, 1997

THE INTERNET MADE ME DO IT

There is a new controversy about the internet these days, started by an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which a professor claimed that the internet was responsible for lowering the quality of student research.

Let me see, how does the net corrupt us? Let me count the ways. It spreads pornography, blasphemy, racism, communism, suicidal cults, and bomb recipes. There are government and corporate secrets, false information, and drug information on it. People are violating copyright on it, seducing minors on it, and organizing to overthrow the government on it. It's dangerously addictive. And now it's ruining student research skills besides. What an incredibly dangerous place you and I are inhabiting.

The professor in the Chronicle of Higher Education complained that students used any old thing they found on the internet, instead of using carefully chosen scholarly journal articles. He said the internet made them think they could do their research the night before a paper was due, and that students no longer knew how to tell the difference between high quality information and garbage.

Now, I was teaching college freshmen thirty years ago, and you know what? They didn't know the difference between high quality information and garbage then either, and there was no such thing as the internet at that time, nor even personal computers. (And little Billy Gates probably had nothing but quarters in his piggy bank.) For the past 20 years I have taught students library research skills, and for every student who gets excited about all the information available in her field, there are at least twenty students who will settle for the first ten things that show up in their search, whether those articles are in the Ladies' Home Journal, People Magazine, or The Journal of Personality. And then they will go run off copies of the articles. (I'm not sure they actually read them. They may think the act of copying is sufficient.)

So, yes, I am sure that professor is seeing shoddy term papers. But I also suspect he saw a few shoddy term papers before the students had access to the internet. The fault is not in the net, but in our students that they are underlings. Which is why they are students--they are not born knowing this stuff, so they are here to learn it. Who should be demonstrating to students how research is done within a field of study? Who sets the terms of the assignment? Who explains to them how to evaluate resources critically? Is this not the job of professors? (And yes, the job of librarians, too--but we can't flunk students who do crappy work.)

This is just one more case of "the internet made me do it." People don't understand that the internet is simply a medium of communication combined with a storehouse of information. It may be used well or badly, just as radio can transmit great drama or soap operas, symphonies or rap, NPR interviews or Rush Limbaugh. The net transmits art and pornography, valid information and false. And, of course, silliness. Lots of sites are simply stupid beyond belief, because there are no IQ requirements for admission.

That's what causes all the uproar, I suspect--the absence of gatekeepers on the internet. There are no requirements for respectability, for truthfulness, for scientific method, for good manners, for good taste, for suitability for children. There's a little something here to shock every possible taste.

But it's also true that in most cases you have to make an effort to be offended. It is very rare, for instance, that you come on explicit sex without warning. You may be astonished when you type in an innocent search for "dolls" to find that some of the dolls are "Hot Babes." Still, you do have to choose to click on Hot Babes to see them. The internet didn't make you do it, YOU did. The serpent might have tempted, but Adam was the one who couldn't resist the ripe juicy apple.

We do not tell children they can use anything in the library. We teach them skills for selecting a few good things suited to their understanding and to the requirements of the assignment. If anything we have even more obligation to teach students the skills for finding and evaluating materials on the internet, because we live in a society with an overwrought respect for the computer--students tend to think that if a computer says it, it must be true. (At least until they receive their first MasterCharge bill.)

We need to teach them to view any medium of information, be it television, newspapers, the internet (or teachers, for that matter), with skepticism, to say: Who says so? How do they know it's true? What is the evidence? What questions were asked? What do the experts in the field think ? Does this argument make sense?

Does the internet turn kids' brains to mush? No. Does it create student laziness? It seems unlikely, since they were complaining about lazy students in Plato's day. Does it make them think they can get away with half-assed last minute research on a term paper due tomorrow? Well, yes, but then again, it just means the kids I used to see in the library the night before the paper was due are now cruising the internet instead.

The time has come for people to stop blaming the internet for all the ills of the world, and start learning the skills for using it intelligently. The internet is far too valuable a resource to find its highest purpose as a scapegoat.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.