Working around Google’s reign on education

The king of search cannot conquer critical thinking if instructors are willing to put in the effort.

The question of whether Google impacts the way people learn is as old as Google itself. Opinions about its pros and cons are in constant flux. Fantasizing about retreating into our luddite shells of looking up information in the library is not productive. To live in today’s reality of information retrieval is to be a subject in the monarchy of King G.

For instructors, this raises questions about working with a tool that has rendered tests of memorization useless. Some instructors retaliated by banning access to the king’s tool during tests. This served the instructors little more than enabling their own laziness.

Yet, their time will come like all the laggards before them. Even the students ask about their ability to learn when consulting the king. But this king is not malevolent. He doesn’t retaliate against dissents. He waits for them to go extinct.

This king is only concerned with his wealth. As instructors, we still have a way around his all-consuming knowledge. I would even say that we may gain from it by forcing ourselves to guide our students in ways the king doesn’t understand: critical thinking.