Can You Google?

When researching a topic, or even just looking up a good barbecue joint, where is the first place you turn? A search engine.

That's all well and good, but apparently too many students rely too heavily on the top search results when doing research, according to an articlepublished on Inside Higher Ed. This problem is compounded by the finding that most students don't really know how to conduct searches. Often times they actually ask the search engine questions, which tend to confuse it.

Much of this has to do with conceptualization. If you do not understand how a how search engines (mainly Google and Bing) actually work or what they do, then you will never get the hang of searching effectively.

This inability to conceptualize is part of a bigger problem in American education. Nobody is taught the nuts and bolts of anything anymore. Shop classes are gone from most high schools. There is no woodworking, metalworking, or auto shop. Fewer schools offer home economics so people can learn to cook.

People assume that kids know how to use computers but does anyone learn about logic and programming in high school? Is there a class that teaches breadboarding? Does anyone in school today even know what that means?

Yes, there are some clubs and even some classes that are more advanced and will teach a student to use Google, but as the article states:

They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources. (For instance, limiting a search to news articles, or querying specific databases such as Google Book Search or Google Scholar.)

Now, I can see a seventh grader doing a poor job of searching Google, but we're talking about college kids.

This is all part of the dumbing down process and I'm not the only one noticing it. Kids are not learning any practical knowledge. When I was a kid, the first thing I wanted when I was heading to the sixth grade was an elaborate chemistry set. In today's America, these things are illegal. In fact, I'm sure most people have never even seen one.

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A company called Heathkit used to sell all sorts of kits to build everything from radios to robots. People learned by doing and building. The company shuttered and sold its last kit in 1992, coincidentally about the time that the first webpages began to appear. The sociology of this has never been fully explored, but the combination of the integrated circuit combined with obsessive worry that some kid might burn himself with a soldering gun did the trick.

The miserable state-run education system, with its funding going to non-teaching middle managers, obviously did not help. Science fairs became less important and somewhere along the way, kids either lost their sense of curiosity or had it browbeaten out of them.

In the end, everything deteriorates. Computer skills are non-existent, as Facebook is the center of the universe. Now it's this search revelation. Where is the high school course to teach Google? Apparently we need one.