The Myth of the Google Generation ‘Myth’

Posted on | January 25, 2008 | No Comments

Thanks to kriss griffon for the pic.

In the ‘old days’ no one in education would have assumed that, merely because the book sat at the centre of learning, young people would know instinctively how to use a library, or for that matter a book. A key part of our schooling therefore was something called library studies or information science or similar.

Why then are some observers chortling and, basically, saying ‘I told you so’ at the recent study from the British Library on Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (PDF). One obvious reason is that the BL itself has headlined its press release on the report: Pioneering research shows “Google Generation” is a myth. The other, of course, is that some are just glad to see any publication that gives them reason to expose the ’self-evident’ dumbing-down of our culture and collective wisdom.

I recently picked up on a post from George Siemens by pointing to a website that categorized and listed logical fallacies. There, listed under ‘Informal Fallacy/Red Herring’ is Straw Man, which it describes thus:

“Straw man” is one of the best-named fallacies, because it is memorable and vividly illustrates the nature of the fallacy. Imagine a fight in which one of the combatants sets up a man of straw, attacks it, then proclaims victory. All the while, the real opponent stands by untouched.

This is precisely what the British Library and the chortlers are doing here.

There are, undoubtedly, some observers of the current scene, generally those lacking experience of life or real knowledge of young people, who believe in the myth of a younger generation that is, somehow, instinctually capable of using Google and a number of other tools properly in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. But few intelligent educationists observing the scene buy this for a moment.

What they do ‘buy’ though is the absolute and undeniable fact that young people DO use these tools as a matter of course, and not just young people (as the British Library report itself points out: these are most definitely cross-generational issues).

The real issue, then, is that young people today need to be educated to use these tools properly, just as we had to be taught to use a library and a book properly in the past (skills that are still needed, of course). And the bigger issue arising out of this is whether or not we have enough teachers with the necessary wherewithall and the experience to be able to teach their young charges to use the available tools effectively. The simple truth is that we do not, and rather than sneer at a non-existent myth, we should be questioning the fact that so many teachers who walk complacently through our school doors every day are completely ill-equipped to deal with the informational landscape that faces our young people (and everyone else) today. Imagine a teacher in a previous time who did not know how to use a book or a library – he or she would simply not have been allowed to teach!

The ‘Google Generation’ is by no means a myth – it is a fact! – but please do not assume that the myth includes some preternatural capacity of young people to know how to research, how to discriminate, how to write without plagiarising and how to argue cogently using the vast caverns of information available to them. That part of the ‘myth’ has been generated, on the one hand, by those who live their ‘gee-whizz’ lives entirely within their own heads, and, on the other hand, by those who feel the need to find ways to demonstrate their own authority in the face of the shifting sands around them – intelligent observers should not fall into the trap of buying the whole of the myth.

Rather than crow and chortle, and rather than write silly headlines to press releases assuming an aspect of the Google Generation that only a fool or a helpless naÃ¯f would believe exists, we should be working to ensure our education systems and our schools have the knowledge and the people capable of taking the Google Generation by the hand and helping them to make full use of the immense stores of information available and to lead them, as teachers have always been able to do, to a position where they understand the requirements for judgement and insight and discrimination and logic.

We do our young people absolutely no good by chortling and crowing at Straw Men.

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