Parents should help the NEW 'PARENT'
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Thanks to the internet, children have access to more knowledge, and are learning faster; this can only be encouraged
The joke has been around for quite some time. However, we laugh not only because it’s funny, but also because it’s painfully and increasingly true. Google, to the kids of today, is their mum and dad combined. If you don’t help the youngsters do their homework, fine. They’ll just go to your “substitute”. Feel awkward about teaching your children about sex? Don’t be. Let the magnificent search engine take over. Clueless about playing the guitar? Just buy them the instrument and watch them go.
And don’t be depressed if Google seems to be a better parent than you. The best you can offer your kids is your own experience, which, no matter how valuable, is still limited in terms of perspectives. Your children are learning from multiple perspectives, which can only be great for their development.
There is more to parenting than teaching, of course. But Google is helping share much of the burden. If you feel too lazy to tell a bedtime story, just look for one on the Net. Your toddler has a minor health problem? Maybe Google can save you time and headaches at the hospital.
Older children’s exposure to Google will ensure they are not easily fooled by political propagandists. If the ideological world is black and white on the outside, Google presents the important grey areas. The children of today are not learning right and wrong only from parents, relatives, friends and teachers. Their “classroom” is far bigger than that.
We can only be excited about the prospect of what the Google generation can contribute to the world’s
progress. If Albert Einstein and the Wright brothers could achieve what they did without the help of a powerful, all-encompassing search engine, what can future brilliant minds accomplish with a helpful tool called Google?
Smart or ambitious children went to libraries in the old days, and there must have been numerous cases where talents were too lazy to walk the extra steps to the far-flung shelves or corridors and therefore their potential was never awakened. Google makes those extra steps easy and the far-flung shelves get closer. And if one person really wants to make a difference, he or she does not necessarily have to be in a physical lab all the time.
Some have compared Google to God. That’s over the top, but is it possible that God was getting impatient at the slow pace of human progress, so the Internet was dropped from the sky? People are not only getting smarter – they’re getting smarter faster than ever before.
Ethical questions have been raised, but children using Google to cheat on their homework has become part of the new world order. Calculators went through similar scrutiny by the education authorities when they first came out, but the world moved on and is generally thankful for them.
It’s just a matter of guiding the young, of making their laptops a worthy classroom. In the past, good teaching meant good knowledge and motivation. With good guidance, today’s children can learn at a higher speed and greater depth. Parents and teachers have a big role to play in making full use of this “super substitute”, which they all should be thankful for.
