Great Internet-focussed essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Mark Edmundson, a professor of romantic poetry and literary theory at the University of Virginia.

This self-described Edmundosaurus (the oldest of the dinosaurs, a colleague’s child tells him), concludes with the announcement that laptops are henceforth banned in all his classes.

Photo of the Edmundosaurus:

Before reaching the laptop ban, he extolls the fully-engaged Socratic-style education:

Why does the encounter need to take place face to face? The student and teacher need to create a bond of good feeling, where they are free to speak openly with each other. They need to connect not just through cold print, but through gestures, intonations, jokes. The student needs to discover what the teacher knows, and what she exemplifies about how to live. The teacher needs contact with the student’s energy and hopes. That kind of connection happens best in person; perhaps it can happen only that way. It’s not a luxury, this Socratic education whose goal is self-knowledge.

Other gems include this great image:

When a seminar is over now, the students reach their hands into their pockets and draw — it looks a little like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But what they’re reaching for, after discussing Thoreau, say, on the pleasures of solitude, are their cellphones. They’ve been unwired, off the drug, for more than an hour, and they need a fix.

Interesting stats:

Three thousand first-year students entered my university last year, and 2,906 of them brought laptops with them; 90 brought desktops. Four students — the incoming James Deans and Marlon Brandos? — showed up computerless. (Ten years ago, half of our first-year students came to school without computers.)

Well worth a read, but would Edmundson prefer to tell you in person? Actually, he wrote a book called Why Read? so apparently approves of certain forms of non-face-to-face learning.

He has many valid critiques of the Internet and computers as learning tools for the type of deep education he teaches, but I still find the Internet an amazing tool – when used properly – to learn. My personal favorite example: Chinese Pod.

(Hat tip to Christopher Graves for sending me this great essay)

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