Ted Auch

What you may ask is too important to fail? Well the answer is lots of things like publication education, local and national newspapers, true democracy, and the NFL. Just kidding! Seriously I would argue one object that is too important to fail is the blackboard. The blackboard you ask who the heck cares if it goes by the way of the 8-track or VHS or basic discourse? Again just kidding about the last one…..I think! The blackboard was at one time a pallet for instructors at every level of education to convey an idea and then another and another, while all the while retaining on the board that initial concept for students to…Now don’t jump out of your seat….actually learn to synthesize to make those nuanced connections that only a young brain receptive to all types of input can manage. We have turned in recent years to Microsoft Powerpoint an all to evil invention of an otherwise seminal corporation. This wonder of the folks in Washington has facilitated an abrupt transition to rote and overly simplified learning. I would argue that what is occurring in high school and college classrooms where Powerpoint is present is far from learning, rather we get respective questions and comments from students like “Is this going to be on the test?” or “I that wasn’t exactly what your Powerpoint handout said!”

I once tried an experiment when giving a guest lecture I waited till everyone was in the room and proceeded to give a lame excuse for why I wouldn’t be using my Powerpoint presentation that morning and instead would turn to the blackboard. Immediately I had students asking how I was going to decide what would and would not be on the test and if I didn’t write something on the blackboard I couldn’t put it on the test. Well I chuckled and said you know let’s just give this a shot and I proceeded to go through the lecture on the board starting at the top-left and ending at the bottom right of two adjacent blackboards, repeating this process twice in the span of 70 minutes. However, half way through I turned to the class and asked if it was all making sense what with them being used to Dr. Evil (i.e. Powerpoint) and all. The response was an emphatic yes and even better they said what they really loved about the blackboard was that it all flowed and they could go back and see the connections right there on the board, which they said facilitated more informed and directed questioning. They said that with Powerpoint it was a race against the next slide, while with the blackboard the pace was slowed down as was the learning, which facilitated true absorption of the information, questioning, and debate that followed. I couldn’t help but ask why they had never voiced these issues with other instructors and they were basically under the impression that the ship had left the dock and they better get with the times or risk the consequences.

This is not how learning is supposed to happen especially with the fact that, as Tamar Lewin reported a while back in The New York Times, college tuition fees and median family incomes between 1982-2007 increased by 439 and 147%. If we are going to send our kids to college and people like myself are going to truly teach rather than talk at them we need to be equipped with the best tools and believe me when I tell you those fancy classrooms with overhead projectors, speakers, etc may look great but we’re not going on tour with Pink Floyd here we’re trying to foster thinking and discourse, neither of which are facilitated under the conforming pressures of Powerpoint and “Is this going to be on the test?” lines of questioning. We have really smart kids in this country that will at some point be handed the baton. I for one want to make sure they are equipped to think holistically and are not in the business of having information spoon fed to them. Powerpoint doesn’t just squash synthesized learning and curiosity it makes students and I would imagine many in the workplace apathetic, lazy, and stupid. Yeah I had to say it because it is true. If we continue to mechanize and desensitize the classroom we won’t produce graduates but rather robots. This planet doesn’t have the luxury of deciding its fate, but we do and I would trust flesh and blood over a robot any day.