Wait, What?: An Opinion Piece Response

            College: a word that brings up so many connotations, depending on which high school senior to whom it is posed. Thoughts of independence, change, the elusive and tantalizing “future.” As my senioritis was kicking in and my college acceptances began coming, I daydreamed about college. I was ready to go beyond the walls of my Catholic all- girls high school, ready to trade in my unwieldy, school- mandated Fujitsu tablet for a sleek MacBook, ready to embrace the new ideas that would bombard me at the forward- thinking New York University.  After a long summer of interning and living on my own in Washington DC, I made my way back to New York to begin my NYU experience. College officially started and I made my way to my classes with an eager, willing disposition and a fully charged laptop… and was promptly told that I would never again need to bring my laptop to class. Wait… what?

                                                                          From this...

                                                                          ... to this.

            Sadly, for three out of my four first semester college courses, I am not allowed to use a laptop. It seems backwards to me that a tool that was my companion all throughout high school should be considered such a distraction in college that all of its concrete benefits are voided in favor of possible negatives. Many educators seem to be of the opinion that the use of laptops in classrooms is more of a hindrance than a help, hence the ban. One such figure, Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University, even wrote an opinion piece called “Why laptops in class are distracting America’s future workforce” for the Christian Science Monitor. As a student who has greatly benefitted from the use of technology in the classroom, I feel that I must poke a couple of holes in Snyder’s argument.

            The first point in Snyder’s opinion piece that mystifies me is when he writes, “…we are losing the long tradition of people learning from other people.” He makes this statement in regard to the lecture hall format of teaching. Lecture hall lessons embody the pedagogy of bank learning, in which students are seen as empty vessels in which a sole purveyor, the lecturer, must deposit knowledge. Snyder’s statement bears no relevance to the point of his article because the basis of the lecture hall, which he says himself “has been around for more than 2,000 years”, is that a solitary educator passes knowledge onto a mass of students. Technology cannot be to blame for ending a tradition of intellectual interaction when there has really never been a back and forth element to lecture halls.

                                                               This would never be ok.

            Another point of contention in Snyder’s writing is where he claims that, “In seminars, laptops are still more harmful, serving as physical barriers that prevent a group of students from becoming a class.” Seminars are intrinsically a more intimate setting for learning than lecture halls, simply because the smaller number of students means more familiarity and opportunity to speak with the professor and each other. Any student in my Writing I seminar, and even the professor, can attest that though we use computers, we still hold stimulating discussions that showcase the range of personalities present in our number. Though Snyder is technically correct in stating that laptops can be physical barriers, the rest of his statement is not founded. The argument here is illogical— how can it be possible for a class with 15 students and one professor that meets for 75 minutes, twice a week, to not bond and “become a class” when the sole purpose of their meeting is to evoke discussion? Again, technology has been scapegoated for a problem that does not actually have anything to do with it.

                                            Is this what Snyder thinks seminars with laptops are like?

            Professor Timothy Snyder’s article “Why laptops in class are distracting America’s future workforce” is only an opinion piece and not a research article, but his attack on the use of laptops in classes has many gaps that defenders of technology can easily refute. Snyder’s viewpoint reflects that of many professors throughout the country’s university and college system. Technology is bearing the burden of claims that, in reality, have nothing to do with it. It is impossible to state that the use of laptops is killing the communication amongst professors and students in lecture halls when the very basis of a lecture hall is that there is one source of communication from lecturer to listener. It is also impossible to claim that the use of technology in seminars prevents class bonding and interaction, when the foundation of a seminar is discussion- based teaching, with students learning from both their professor and each other. It is time for people to stop using technology as a scapegoat and realize that their arguments do not make sense.