A reader thinks Dan Rockmore’s argument against laptops in the classroom misses a larger point:
I’m a medical student, and the absolute volume of information I have to absorb is astounding. It would be impossible for me to keep up with everything if I were forced to write it all down by hand. I do, however, have an app that allows me to not only type, but to write and draw images using a stylus, allowing me to take beautiful notes (if I do say so myself). I can also download PowerPoints and type notes, write, and draw directly on them.
Maybe the reason laptops appear to harm classroom comprehension is that we haven’t focused on teaching students how to take effective notes on computers. If we focused on that instead of simply reacting against technology, we could not only boost students’ immediate comprehension but also improve the quality of the notes that they use to study for their exams.
Another recalls an encounter with a literature professor who wouldn’t allow note-taking of any sort:
His rationale?
He wanted us to use our memories and so we had to become good listeners, instead of note-takers. He had a point. This same professor required us to memorize five poems of varying length. Again, we asked why, and he said that these poems, memorized in our youth, would stay with us for our life, so we should choose wisely what we would memorize.
The result? Forty years later, I still can recite the first 16 lines of The Canterbury Tales, a sonnet by Milton, and a love poem by Robert Herrick. You cannot imagine how many people I’ve impressed with these recitations!
A PhD candidate in medieval history notes how that tension between memorization and note-taking goes back quite a bit:
In 1355, the committee of masters of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris (later known as the Sorbonne) issued a decree that all lectures given were only to be delivered by speaking rapidly, “so that the mind of the hearer can take them in but the hand cannot keep up with them.” They gave no direct explanation of their reasons for favoring this approach, but the implication is that speaking quickly would force students to actually listen and memorize what was being said rather than permitting them to rely on the notes that they (or someone else) had taken.
In the medieval university, the memorization of great quantities of material was a fundamental part of the curriculum and it seems likely that the masters realized that the ability to memorize things after hearing them only one time was a valuable skill for their students to develop. Therefore, any lecturer caught speaking too slowly was forbidden to teach for one year. Amusingly, though, it also appears that the masters expected that their decision was going to be none too popular with their students. At the end of the decree they declare that any student who protested the implementation of the statute in the classroom, “by clamor, hissing, noise, throwing stones … or in any other way,” would be suspended for one year.
The Dish 