With the advancements in technology, especially the internet, questions have popped up considering if it is actually beneficial or hurtful towards our world intelligence. In a more specific field, have students improved in their knowledge of the world and increased their thought process? With Google being a massive database of websites to nearly everything known in human existence available with a few clicks of a button, the answer could be found.
The websites Sparknotes.com and CLiffnotes.com analyze and summarize with great description novels and works throughout history assigned to any literature class. For example, a decade, maybe two ago, the complete works of Shakespeare would have had to be read, analyzed, and expanded on the writings of a 15th century playwright. Nowadays, any sane and student would simply search for Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet on Sparknotes to have their work completed for them. Now all they have to do is reword it. These summarization websites have become so greatly used that there have been precautions to using the site, from turnitin.com, which authenticates the essay, outline, etc. to find any relation with any source.
Now regards to logistical and set problems in any other subject, especially science, students no longer have to read their expansive textbook to receive the right answer. Hindering their ability to pinpoint certain terms through deductive reasoning. Depending on the question, they could pinpoint the chapter the answer is located, and could further dig deeper to more specific subjects.
While student grades might have increased throughout the years, it does not correlate with their intelligence and their contribution to society, just how well they can phrase a Google search and how well their short term memory is. If you ask any high school senior a history question from their adolescents, maybe when did Christopher Columbus “discover” America? He/she would probably answer, in the 15th, 16th century right? But if that was going to be on their test the next day, he/she would simply react, 1492 with gusto. Intelligence is not proportional to either memory or word phrasing, it is correlated with the process of finding the answers, not how well you know it.
