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and dollars. A "Herd em in, herd em out" sort of mentality keeps education from being a sacred opportunity, and lends itself to creating a type of melancholy over the whole situation. Too many students just don't care besides the gifted few and even those can be crushed under the weight of society's dictates of how those minds should be used.
Whereas our educational institutions struggle (financially and logistically) to provide the offering of classes encompassing all the latest available information and technologies along with the traditionally expected courses, there is an utter dearth in providing what the student needs most, which is a sense of respect and honor and gratitude for the privilege of learning and the assurance of having the spirit of a life long learner instilled within. Many might consider these considerations to be fluff, but I say they are imperatives. Without them, we produce graduates who learn for the sake of learning, not for the sake of knowing; young people who can crunch facts and figures, but who cannot form an informed idea or opinion of their own; fledgling adults who believe action is far better than comprehension; human beings who do not grasp the meaning of graciousness and thankfulness; mere automatons which may perform the daily tasks as assigned, but which cannot function in creative unison or within soul-searching solitude.

Let me get back to the concept of "avoidance". I say that the myriads of diversions we have created in order to keep us from looking at reality are a symptom to how large the problem actually IS. We cannot be out and about in society nowadays without seeing people with their cell phones, their mp3 players, their hand-held games, their PDAs, their laptops, the list is really beginning to become endless.
("Hey did you hear that Fred got his virtual death ray the other day? And I hear the Smiths down the street just had a new replicator installed.")
The question is this:

What are YOU trying to avoid looking at in YOUR life that makes your gadgets more important than you LIFE?

Once we begin to identify these things from which we are averting our eyes and our attention, and start to address them, intellectualism and the love of the pursuit of knowledge and understanding will again thrive and blossom and spread forth their seeds.
Let's face it, you give a child too many toys, and eventually the child grows overwhelmed and bored and the only way to soothe him is with a nap or some simplicity. We will reach that point, where the toys are no longer holding our attention, and we each begin to look up and at EACH OTHER again. At that point, we will be able to actually attend to the ACTUAL problem at hand, which is that we need to wake up to our reality and begin to once again participate within it with our whole hearts, minds, and souls.

And in that atmosphere, we will finally find that technology is an ally, not the enemy.

Learn more about this author, Quirin.
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