Much has been said about how today's youth are entirely different from its predecessors. And those of us who belong to the earlier generations find ourselves sighing over the youth's insensitivity and nonchalance to things that take place in their midst.
But, have we truly thought of how our youth is responding to and receiving this world primarily dictated by multi-tasking and broadband speed?
The youth may have access to almost anything they can think about with just a click of a button, but there are questions that do not have one-click away answers. Questions that are bugging them the same way they have bugged us when we were their age.
Together with the youth, we have been shocked, swayed, poked, and twitted by the various gadgets and technology that now govern and control much of the world. We too were excited by the vastness of the world wide web and the ease with which we can accomplish things. While we let the microwave do the cooking for us, we go to watch cable TV or check our long-lost friends and classmates in various social networking sites.
While our son, daughter, nephew, or niece is quietly tilling their virtual land and harvesting digital produce, we observe in amazement how printers and photocopiers publish theses which in the past we either had to manually write or mechanically produce using those bulky, callus-buidling typewriters.
The limitless and borderless world of the tangled world wide web has created a bigger gap between the children of the 21st century and the children of the bicentennial that was. We have grown apart from the youth greatly, so much so that we have forgotten that even if they could communicate with relatives and friends with a few clicks of a button or with a few shortcut text messages, these awesome technological advancements will never suffice the security that our presence offers.
We need to understand that despite the quickness and ease by which things are accomplished, they could never appreciate them properly because they have no point of comparison. They could not appreciate instantly how writing and listening develop ones keenness when they know they could easily ask their teacher for a soft copy of the lesson's PowerPoint presentation, have it printed for their own consumption, and understand the lesson in their own terms and conditions. They could not appreciate right away the value of thinking well before you type something when one could easily delete what he/she has typed with just a simple press of a button, without having to pull out liquid erasers and waiting for the eraser to dry before you can continue writing.
The truth is that the amount of guidance our youth needs is in direct proportion with the amount of information they get from the Web. And it is educators and formators who comprise part of the youth's first line of guidance in the process of properly understanding what this information age is bringing with it. Think of it this way. If you were falling in line for an eat-all-you-can buffet and you find a foreign selection of dishes in front of you, would it not be great to have someone who has seen and tasted the dishes in front of you offer you help with your choices so you'd have great time feasting on the great-tasting meals, as opposed to getting a little of everything and seeing what dishes fit your taste only to find out that you have wasted so much time tasting the first few dishes that the other dishes have been taken by everybody else because those were palatable ones?
The world wide web may have much to offer but the youth is in dire need of help in order to thread that web properly. We need to guide them with wisdom we acquired from decades of experiences and bestowed upon us by the Almighty.
No matter how many webs get entangled into each other or how many megabytes per second the world demands, aging wine will still be the best way to produce great tasting wine, cooking delectable dishes over slow fire will still create magnificent tastes, and the slow setting of the sun will still evoke the same nostalgic, romantic feelings.
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