To rear our kids to be learners and thinkers requires skills
well-beyond information retrieval. We as moderns with our high-
powered phones often feel well-educated because the facts we
need are so close by; mere seconds of typing and waiting
separate us from knowing all sorts of truths. I have more than
once replied to an innocent fact-wondering family member or
friend who asked a simple question, with a flick of my phone-
filled wrist and a caustic, ”Is my Google better than yours?”
From the Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday, When it comes to the
materials of learning, we should impress upon students the
importance of carrying these materials around in their own
heads. Facts about the Civil War, scientific laws, poems by
Emily Dickinson . . . these are not just items to retrieve when
a situation calls for them. They are rightly part of a youth’s
character and sensibility. The Gettysburg Address isn’t just a
text on the syllabus to be invoked at test time. The cadences
and assertions should be internalized fore