Educational Norms and Critical Thinking

Educational Norms & Critical Thinking

A student's experience in the American educational system varies widely based on where they live and the type of school they attend. Each school has its own standards, practices, and expectations. While K-12 schooling is important to childhood learning, schools do not have the power to overcome the current household realities of its students or widespread changes in culture.

But it's worth considering the impact of schooling on a graduate's educational foundation and critical thinking skills. In the 20th century and prior, school was synonymous with textbooks and notebooks. Today, pens and papers have been replaced by i-pads, websites, and keyboards.

Cramming for a test or frantically drafting an essay just before the submission deadline isn't new to students of the internet era. I used to pass essays under the door of my professors' offices in the wee hours of the morning back in the late 1900s. However, books were more common research tools in those days than was the nascent internet. Handwritten notes were more common than weighty laptops or the i-pad, which Apple debuted in 2010.

Evidence suggests that reading from a book or printed page fosters a greater chance of storing information in short and long-term memory than reading something on the internet. When we read things on our computers or phones, it all looks the same. Our recall is of staring at our computer or phone screen. That makes it harder to differentiate one reading from the next. A lot of the readings you are assigned today are, like this one, online. So, you may find it harder to remember a reading and readily recall its unique detail.

The speed of the internet complicates our ability to focus for long periods of time. While we are trying to study, we are interrupted time and again by notifications, which tempt us to scroll social media, catch up with group chats, or shop. People multitask more in the internet era than they did before. When we try to do several things at the same time, we are often tempted to focus on the things we enjoy, like our group chat or shopping, rather than the things we may enjoy less, like classwork. Multitasking also shortens our attention span and makes it harder to focus on a single task for extended periods of time. In other words, multitasking leads to more multitasking.

Educators have a lot of ideas about improving the American educational system. Because a good deal of learning loss can be attributed to the internet, one concept that has gained traction nationally is limiting or banning smart phones and internet-equipped devices in schools. I suspect this will become a proposition central to American discourse in the coming years, since some schools have made initial moves to limit tech. But even if every school banned internet devices, doing so wouldn't automatically solve the problem. Surely, banning the internet in K-12 schools would give school-aged children a better chance to focus on learning. But it wouldn't change students' lives outside of school. That's the majority of a student's waking hours in a week and year. Even if your school traded in all its keyboards and computers in exchange for pens and papers, you would still plenty of time to be overstimulated by technology.

You may have already thought about ways to enhance your memory and skills. While we cannot individually fix a global problem, we can work on improving our own learning. Experimenting with different methods of hand-written notetaking is one way you can, at little cost, become a more active learner.

The articles linked in this section focus on:

Considering how we either store or forget information we learn in school (Wllingham)
A psychology-based argument that handwriting is better for memory than typing (Routledge)
An argument that books foster longer attention spans and better memory (Gowing)
A guide to fact-checking the internet (Bartolomeo)
Defining the lack of shared truth, or "truth decay" (Kavenaugh and Rich)
Identifying ways to avoid conspiratorial thinking through critical analysis (Hapt)
Arguing for greater emphasis on critical thinking skills in education (Davies)

Sources:

This page was written and edited by Jay Trucker

August 2026

Contact

Jay Trucker, Ph.D.

Email

jtrucker@ccbcmd.edu