Guest essay. You can’t Google understanding. Denton Record Chronicle 1-17-20

Don’t get me wrong, I like the internet, I like online banking, I like sending an email to my daughter teaching in Taiwan and not having to wait a month to get a reply. And I like having a smartphone in my back pocket. All this is good and well, but having a computer at hand doesn’t replace thinking. Try it: ask Goggle if there is a full moon tonight, or new, or waning. That is easy. Now try and ask why. Harder yet is to understand why. The best way to understand something well is to try to teach it. And that requires reading, dedication and reflection, all things that take time.

It’s amusing to find the lengths at which people will go to trying to make learning easier, less of a chore, and in the end get nothing. It’s like the bank robber in the old west who after a life of crime discovers he’s still broke and the guy that worked an honest day for honest wages, has a house with a white picket fence, a wife that makes flapjacks for him and some savings. Plus he’s not on the run all the time.

In the end, there is no shortcut for learning, none. Unless you call hard work a shortcut, which in the end, it is. Here is the link to my essay on the Denton Record Chronicle