Anyone who has sat in the back of a lecture hall knows that students with computers get distracted. This is immediately obvious, and it makes sense; lectures can get boring, and when they do it’s hard to avoid the allure of the bountiful Internet. Many parents and faculty members I’ve spoken to believe that this is a generational issue, that a population raised to expect fast and constant entertainment doesn’t know how to slow down. I strongly disagree. It seems to me that anyone who expects students to remain focused on lectures with such a cornucopia of distraction in front of them needs a lesson or two in human psychology.
Despite the fact that such a level of distraction is harmful to education, relatively few faculty members ban the use of electronics in class. I find this mind-boggling and more than a little imprudent. But your education, after all, is your responsibility, and though the desire to distract yourself is an understandable fallibility, I urge you to pay attention.
Let’s talk about money. No one at Brown is oblivious to the fact that a college education does not come cheap. And so the most straightforward argument for valuing your time in class is this: You’re paying for it. Sure, this kind of thinking is a lot easier in the afternoon than it is right before your 9 a.m., but if you take a second to calculate how much you’re paying for each class, you may start to second-guess the decision to sleep through lecture or spend it scrolling through Facebook. The average class meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays, for example, ends up costing you over $300 per class. With this kind of financial cost, it would seem an easy decision to close your browser and stick to note-taking.
The issue is that most students don’t see classroom distractions as a major disruption. “I needed a break,” they’ll say, or “I’ll just read the PowerPoint later.” Again, these justifications seem to add up. Even the most studious Brunonian can’t deny that he or she has blanked out for a second or two in lecture without any real harm done. But the reality of the situation is that for many, online distractions are not fleeting. Students, while attempting to glean the gist of the professor’s point, will often keep their Facebook tab open throughout class. If you haven’t read the science on multitasking, here’s a spoiler: It’s not going to help your retention.
For some people, the money argument doesn’t do it. Some say that the money they are spending is more for the diploma than the education, while some argue that, as long as they learn the material later, they’re not really missing out on anything. I vehemently reject both of these arguments, but there is another reason I see for paying attention in class, and it has to do with another limited resource: time.
It’s no novel idea to think of time as a resource, but most people don’t seem to treat it like this in day-to-day life. A minute distracted is a minute wasted — a minute that could have gone to one of the innumerable things that we claim never to have enough time to do. Distraction is wasteful, and time is a nonrenewable resource. If you’ve already given up an hour to come to class, it wouldn’t hurt to pay attention.
Of course I’m not blind to the desire to take a break from class. But when browsing the internet during lecture becomes a routine, more is lost than most students realize. What’s more, this kind of behavior reinforces the negative impressions that students already have about lectures, namely, that it is hard to retain information and that they do not have much value. Regardless of the reason given, I strongly believe that we would all benefit from paying a little closer attention in class. Sure, it’s not the end of the world, but to me, it seems like a pretty egregious waste of time and money.
A friend once told me, “It’s hard to focus.” Maybe. But if you look up from the screen for just a few moments, you might catch a glimpse of the Ivy League education you’re missing.
Nicholas Esemplare ’18 is a double concentrator in English and economics.
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