"Creative" is An Excuse, Not a Reason

Tapscott, author of the best-selling book Wikinomics and a champion of the "net generation", suggests a better approach would be to teach children to think creatively so they could learn to interpret and apply the knowledge available online.

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Tapscott dismissed the idea that his approach is anti-learning, instead arguing that the ability to learn new things is more important than ever "in a world where you have to process new information at lightning speed".

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Tapscott added the brains of today's youngsters work differently to their parents', and that multi tasking with digital devices, such as using the internet while listening to their MP3 players, can help them to develop critical thinking skills.

The Telegraph

This man is a prime example of the overeducated, specialized idiot.

He needs a topic to write about, and sell books, so he picked this -- consequences? What consequences? -- maybe he has even convinced himself he's doing a good thing.

Creativity is the universal excuse in the West for flakiness. If your apartment is covered in pet droppings and cigarette butts, claim you were too busy being creative. Across the land, every middle-class mother has some paintings she's done to show you, and in the ghetto every man is a rap*star just waiting to be discovered. You're just all so special and unique!

His argument is that distracted kids think more creatively, and that since they can have the information online, they don't need to know it.

What he forgets is that for any task more complicated than answering a multiple-choice question -- like all tasks in the real world -- you have to have a background in knowledge and navigate between many different data points, each of which has multiple attributes.

The idiot clearly didn't think of that. Instead, he wants us to teach kids "to the test," or so that they appear to be succeeding, while sapping their fundamental skills. Is memorization needed? LOL, linear thinking -- a degree of memorization is needed to all tasks. We need to find a happy balance, and going off on some "we're so creative, all we need is Google and an iPod" is beyond stupid -- it's deceitful.