Creative Thinking: Ontario, capital of Canada

I have recently seen a short video — and read the relevant article — about Harvard (Harvard!) students who do not know what the capital of Canada is. The only one who “guessed” right (Ottawa) was a Canadian citizen! Several said “Ontario,” clearly not realizing that Ontario is not a city. Do they even know that the word “capital” indicates a city? I have been a teacher for a long time and I can’t stop being amazed at how the level of Culture — and I just mean “general culture,” nothing too difficult or specific — has been getting lower and lower.
I partly attribute the responsibility for this to the always increasing requests for experts and specialists. As an extreme and clearly sarcastic example (but you never know, do you?) — we could expect a cardiologist to only be able to detect a heart disease and nothing else. Therefore, it might occur that if — while you are seeing him — you suddenly develop an appendicitis, he will let you die because he is not an internist. Just to give you the idea of what I mean! What amazes me the most is the widespread ignorance in the field of geography. I remember studying the countries of the world — if not all, at least the most important ones — their capitals, climate, main products and industries. And we studied where such countries were located. We were able to find them on the atlas.
Now I dare anyone to find many students who can show you where such or such country is (I am not sure about what happens later, when they grow up, but I would let my hope soar too high!). A student of mine, when requested to name a city she would like to visit, said, “None.” When I asked her, “How come?,” she answered, “As I am not traveling abroad, why do I need to know about other countries or cities?.” Perfect logic, isn’t it? And, naive as I am, I thought that with the World Wide Web, which brings the whole world into your home, people would be encouraged to learn more because it has become so easy! On the contrary, it seems that the possibility of having such a great amount of information at the speed of light has almost shrunk the brain.
You need to know something? Click on Google and you have the answer. You will use your “find” right away and immediately forget it because you probably won’t need it any more. Everything seems to be reduced to “needing” something in order to “use” it. This outcome should have probably been expected after the invention of disposable stuff. Need whatever? Take it, used it and discard it, immediately. Then get a new one. Do you say that all this has made life easier? It certainly has. But… at what price? We have stopped re-using things, everything must be brand new, so that we can go on buying and buying, over and over... while spending more and more money. And let us not forget about the pollution caused to our planet by all that we discard on a daily base.
Video games, smart phones, the newer and newer devices that appear on the market with frightening frequency have created the environment in which our young people live, act and think (or not think?). I do not deny the usefulness of technology. I like it, appreciate it and use it. But seeing the extremes that it has brought about, I can’t help feeling a bit sad and nostalgic about the times when people could have the heel of a shoe or a malfunctioning mixer fixed, instead of rushing to the mall to make a purchase — as we do today.
Far away are the times when students acquired what was called general culture, when they learned to make additions and divisions using their brains instead of a calculator, when they were able to locate Japan or Peru on the world map. And, finally, when they — before being admitted to Harvard — also learned that Ontario is a province (administrative division) of Canada and not its capital.

E-mail: elsafranco.algh@yahoo.com
Blog: recreateyourlifetoday.blogspot.com