Facebooking 101

Last Friday was family visit day at Cornerstone University, where Katie will begin her college career next fall. Upon arrival, we were ushered into a room where we could sign up for optional activities during an hour in both the morning and afternoon. The three of us decided it would be interesting to sit in on a class, and we signed up for a required course: Intro to Fine Arts.

After attending what felt like an eternal chapel service (all praise and worship music) that seemed to be a tangible example of what Michael Horton is writing about in Christless Christianity (another blog post perhaps), Henry and I set off to find Intro to Fine Arts.

Let's just say college just isn't what it used to be, back when I was attending courses like Intro to Fine Arts. One of the perks for Cornerstone students is that they receive a notebook computer upon arrival to campus, so everyone has one. As we took our seats, we noticed all the students around us, waiting for the professor to come in, and that part is pretty much the same. But while in my day we would have been pulling out our spiral-bound notebooks and digging for pens while having a conversation with a friend, these students were . . . Facebooking.

Yes--WiFi has made its way into the hallowed halls of Cornerstone. To be fair, not all of the students were Facebooking. Some appeared to be randomly surfing the Net, hitting sites that had nothing to do with higher learning. As the professor took his place at the front of the classroom, I expected that students would now pull up the screen where they typed their notes for Intro to Fine Arts. The student sitting in front of me, though, spent the hour checking course options at Hope College, Calvin, and Cornerstone and recording his findings on his Google calendar. It appeared, briefly, that he was going to work on a paper for another class, but thought better of it and sent a couple of emails instead. The two girls sitting a few chairs down from us seemed to just be surfing, with occasional visits to their Facebook pages.

The professor was discussing some of the differences between Renaissance art in Italy and in Northern Europe. The discussion was interesting, and Henry and I were impressed with his lecture. At one point, the professor asked the students what important event occurred in late October 1517. No response from the class. He threw out a couple of other clues: it had to do with a monk . . . Wittenburg . . . I was crying inside, using every ounce of strength I had not to scream out, "Come on!" Finally, one student said, "Oh!" and started making a gesture as if he were hammering something. The poor professor finally managed to get the response he was looking for: the Reformation.

In a lunchtime conversation we had with a philosophy professor, I brought up the issue of WiFi in the classroom. He told us that this fall, he would be banning computers from his classroom. A co-worker at DHP who teaches freshman composition at Cornerstone tells me he plans to do the same thing. There are still some voices of reason, apparently.

Dear Cornerstone Administrators (because I can't imagine that professors would ever go for this):

What are you thinking, putting WiFi in the classrooms? Do you not know that it is an irresistible force, akin to the gravitational pull? Do you not know that it has a force greater than Renaissance art, Old Testament history, chlorophyll, the respiratory system, Isosceles triangles--pretty much anything that might be discussed in a university lecture hall?

Perhaps this is your secret plan to collect more tuition as students fail classes while checking their messages, writing on someone's wall, or taking a quiz to find out which Disney princess they are most like. If so, it will probably work, and fewer and fewer people in this world will know that Renaissance art in Italy was more idealistic while the art of Northern Europe was more realistic. On the other hand, they will know if they have Belle's independent spirit or Cinderella's work ethic. And that will get you a long way toward an accounting degree.

I do know, though, that the professors are on to you, and they are getting tired of lecturing to the wall and having no response to their questions. Most of them realize that notes can be taken with paper and pen, that technology is not always the answer. There is a life--indeed, a world--beyond Facebook.

Thank you for your efforts to encourage higher learning.

Sincerely,
Annette Gysen

And that was our day at Cornerstone.