It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. In The University of Google she projects a defiant and passionate vision of education as a pathway to renewal, where research is based on searching and students are on a journey through knowledge, rather than consumers in the shopping centre of cheap ideas. Tara Brabazon argues that this information fetish has been profoundly damaging to our learning institutions and to the ambitions of our students and educators. Information is no longer for social good, but for sale. We lose the capacity to sift, discard and judge. Bored surfers fill their cursors and minds with irrelevancies. Meanwhile, the internet offers a glut of information on everything-under-the-sun, a mere mouse-click away. Teachers cram their curriculum with 'skill development' and 'generic competencies' because knowledge, creativity and originality are too expensive to provide to unmotivated students and parents obsessed with league tables, not learning. Libraries and librarians have been starved of funding. Looking at schools and universities, it is difficult to pinpoint when education, teaching and learning started to haemorrhage purpose, aspiration and function.
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