Millenials

There has been a lot of posting about millenials recently. I have left well enough alone until this one.

Thomas P.M. Barnett:

I think a lot of this elder angst over Gen Y/Millennials is misplaced, meaning they don't understand the kids AND the kids will be all right. I see this distinctly in my own kids: they don't know as much as I did but are far more adept at finding than I am now! Einstein didn't know his own phone number. "Why should I?" he said. "It's written down in a special book if I need it." Our "mastery" of knowledge relative to the Millenials is a different type of intelligence, but not necessarily a better one, than the mastery of searching.

Yes, kids may be better at finding information. They can find when the Battle of Hastings occurred with a three second Wikipedia search. However, I am not so sanguine with simply accepting their ability to search as enough. Students need to know something happened before they can google it. If the student never learned, or learned and then completely forgot about the Battle of Hastings, then what benefit does it do to be able to search for it? Children need to learn to recall information without completely relying upon Google.