Adults can easily dismiss the danger that “Technology is making us stupid.”  Maybe you used to fuss semi-competently with maps, got lost now and then, and now you are glad that your cell phone can provide directions.  What is the problem?  You did not get stupider, your life got easier.  Well, adults consistently fail to consider how differently certain problems can manifest themselves in that dimly remembered country they once inhabited: Childhood.

A fifth grade teacher recently told me that not one child in her room could tell time from an analog clock.  Their homes have only digital clocks on TV recorders, microwave ovens, clock radios and the like.  Experts and editorialists everywhere wring their hands about “Why can’t Johnny do fractions?”  There is your answer.  Incredibly, a fifth grade teacher confronts blank space where you might expect rudimentary notions of quarter, half and whole to preexist. If you are reading this, chances are by age 10 you could make it to dinner on time if your mother told you it would be at a “quarter past.”  Your familiarity with that pie shaped area between the big hand and the 12 made your fifth grade teacher’s job a whole lot easier.

Taking the kids for a hike or just out on a drive?  Let the GPS be for emergencies only!  Those minds will not develop unless they get practice observing and memorizing landmarks, guessing and testing distances and travel times, comparing routes and struggling to make the connection between the the territory and the map.  The ability to absorb abstract information and apply it in the real world, an ability you may take for granted, can be gained in no other way.