First, I think our education system has yet to fully adapt to the so-called distracted state that technology media has brought about. My little sister is in third grade and she still brings home books for reading and they still have Sustained Silent Reading for half an hour in her class. Moving up to high school, I feel as though there has been an increase in the need for silent reading for intellectual growth because Advanced Placement courses are becoming more popular. In those courses, high school students take on the work load of a college student, with sustained reading in textbooks being a primary way in which the students learn in the class. And we all know how much reading we do (or are supposed to do) for our classes as college students. Essentially, reading for an extended period of time in order to gathering information and insight is still a central practice in our education system, which, mostly likely, will be here to stay for a while. We have yet to have shorter class periods or readings in shallow, bullet-pointed form; however, I do feel that the emphasis on more interactivity in classrooms and less lecture is the educational system’s way of slowly and begrudgingly giving in a little to our distracted minds. Yet, other than that, I don’t see how the educational system is working with our shortened attention spans, if anything, it’s the only think keeping sustained reading and thought alive.

            Furthermore, I’m not sure what I think about the educational system becoming as disjoined as our search for knowledge on the internet. Like I said before, I feel like the educational system is the one of the only institutions keeping extended reading and thought alive. Cornerstones of education and scholarship, such as the essay and personal research will still need to be written in order to people to fully understand complex topics and issues. Therefore, I don’t think this linear form of thinking will ever go away. Yet, if the educational system is one of the basic institutions were we learn about and understand the world, will all sustained thought be lost if the educational system does not teach it? And does that even matter? I know Carr is arguing that yes, it does matter and I do find that I agree with him on several points; however, as we’ve talked about in class, I am hesitant to say this is a bad thing. I think distracted ways of thinking are just too new for us to know how to deal with them.