There are a lot of metaphors for learning and access to information. When the internet first became a thing in the mid-90s, we called it the Information Superhighway. When I first began teaching, someone told me that my students would be adrift on a sea of information and that I should be like a lighthouse. While all the metaphors have some value, there is one I came across recently that rang eerily true. In her book, None Like Him, Jen Wilkin talks about the world in which we live as having a buffet of information. This seems the most applicable analogy to what I see in the 21st century.
Too Much. Just like a buffet allows you to stuff yourself in ways you wouldn't at a normal meal, the plethora of news sources and their 24/7 availability allow us to overconsume under the justification of "staying informed." I have seen advertisements for apps that allow you to stay "up to the minute." Is that really a virtue? I mean, unless you are in a situation like the people of Boston in the days after the marathon bombing, what is the value in being up to the minute? Is there a correlation between the information being immediate and it being accurate? I haven't done the research, but I would imagine there is a negative correlation between those things. Perhaps, taking the time to check sources and verify information would result in better information rather than just more.
Consume What You Like. Reject What You Don't. No one eats everything on a buffet. It just isn't possible. When I got to Golden Corral, I first walk the entire length of the restaurant to see what they have before putting a fried chicken leg, a cheese biscuit, some scrambled eggs, and six strips of bacon on my plate. Are there healthy options available to me? Yes. Do I eat them when I am at Golden Corral? Of course not. When Sweet Tomatoes existed in Raleigh, I ate delicious and healthy salads, but I'm not going to eat salad at a place where I man will make me an omelet while I put a marshmallow under a streaming chocolate fountain. That's just crazy talk. The internet has allowed us to do the same thing with information. Are there good sources out there? Yes. Do I take the time to go beyond the first page on a Google search result to find them? Rarely. And I know how to recognize it when I see it. Not everyone was as blessed in training as I was.
Illusion of Satisfaction. I don't know how many times you have been to a buffet and stuffed yourself to the point where you know if you move, you will either vomit or burst the button right off your jeans. Because of what you have chosen to eat, it burns pretty fast, and you are at home a couple of hours later, looking for some crackers or something. I think there is an analogous experience with information consumption. We listen to so many talks, watch so many videos, and read so many articles (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that you are reading this blog post) that we feel like we are overflowing with information. However, because of what we have chosen to consume, we aren't actually informed. If we get into an intelligent discussion, we are hard-pressed to bring out good information from a credible source and find ourselves referencing that well-respected publication called, "somewhere." You know what I mean - "I saw somewhere. I read it somewhere." After consuming all this information, we are not informed.
Poisoning Others. All analogies break down somewhere, and this may be where the buffet analogy falls apart. I don't think I influence others too much at a church picnic when I eat strange combinations of foods, other than perhaps recommending those foods to other people. With bad information, it is different. When I pass along something false or non-credible on social media, my friends and followers will at least read the headline and draw some kind of conclusion whether they read the article or not, whether they check the source or not, whether they digest the information through a discerning filter or not. I recently had the experience of a friend (one who use to teach proper research skills to her English students) posting something that was from an obviously sketchy source (It's not always super obvious, which is why you should be careful about just hitting share, but this one was from a conspiracy group, so it was clear). When I questioned it, she said, "I don't agree with everything I share. I just passed it on because I think it is interesting." To beat the food analogy to death, she might as well have said, "I found this food on the ground and I gave it to you because I thought the dirt made a nice pattern." We are all in positions of some influence, even if it is just on a few people, but teachers need to be extra careful. There's no such thing as casually sharing an opinion with a student (a lesson I've learned many times when my words were quoted back to me later). If you share things without checking the source, you teach others to do so as well. If you pass along inflammatory opinions without regard to their impact, you teach students to do the opposite of what you try to teach them in class. Do not poison students and hope they can discern the junk food information from the healthy when you haven't.
When you step up to a food buffet, you experience the consequences of your choices, but because of the way your body is designed, it won't do you too much harm if you only occasionally consume poorly (Birthdays and Thanksgiving won't cause too many long term problems if you don't have them a hundred days a year). Your brain, however, isn't made that way. You will suffer the long term consequences of daily exposure to the data buffet, so consume responsibly.
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