In Defense of Hard-Earned Ignorance

Learning Nothing the Old-Fashioned Way

Kids today can just cut and paste into Google Translate to do their French or Spanish homework and learn nothing. Back in my day, kids learned nothing, but we did it the hard way and were proud of it! That’s right, none of this fancy schmancy “cut and paste” into Google Translate. No, sir, we had to earn our ignorance with blood, sweat, and erasers worn down to the nub!

You see, when we did not want to learn a language, or anything else, we had to do it by sheer force of will. We spent hours staring blankly at French verbs and Spanish conjugations, skillfully retaining absolutely none of it. It took real skill to come out of a whole semester knowing just “bonjour” and “hola” and maybe a suspiciously accented “croissant.”

But the kids today? They’ve got it easy. With just a few clicks, they can translate “War and Peace” into Klingon and back without even knowing what “peace” is in English. Homework? Just copy a paragraph from Wikipedia, paste it into Google Translate, and voilà — Spanish homework done, all while learning the art of absolutely nothing about the language.

And the implications are vast. Not only are they missing out on the joy of doodling aimlessly in the margins of their notebooks during a particularly boring language lab, but…