In past years the emphasis in higher education has centered on the idea that a student must be prepared only for the specific applications that will be their career upon graduation. In this way of thinking, an engineer should only learn mathematics and science and an English major should not be required to take classes in world history. As this way of thinking begins to change, we question the factors that encouraged these changes.
Long before our time Leonardo de Vinci personified the idea of the "Renaissance Man." As the "Information Age" of recent years slowly evolved the importance of a well rounded education became more and more obsolete, the presence of education based in "logical and precise use of the left-brain" became the norm. (Revenge of the Right Brain, pg: X329) "The Whole Person Paradigm" was ripped apart, separating the "mind" from the "body, heart, and spirit." Putting the importance of the "IQ" over that of the" PQ, EQ, or SQ". (x: 40-46) The ideas of emotional and creative quests were frowned upon as frivolous wastes of time, and consequently the development of the right-brain as a society has been crippled. Only recently has the revolution of the "Conceptual Age- ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion" begun to return the focus to the importance of the right-brain. (Revenge of the Right Brain, pg: X329)As we have grown up the influence of media, both visual and audible, is impossible to ignore. These factors are largely due to our integration with television and the World Wide Web (aka- the Internet). We have grown up looking at and hearing all the products and ideas of the people around us, not only reading them. This stimulus of our right-brain activity is carried through to the classroom. As our new, knowledge hungry generation arises and begins our own pursuit of higher education we find that the ideas being presented to us not only include left-brain learning, but
incorporate right-brain learning as well to the end of the holistically educated person Bump speaks about in his article "Left vs. Right Side of the Brain: Hypermedia and the New Puritanism." Traditional ways of teaching do not affect us. We are accused of being the "never crack a book to study" generation…why should we when the plethora of website afford us endless opportunities to learn the same material while stimulating both sides of our brain, therefore, allowing us a better understanding of the concepts as a whole. As the "Brain Dominance Theory" points out, we are able to "analyze" and "synthesize" information better than those before us because of this integration of both sides of our brain. (Covey, pg: 130)The inventors of "Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/isg US" marvel at the relationship my generation has with the internet. The film’s title admits that we are separate yet the same. It is a machine or a tool, but yet it is a part of our everyday life. Without even knowing it, and maybe by accident our generation has been geared from the very beginning to be something completely different than those before us. The idea that "you can respect both sides of your own nature- the analytical side and the creative side. [That] you can value the difference between them and use that to catalyze creativity" is something the generation before us is finally beginning to learn, but it is what we have known all along. (Covey, pg: 283). It is not an issue of whether to use one side of the brain or the other, but to be able to use the two as one. A new generation, the new whole-brain.
