But I hate the word "lazy". Its a sloppy, stigmatizing way of saying 'unmotivated" that is often-times not deserved.
So you subscribe to the school of thought that one is not supposed to tell stupid people they are stupid, or lazy people they are lazy? And that they will all become mass murders if you tell them the truth? And that it is perfectly OK they feel entitled to everything without the need to put anything of their own in? And that it is OK to be lazy, because some eduction clown didn't sufficiently motivate / amuse / entertain to become active and learn?
The really lazy ones are the folks in education that cannot figure out that the entire paradigm has shifted away from how-much-crap-can-you-pack-into-your-skull to how-can-you-best-utilize-that-crap-that-is-OUTSIDE-of-your-skull.
Please explain how "that crap that is OUTSIDE", i.e. stuff on the Internet, is supposed happen to end up on the Internet? How it is supposed to be enhanced, get better and more complete once the "just google some fragments of it" paradigm has driven out those with the talent to structure and explain complex things?
The best you can hope from the "just google it" people is endless iterations of existing material.
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Not much point in telling people they are "stupid". That simply sets them up to sell themselves short, which is entirely too common a problem. Same thing with "lazy". Instead of calling people names, why not simply offer them up the material as best you can and then assess them on how well they learned it? I understand what you are saying, though The problem is not that we are not telling enough people they are stupid, but rather we are dumbing down the assessment of what they have learned for reasons that have little to do with what needs to be learned in order to be proficient. Just teach the material, set the standard and hold them to it. They will either get it or not. They will then either be able to perform or not.
As for the "just Google it" bit, what you are talking about is what is referred to in the education business as "higher-order Blooms", which stems from Bloom's Taxonomy, a way of grading just how complex an intellectual activity is. The higher order ones include things like synthesis and creativity, lower order ones things like remembering and understanding.
The trick is to match the level of "Blooms" with the material to be learned. Another thing about them is that they tend to build upon one another. In electronics, for instance, things you might want to remember include stuff like Ohm's Law and things you might want to understand include what Ohm's Law is supposed to capture, the relationship between resistance, voltage and current. On the high-end, you might use things like Ohm's Law to design and build a new type of audio amplifier or some such.
The thing is, in this new world of ours, you may not have to memorize so much stuff like Ohms Law, as it is generally going to be available on the Internet at any time, but you will still have to understand that it relates to resistance, voltage and current and how that applies to designing and building more and more complex circuits. You may not need to memorize how to, for instance, measure inductance in a component using a pair of vacuum tube voltage meters in the absence of an LCR meter, but it sure as hell is useful to be able to look it up when needed. I don't have a LCR meter but I do have a pair of old VTVMs, and knowing how to use Google got me an old military TM that told me how to do it "the old fashioned way". But then, it certainly was helpful to look up the Wikipedia definition of "inductor" and the formulas associated with induction...
So, its all about applying the right set of tools to the job, and knowing when to apply them. "Just Google it" is a great answer for looking up Ohm's Law, but it will only buy you so much when designing the great multi-million dollar widget. One builds on the other.
Sorry for rambling on.