Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24

Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24
Jeff Gill

Learning what from who, where, and when
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Who was it that first said "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?"

Well, I'm typing this on a laptop connected to the internet, plus I have a smartphone next to me with a good cell connection. Hold on a sec.

Huh. It is from an essay in 1841 entitled "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

This is one of the huge advantages of the internet world we now live in. In school or even in seminary, I would have needed to not only have some research skills around how to use various reference tools to find the full source of that quote, I almost certainly would have needed to physically go to a library building, downtown or elsewhere, and possibly be sent from that library to a library at a college or other more distant location.

I remember when the rise of inter-library loan was seen as a massive transformation of the research process, that you could get books sent from another city or state to your local library for access. It was, truly, big stuff. (When? It was a college only thing when I was in high school, but . . . let's look it up. Oh my. So interlibrary loans between colleges began in 1876; the Ohio College Library Center began here in 1967, which grew to become the Online Computer Library Center, now based just down the road in Dublin!)

So when I talked at the end of last year about concerns around being too online for school age youth, I was echoing what an overwhelming plurality to school officials have been telling me these last few years. The constant checking and scanning and scrolling around personal platforms and messaging has, in their eyes, increased both anxiety and depression, as well as threats and conflict between students. None of us think the internet created these issues, but they've been an accelerant, like gasoline to a match, causing brush fires of interpersonal tensions to blaze out of control faster and more widely than they did just a decade ago.

Is a totally un-connected world feasible, in education or for parenting? I don't think so. It's a question of management, of guardrails and boundaries. And the everlasting question of how one family raises their child while a nearby family has different boundaries, if any at all, and what happens when they come together.

In the Scouting movement, it's become a requirement along with knife and axe safety and how to handle fires and flames, to take a sort of cyber-safety course. Many schools have begun to include online etiquette and ethics in their plan of study.

And I will continue in 2024 to note that many of the ills blamed on the online life may have more to do with the sleep that is lost to them than the content you find in it. Lack of sleep is plaguing both youth and adults, and we're seeing that loss in many ways.

Some of you have proposed solutions, and I plan to share some of those ideas as we roll on into 2024.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he spent too much time reading about Emerson & the OCLC while preparing this column. Tell him how the internet distracts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.