Students --Motivations and Distractions

A (Dec.2005) study  titled "Scholarly Culture and Educational Success in 27  Nations" has this to say about the children growing up in homes with their own libraries:"Children growing up  in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents' education, occupation, and class.("That Used to be Us, p.127)
With regard to the distractions caused by technology,the following study by the Kaiser Family Foundation  "Daily Media Use among Children and Teens"  gives the following details:
"Today 8-18 year olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day.And because they spend so uch of that time"media multitasking"(using more than ne medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hrs and 45 minutes worth of media content inot 71/2 hours...About half o heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades.  The proportion of young people who read a newspaper in a typical day dropped from 42% in 1999 to 23% in 2009."
"Half ofAmerican teenagers(ages 12 through 17) send 50 or more text messages a day, and one third more than a hundred a  day.
In 1960,students at four-year colleges in the U.S. studied 24 hours per week.Today,the average is 14  hours per week,42% less."(Friedman,p.129).
Friedman very regretfully observes that "our students are spending more time texting and gaming and less time than ever studying and doing homework." He further adds that "unless we get them to spend the time needed to master a subject, all the teacher training in the world will go for naught."
All these observations warn us of  the dangers lurking in the big business of education.The schools cannot do their work so long as the students are not motivated and focused.We need to reorient our mind-sets and come back to the basics of teaching and learning. It is good that the students  become familiar wth the uses of  modern technology. But when these technological tools take their valuable away from their studies, we are losing them.