Occasionally we read an article that says we no longer need to learn things because we can quickly and easily look them up on Google. Scientists are now studying the impact of tools like Google on human knowledge. They are now talking about how people learn to optimize their intellectual energy expenditures in the presence of Google, i.e., adapting their behavior to make better use of a situation.
If I no longer need to remember as many things because they are so easy to look up, it is important to note that my brain and time resources that are freed-up are not necessarily being put to better use.
It may be true that I technically don't need to be able to do long-division because I have a calculator now, and I don't need to remember dates because my iPhone calendar does, and I don't need to remember anything else because Google can find it for me. What this argument doesn't address is the time-cost. Using a calculator clearly saves time over long-division by hand, because machines will always be faster at arithmetic. However, actually remembering how to approach solving a complex equation, knowing the meaning of a word, or the relationship of two historical figures, or the difference between Canada's and the U.S.'s government structures, saves a lot of time compared to the effort of 1) getting to a computer, 2) formulating a query, 3) sifting the results for the answer, 4) repeating steps 2 and 3 until you get the answer.
While research will sort this all out sometime this century, we suggest you still focus your home school students on actually learning things.
