Remember when we didn't have infinite information at our fingertips?
Technically speaking, Duke University professor Aaron Dinin teaches entrepreneurship. But more accurately, he teaches young people to have a healthier relationship with failure, and he does this through various oddball challenges—everything from solving a 1000-piece puzzle in six minutes to trying to beat a nine-year-old at selling cookies.
In one recent video, Dinin's students were tasked with answering as many obscure questions as possible using nothing but the books in their library. Yes, just like back in the day.
After tossing their phones into a box, students were given a printed-out catalog of books to help them find the answers to questions like "When was Kentucky founded?" and "What makes Pickett's Charge important?"
Many Gen Zers admitted this was the first time they had ever looked something like this up in a book. Dinin quipped that, to them, the whole experience must have felt like "time travel." He also clearly enjoyed watching students come up exhausted, saying, "This is what research used to look like. This is why my PhD was so hard!"
And yet, the students managed. One even learned how to use an index, aka an "underrated piece of technology."
Watch:
As Dinin pointed out, anyone these days, not just Gen Zers, would almost certainly just Google this kind of information. And because of that, "being able to answer questions isn't nearly as valuable in the modern world as knowing which questions are worth chasing in the first place," which is perhaps an even bigger takeaway for students than learning how to use a library.
Down in the comments, parents and fellow teachers alike couldn't wait to try the exercise out on their own kiddos.
"This is awesome and I will be showing this to my 11 year old who was beside himself when I took away his iPad and gave him a physical dictionary to double check his ELA homework."
A boy drawing on an iPad. Photo credit: Canva
"This is brilliant! I need to do this with my middle schoolers!"
"What a GREAT experience! It's like Escape Room, library edition!"
Others were simply grateful for the trip down memory lane.
"Thank you for sharing this! I remember to actually looking for info for any research paper in like an encyclopedia Britannica🥴😂🤫"
"Is it nerdy to say that I actually had fun researching this way back in college (even though it was laborious)?!? Gen Xer here…"
On his website, Dinin shared that he was inspired to create learning opportunities like this after spending two decades "watching brilliant students sabotage their futures because they were scared to be wrong." He knew that, in order to combat that, he'd need to design classes that "make failure survivable (and maybe even a little bit fun)," rather than "chase success."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
And this is truly a great example of that. In our fear of failure, our enmeshment with experience, and our reliance on having knowledge at our fingertips, we run the risk of forfeiting autonomy and resilience. There is always a balance to strike, but doing so requires the willpower to ignore the alluring siren song of convenience. Perhaps in this day and age, that kind of willpower is one of the most valuable skills teachers can bestow on their students.
Follow along for even more of Dinin's fun videos here.