"Common Sense or Imprudence?"

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." - Robert Green Ingersoll

Growing up I have heard many stories told by both my father and mother. It always started like "When I was a boy.......I had to walk ten miles to school everyday" or something around those lines. I listened and sometimes made sarcastic remarks. Until one day when my father asked me do you know all the elements in the periodic table?, do you know the importance of doing geometry without using a calculator? I was dumbfounded, NO I didn't, I didn't know why I would ever need to memorize the periodic table or why in the world would I need to know the areas of a circle or find the perimeter of the yard in my head. He said, "that is the problem, your generation has supposedly better education than the previous generation with state of the art computers, phones, and calculators. But what happens when you strip them of everything, what is left?". I couldn't answer him, because I didn't know, but most importantly I was ashamed because he was right. I have depended myself of technology and I guess that without it I wouldn't be able to do much. In a way I realized technology has clouded our common sense our ability to function without it. Technology can be useful but we cannot depend off of it. If we continue to allow ourselves to be driven  by technology it can become the most eminent danger in our society. The quote that is shown above came from a man that lived during the Civil War era. He understood that education can be useless when a pupil does not know how or why to use that knowledge. He might had not been aware of technology for it was far past his time but the lesson or message transcended throughout the ages.  So I ask myself is technology part of our common sense or our imprudence to do create shortcuts or learn things quicker.