As I was growing up, a certain family member always seemed to be searching for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And as my father was prone to say, his “air castle would get blown away with a puff of wind.”

Once this family member’s pot of gold was to be found in a vein of silica in the lower foothills of the Appalachians. However, when these foothills were tested, the silica turned out to be of low grade too burdensome to be profitable. Mining this material would not have been economical.

Today’s students are living under a burdensome problem: too many distractions to learn. Around every corner I-Pods, MP-3 players and GPS tracking systems are dangling from ears, hung around necks, and injected in the gluteus of every child. (No GPS, not yet, however if our society should implode as the popular TV phenomenon “Heroes” foretells, we will all be tracked. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and maybe a vein of truth can be found beneath burdensome sensationalism.

While I do not believe in “carrots” to stimulate learning, many believe in extrinsic incentives. However, I believe as represented in an NEA magazine I read years ago that “carrots” dangled in front of our children as motivators, only, destroy the intrinsic drive to learn.

So from kindergarten forward as more wall murals and ceiling hangings distract and detract from the instructor, more and more stuff is required to propel the learner forward. And their distraction drives the need for more distraction and more stuff, stuff, stuff to the point of being left with mindless consumers who have only the drive to satisfy the need for more stuff.

Sadly, as bells and whistles dominate the hallways, classrooms and computer labs of our schools, the noise provided by the constant 50-hertz hum can only be quieted by the pounding of the I-Pod, or the MP-3 players.

The aforementioned technology drives its own market with a mode of manufacturing, which disallows the interfacing of old toys and tools with the latest to be put forth from the assembly line. These noise-making detractors from our concentration certainly are not concerned with our learning; there only concern is with our purchases.

How can anyone learn when they are constantly bombarded with the sounds emanating from the variety of gadgets spewing from the technology “muses” surrounding the world ever-attempting to top the latest release of the week.

If there is a vein of truth in all this blathering, implosion of our stuff and our pot of gold is eminent.