In "Bart Gets a Z," Bart Simpson has a young substitute teacher who's seriously wired. He sends a mass text to assign homework: "20 MINUTES OF TWITTERING." At one point, the teacher asks, "Who can tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was?"

An unfortunate student starts to answer: "The policy of President Monroe that America has the right as a nation to ...." The teacher interrupts him.

"Are you telling me you memorized that fact," he asks, "when anyone with a cell phone can find it out in thirty seconds?"

This question is giving a lot of teachers pause--especially when their students ask it. "Why should I memorize this when anyone with a cell phone can find it out in thirty seconds?"

We have a dilemma here. If we focus on teaching facts, we risk wasting time that could be better spent on other things, like how to think about these facts. On the other hand, student can't think about facts unless they're already aware of them. And it's not enough to say that students can just look up the facts--there's no reason to look up the Monroe Doctrine if you don't know it exists in the first place.

This dilemma isn't new. But in the past, it took place in a world of dictionaries and encyclopedias and The World Almanac. Does having Google on your cell phone change where our focus should be?