With the development of Internet and digital technologies, the human race entered into a new era. Since the beginning of the 21^st century the pace of life has quickly accelerated, the information has suddenly flooded us, and the world finally became a global village that has connected us on a daily basis to people, facts and events that we have never thought we would be excited about. The abundant information on every possible subject makes us biased towards a much wider range of problems that our ancestors encountered, and it is already possible to witness even in the neighborhood grocery conversations whether the genetically modified food is harmful, whether President Trump would do well, or whether the escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula could lead to another global crisis. Our children are now much fuller of information, even before they go to school, and it is no coincidence that their interest in learning as a purely cognitive process is weakening abruptly in recent years - they are just overloaded with information and the full set of textbooks does not help in any way.

Even though I was born at another time, I'm more and more often asking myself, "How did we actually live when we had no internet?" And since I ask myself such questions, what's left for a teenager who does not leave his smartphone for more than two minutes (for example when brushing his/her teeth), and in the evening they leave it under their pillow, so that the smartphone is the first thing to grab when they wake  up. The problem is not even the fact that for a teenager Google is more popular than Gogol, or that kids spend more time at the computer than we used to play in the street. The real tragedy is that for most of today's young people, Google and Facebook are the cornerstones of human civilization and if they suddenly disappear, the youngsters will simply not know what to do.

In fact, the problem is not in the teenagers. They are actually quite normal children and youngsters who just try to adapt to a not so normal environment. Despite all the nostalgia for the past, which is characteristic for much of my and previous generations, we actually have no special reason to criticize modern young people - they just react to the changes in the environment. And since I do not believe that evolution has gone back and our kids are more stupid than us, then perhaps the reason is the very rapid changes - technological, social, economic, which are often a surprise for us too. I think the main problem comes from the fact that we, as parents and educators, are also not sufficiently prepared for this escalating dynamics, and we usually find ourselves in the role of the small screws that can make the powerful machine of globalization squeak, but not stop its outburst. The truth is that many of the changes were not expected by anyone, and the vast majority of society simply did not realize in time the significance of the digital revolution. Just like electricity or nuclear power, the introduction of the new information and communication technologies (ICT) is something extremely good, but it can also have bad consequences if we do not understand it in all its aspects. For example, we cannot yet teach our children that the new technologies can be a very good helper, but an infinitely bad master, as we simply do not know the problem in detail and if in China and South Korea for years there have been centers for treatment of internet addictions [1], we are yet to struggle with this problem in Europe. Unlike traditional cognitive practices that have been evolving for centuries and have been passed down from generation to generation, the boom of ICT globally has been relatively recent and humanity has not yet developed adequate mechanisms for timely adaptation. We must honestly admit that it is difficult to teach our children things that we do not know ourselves, especially when in the adoption of such technological innovations they will always be a step ahead of us, even if it is only for the fact that they do not have to overcome the stereotypes we have chained ourselves with over the years. For example, while we are used to the habit of turning on the TV to hear the news, they've already grabbed the tablet, browsed the internet, and informed themselves about the events, even before we count up to ten, and that's something completely natural to them.

The digital lifestyle gradually conquers all sectors of the economy and social relations and logically goes into education - our schools already have Internet, multimedia projectors, interactive boards and smart classrooms... However, the teaching, learning and testing methods are basically the same as they were in the twentieth century, even in the nineteenth century, and this is one of the essential reasons for the devaluation of education that we are witnessing in recent years. In many aspects the change in the context is essential and radical, and we do not even realize it and behave like a fish trying to fly without realizing that the environment is different and that in order to be able to integrate itself, it no longer needs gills, but wings. The vast digitization of life, as we know it, is obvious, and our desire to continue living without changing anything around us could result in one single thing - the change could run over us and leave us miserable. And this actually happens.

Let's look at education. Obviously, with these dynamic changes, it will also be affected, the question is exactly how. Is traditional education dying and will the Internet at some point replace the need to go to school at all? A seemingly absurd question, but more and more parents are asking it to themselves, especially at the background of the crisis in the educational achievements. It certainly does not affect only Bulgaria, but we cannot ignore the fact that in the international PISA assessment our performance is far from satisfactory [2] and in many ways it is not excessive to say that a serious percentage of the children in our country are functionally Illiterate (the map below shows the comparison of our country to other countries, measured in the field of natural sciences, and our performance in mathematics and reading is similar, if not worse).

As part of the team of the Ministry of Education and Science I have taken part over the past years in a number of meetings with various professional communities of teachers, and invariably each of them has been passionately and with arguments trying to convince us how important is the subject they teach, how its curriculum is extremely poor and children will certainly remain completely ignorant if we do not add a few more hours of this particular subject in the curriculum. Perhaps the teachers had their rational arguments, but as a result from the three decades of educational experiments, students now learn more than ever and know less than ever. I remember that as a child I had an average of no more than 5 school hours a day, and there was enough time for fun, sports and whatever you could think of, and I was a good student and going to school was not unpleasant for me. Today's children sometimes spend 7-8 school hours, even the whole day at school, go there reluctantly, and the lack of motivation in most of them is obvious even without consulting with the school’s psychologist.

What has changed over the years and how can we overcome it? Is it possible that the digital education – through the Internet and the home computer – completely replaces the classroom and some spectacular interactive lessons with attractive Walt Disney-style animations replace the need to stay in class and to waste unnecessary time in school? Is it possible to dub the whole material, for example, on a philosophy subject, with the voices of famous actors and to upload them to SoundCloud, or to use appropriate Animal Planet clips - adapted and uploaded at YouTube - during the biology classes?

No doubt that all these things can be done, but in general they will not solve any problem. The main hindrances for the development of the cognitive culture in today's teenagers are the lack of motivation and the lack of critical thinking skills. And that cannot be overcome with purely technological means. Of course, it's nice to have interactive tutorials, it's great if there's enough multimedia resources for self-training and animated lessons on each subject, holographic images of the human body, and 3D physics simulations. We can add to this the hundreds of online mathematical problems and self-generated tests, virtual classrooms availability, online access to global experiments such as CERN, Antarctic bases, supercomputers, or giant radio telescopes. All of these, however, are only technological means, and no matter how much more advanced technologies enter the market, they cannot motivate students to learn how to think or make them love the subject. The main factor for unlocking the wave of empathy and understanding in the modern teenager remains the inspired teacher and his personal ability to convey his enthusiasm to the students. To put it briefly, even if there is a virtual classroom, it cannot stay empty and no one can replace the good teacher who is willing to talk with the students, to make them think and dream. In fact, the transformation of the educational process and the roles in it are the subject of a number of studies, but the common ground is that they do not in any way talk about reducing the importance of the teacher, just the opposite – about a transformation of his duties in the field of the universal human values and about increasing the teacher’s responsibilities for the adolescents:

".. Research has shown that although the orientation towards computers is assessed positively, it can by no means replace the role of the significant teacher in class.." [3]

"The main role of the modern teacher is to inspire and motivate the students and generate interest in the subject, unlocking their curiosity and engaging them in the cognitive process ..." [4]

"... In this digital age, the role of the teacher moves from a simple preacher to a manager of the social and emotional behavior of the student; mentor of his training and general development as a balanced citizen.."[5]

Yes, education is undoubtedly changing and will continue to change to digital and electronic. And teachers who are not up to date with ICT as a whole will gradually drop out of the education system because they will not keep up with the trends of time, they will not be talking in the same language with students and will not be able to reach their hearts. Yet, only the acquisition of purely technological skills and working tools is not enough to call someone a good teacher. In fact, the truly good, motivating and value-adding teachers are those who succeed in lighting the spark of curiosity and the desire for knowledge among students, and no technology can replace that. The real teacher is the inspired teacher, the real pupil is the enthusiastic pupil, and today, in the context of modern, mathematically modeled and digitally adapted reality, the need for real human emotions and critical reflections, beyond the dry scientific facts, is evident in a key area like education. Replacing the question "What is happening?" with the question "Why is it happening?" is also key - in order to understand the world we live in. And neither facts, nor technologies can help us here – we need to contemplate on this and students need to have the necessary motivation to do so.

Learning has always been a lonely action, which requires personal engagement, but someone has to direct, motivate and encourage the learner, and his/her own brain will do the rest. The obvious truth -- that inspired teachers will always have their place, because they are the catalyst that motivates the students and provokes them to do their best in the training and in their future realization -- remains somehow out of the public attention.

And this truth can and should become one of the pillars of the modern educational process, because obviously only piling up knowledge and introducing new technologies is not enough. And will never be.