You've gotta be kidding me. L'il Wayne? Text messages? At some point we have to draw the line between pedagogy and pop culture. But the lines are not as clear as they used to be. Moving through the literature provided in James' course and some of the presentations by students it is evident that the definition of 'text' is in dire need of expansion, and is so doing - with or without the endorsement of public education. One of the most interesting examinations of the idea of text that I have ever read comes from an acting theorist. David Cole in his book Acting as Reading makes the following observation in his introductory chapter:
"Assuming, that is, that reading even is a single
activity - for we call a bewildering variety of situations
by that name. Psychics and poets both "give readings."
Significance may be "read into" a book, and members "read
out of" a club. My "early reading" is a collection of books;
my "best reading" an informed guess. Someone who chooses
to "read economics" at a university has chosen more than a
reading list, while someone who "reads me like a book" may
never read books at all. Hunters "read sign" (animal tracks)
in the absence of a text; lasers "read" video disks in the
absence of a text and reader alike; and "do you read me?"
asks the pilot of a tower, meaning "can you hear my voice?"
"Curiously unreadable metaphor of reading," muses Paul de Man,
"which one never seems to want to read." But perhaps the
universality of the trope is traceable back to the ancient
view of the universe itself as a Book: Dante's "single
volume" in which substances and accidents and their relations"
are "ingathered"; Sir Thomas Browne's "universal and publick
Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the Eyes of all." If
all the world's a text, then every experience you can have
of the world is reading".
But we cannot assume that all reading is of the same value academically, nor that it should all be allowed into the classroom as part of a relevant or valuable learning curriculum. To extend our examination of acting theorists and reading into this contention, let us look to such greats as Brecht, who said that "[t]he actor should [. . .] go on functioning as long as possible as a reader" (137). And Stanislavski champions extensive reading as part of a good actor's necessary schema. However, it is arguable that they are both referring to texts from within the current canon that represent the highest and finest literary achievements in theatre and beyond. But I digress.
James' course was full of revelations regarding everything from the nature and drawbacks of 'toggling' to the alarming rate of change of textual platforms that increasingly allow young people to become creators of text, while simultaneously degrading the current standards of prescriptive literacy. Huge questions that seem pedagogically intuitive to answer proved much less simple than anticipated. The use of text message short forms, for example, is more problematic than it might seem. It actually has practical pedagogical application. Students who are using text messages are engaged in more text production than ever before. Add to text messaging the entire "Read/Write Web". In the first chapter of Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, he notes that "in 2005, another Pew study showed 57 percent of all teens who use the Internet could be considered "content creators". Although it is using a standard of spelling and grammar that is currently considered sub-standard, that consideration is a qualitative one against a language that is constantly changing and evolving. Certainly current spelling standards would be considered incorrect by Chaucerian-era English standards and descriptive grammar proponents in the modern field of linguistics have taught us that language will change, regardless of efforts to control or regulate it, and that it rarely acts in practice as proposed in theory.
However, even though there are viable and intelligent defenses provided for virtually every new platform or text that might come available, like any argument, there is a point at which it becomes academic, and someone needs to stand up and say, "Coooooome oooooon!" Recently, I was discussing with my teenage step-daughter how the Odyssey may have been written by a different Homer than the one who wrote the Iliad, perhaps an apprentice or a son, as the styles are similar but markedly different in certain ways, including fantastical content and the treatment of the gods. Her expression was incredulous and she said, "I don't think you know who Homer is." WHAT!? How dare she! I have been studying literature for the better part of my entire life and I certainly . . . "Dave, Homer couldn't teach Bart to shave, much less how to write a story!" D'oh! Of course, she was thinking about the Simpsons character. We live in an age where an entire generation knows 'Homer' as only a fat, balding slapstick cartoon icon. When I tried to explain the stories and their history, her incredulous expression returned and she asked, "Do you mean that movie with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom? Orlando Bloom was also in Lord of the Rings." Her entire exposure to literature, aside from Twilight which she re-reads daily, has been via motion picture. But aren't the printed Homeric epics still relevant? Aren't they still fundamental elements of our entire cultural canon? Or are they? Are movies the new media of choice for literature?
In the article studied in class entitled The Last Page, the author suggests that the tactile and intimate nature of a book is still fundamentally different than other kinds of reading and when I see either of my teenage kids lost in a book, even if it is Twilight, I see no risk of books becoming obsolete. For them, with a house full of siblings, the solitude and escapism may be very valuable. “Reading gave me an excuse for privacy” (10). “Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge” (11). As is the case with my step-daughter's copy of Twilight, the author tells us that “[s]ometimes the books themselves were talismans” (14) and he lists the few of his collection that were “kept for special moments” (15). Also, “[i]mplicit in the possession of a book is the history of the book’s previous readings - that is to say , every new reader is affected by what he or she imagines the book to have been in previous hands” (16). Perhaps most importantly, is the author's memory of when he “was twelve or thirteen: I was curled up in one of the big armchairs, engrossed” (12). As discussed during week six of the class (From Page to Screen), a good book (of the traditional kind) often disappears in a reader’s hands as they are swept away with the story. Is such the case with electronic books? The new e-book platform Kindle, from Amazon, is making every effort to fuse the tactile nature of a book with the technology of the internet, but I daresay that the feel of pages in your hand is irreplaceable. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4kdLKV7LwI) New platforms do not require old ones to disappear as so many pedagogical experts seem to fear. And they may well encourage further reading that is traditional, as suggested in Elaine O'Quinn's article. I have parlayed my step-daughter's interest in Twilight into the reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She even commented that the writing by Stoker is much better. Maybe I'll watch the movie with her!
In his 2006 TED lecture, Sir Ken Robinson makes some moving points about the nature of creativity and an academic system that inherently stifles it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga2CYYCrtNE) Although motivating, his lecture was as much alarmist as informative. He provided a very poignant example of the young girl whose hyper-active behaviour in class was fostered rather than remediated (which would have been done using drugs in his alarmist rhetoric) and she became an award-winning choreographer for world-renowned and syndicated Broadway musicals. He further claims that public education systems “came into being to meet the needs of industrialism”. “The whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance” (Robinson). Not only has the economy evolved far beyond the industrial revolution era, but university has nearly become the antithesis of employment. College educations represent the majority of high paying employment opportunities while educational inflation at the university level has resulted in only the very elite few achieving relevant or sustained employment in their field. “Suddenly, degrees aren’t worth anything” (Robinson). But is it really practical to redesign our entire academic system away from university preparation in favour of a system that equally respects all of the multiple intelligences? Following that logic, virtually anything qualifies as academic and that can be a dangerous and slippery slope towards a universally illiterate and attention-deficit society. Check out the following videos.
Both of my sons are motivated to read the screens and continue to engage the energy that this game (called 'Dance Dance Mario Mix') generates, and they certainly get more exercise than from the traditional video games they play, which promote largely sedentary behaviour. But wait a minute, WAIT A MINUTE! This is a Wii (Nintendo) game and is characterized by all the shortcomings that video games entail. “[B]rain scientists are speculating that too much technology may get in the way of normal frontal lobe development and stunt the maturation process” (George). “[T]he more time teens spend playing video games, the more they suppress key areas of the frontal lobe associated with learning, memory, emotion and impulse control” (George). Furthermore, allowing educational systems to qualify such material as academic text is a terrifying slippery slope towards corporate controlled schooling systems. That level of brain-washing is an old trope of corporate power gone mad - Pokemon anyone?
The following is as succinct as I could make an examination of several articles, some from within our course material and some not, that take a good look at electronic platforms in the real lives of young people and their academic relevance, as well as alternative texts of a more traditional genre, such as the hyper-popular Twilight and others containing supernatural or science-fiction subject matter.
ARTICLES:
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google Making Us Stupid?. The Atlantic. July/August 2008.
George, Lianne (2008). Dumbed Down. Macleans.ca. November 2008. Retrieved 10-03-2009.
Johnston, Stephen. (2006). Don't Fear the Digital. Time.com. July 2006. Retrieved 10-03-2009.
O’Quinn, Elaine J. (2004). Vampires, Changelings, and Radical Mutant Teens. The Alan Review, Volume 31. Retrieved 18-02-2009.
Robinson, Ken. 2006 Ted Lectures Monterey California. Accessed 18-02-2009.
Wallis, Claudia. The Multitasking Generation. Time/CNN. Retrieved 19-03-2006.
THE QUESTIONS:
“Are we developing a generation with underdeveloped frontal lobes – unable to learn, remember, feel , control impulses [. . .] or will they develop new advanced skills that poise them for extraordinary experiences?” (from the article Dumbed Down by Lianne George, quoting Dr. Gary Small)
“What are the cognitive tasks we’re ignoring?” [. . .] “And what are the consequences of not doing those things?” (from the article Dumbed Down by Lianne George quoting Dr. Michael Merzenich)
“In the offices of the future, which skill set will to-day’s kids draw upon in their day-to-day tasks?” (from the article Don’t Fear the Digital by Steven Johnson)
CON:
“a great many young people [are] having difficulty with executive function, which involves thinking, problem solving and task-completion” (George)
“media or other technologies we use in learning the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains” (Carr 62)
“”It looks like attention deficit disorder”, she says. “The person has a job or task and they start doing it but they can’t stay oriented to it”” (George) “more frequent trouble with non-verbal thinking skills” (George) “Both of these skill sets relate to areas of the prefrontal cortex, or what Young calls “mental initiative.” It’s the area of the brain that drives us to go out and investigate the world” (George)
“When paying partial continuous attention, people may place their brains in a heightened state of stress” “Over time” he says, “[it can] actually impair cognition, lead to depression, and alter the neural circuitry in the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex – regions in the brain that control mood and thought” (George)
“students’ discomfort with single-focus learning has created a generation of bibliophobes” “Reading is something you need to practise doing, and Bauerlein says Digital Natives simply don’t get enough” “Students just can’t do it” (George)
“Studies tell us multi-tasking itself is a myth. We expend valuable time and energy transitioning from one interface to another” (George)
“[T]here’s substantial literature on how the brain handles multitasking. And basically, it doesn’t” (Wallis). “[W]hat’s really going on is rapid toggling among tasks rather than simultaneous processing” (Wallis). “[T]he ability to multiprocess has its limits, even among young adults. When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer – often double the time or more – to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially”(Wallis).
Wallis concludes that “today’s students are [therefore] less tolerant of ambiguity. [. . .] “They demand clarity,” says Koonz. They want good guys and bad guys, which she finds problematic in teaching complex topics like Hutu-Tutsi history in Rwanda. She also thinks there are political implications: “their belief in the simple answer, put together in a visual way, is, I think, dangerous.” Koonz thinks this aversion to complexity is directly related to multitasking” (Wallis).
PRO:
“will they develop new advanced skills that poise them for extraordinary experiences?” (George)
“young people [are] using technology to develop hyper–efficient ways of finding, synthesizing and communicating information” (George)
“New technologies present Digital Natives with “a giant opportunity”, Tapscott writes, “an opportunity to fulfill their intellectual potential and be the smartest generation ever”” (George)
“Technophiles say what we’re losing in memory we’re gaining in productivity” (George)
“They’re not using the technology to replace their real-world social life; they’re using technology to augment it” (Johnson)
“Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes” (Carr 57)
“the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through [. . .] eyes and ears and into [the] mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many” (Carr 57)
“Twenty or 30 years ago, we sat in submissive wonder soaking up the magic of TV [. . .] Today’s kids see the screen as an environment to be explored, inhabited, shared and shaped” (Johnson)
But arguments against these texts claim that they are void of literary merit and “[i]nstead of allowing readers to use such texts as touchstones for the sometimes tragic nature of their lives, or even as sites of inevitable loss that may never be reconciled, we condescendingly refer to them as “dumbed down” versions of “real” literature” (O’Quinn 51).
FACTS and REALITIES:
“Digital Natives. The first to be born into and come of age in the digital age, they use their brains differently than any generation in history” (George)
“By the age of 20, the average teen has probably spent more than 20,000 hours on the Web, and over 10,000 hours playing video games” (George)
“in the process of navigating so much frenetic brain activity, kids are rewiring their brains, customizing them for speed and multi-tasking” (George)
“not since early man discovered how to use a tool [. . .] has the human brain been affected so quickly and dramatically” (George) / “Five hours on the internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains” (George)
The gap between student and teacher value systems and technology literacy is becoming so large that more and more students are becoming disenchanted or disenfranchised by a public academic system that seems irrelevant to them.
THE ANSWER:
“Kids should have a balanced media diet: surfing and gaming alongside old-fashioned reading” (Johnson)
Don’t treat teens like radical mutants – discuss pros and cons with them so that they can see the value in both – activities that bridge the gap and are relevant to their professional futures. Eg. Teaching them how to write formal e-mails in a professional environment.
'AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT'. Here are some 'facts' that I retrieved from various websites on the internet. I leave it to the 'deep-divers' in our class to discover their verity.
-'hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words
-children laugh an average of 100 - 200 times per day, adults only 10 - 15
-triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13
-it is impossible to lick your elbow
-Hitler had only one testicle
-didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school
-the word 'listen' is an anagram of the word 'silent'
-any month that begins with a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th
-Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
-The increased electricity used by modern appliance parts is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
-The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
-Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.
-The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver (which makes me glad I can't lick it - not that I've had a skin transplant to my elbow! Why would anyone need one?)
-Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
btw - I am aware of the irony of examining the course information, as above, by attempting to reduce each major article or presentation to their most salient points. The reduction of 'deep dive' research material to mere info-bytes is one of the very problems that the course examines in the changing field of young adult texts, but if you need a culprit for that shortcoming, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. James Nahachewsky who seems to think that a virtual plethora of conflicting research texts and studies can be reduced in scope to a single multi-page blog entry. Alas, what is higher education coming to?
In that spirit, let's conclude by offering a summary description of who young people are today as based on these materials. The reason for so doing is twofold: it is as relevant as any conclusion in a course that really leads to more questions than offers any viable answers to such questions as 'What is text?' and 'What is acceptable text/platform for the modern classroom?'; and it is necessarily included as required by ol' Dr. N. Here's the list that I came up with:
-"Young people will always push the envelope of whatever freedom they're given" - Sarah Riddell
-video games tend to be more popular with the male gender
-fan fiction tends to be more popular with the female gender - Twilight was/is a crescendo of female internet use
-young people are better multi-taskers as they are "digital natives" but the side-effects may be devastating and the skill of multi-tasking only truly applies to mundane or repetitive skills that require little thinking
-they have a depleted atention span, but an increased input rate
-they embody an anti-cool paradox: traditional marketing has failed in the wake of the new social sensibility of teens and the rising cost of avant-garde (see Dave Christopher's brilliant presentation on PBF Comics (link on the sidebar of this blog) as to what teens are exposed to and how socially savvy they have become) - marketers are required to enter the teen world and convince teens that they are not part of the corporate establishment
-"students are less tolerant of ambiguity" (Wallis) - require clear good guys / bad guys - difficult to teach them about multiple perspectives in history or text
-different/new/faster research skills complemented by new e-synthesis skills
-highly emotionally self-aware (O'Quinn)
-aware of ther own education, goals, future, environment
-internet literate - ie. natives, not immigrants or aliens
-newly powerful as text creators, online information manipulators
-increased vulnerability - ie. internet bullying, illusion of privacy on-line
-multi-culturally textual, literate, and much more tolerant than previous generations
-disillusioned by a pedantic education system that they often feel doesn't speak to their reality or needs
-“They’re not using the technology to replace their real-world social life; they’re using technology to augment it” (Johnson)
I hope my teenage son reads this entry - lol.
C U n hell,
Shakes.
