Are the hours kids and teenagers spend prowling the Web a threat to literacy? Or is it simply a new form of reading and writing? A sprawling New York Times thumbsucker notes that “as teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.”
Clearly when kids go online instead of turning on the TV, they read and write instead of passively consuming video. But critics of reading on the Internet say they see no evidence that increased Web activity improves reading achievement. “What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,” Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., tells the Times. “I would believe people who tell me that the Internet develops reading if I did not see such a universal decline in reading ability and reading comprehension on virtually all tests.”
“Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode,” adds Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale who has studied brain scans of children reading.
According to the paper, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers reading, math and science tests to a sample of 15-year-old students in more than 50 countries, will add an electronic reading component to next year’s tests. The United States, among other countries, will not participate. “A spokeswoman for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education, said an additional test would overburden schools,” the Times notes.
Robert,
I don’t think it is fair to call the NYTs article a thumbsucker. The Gray Lady makes excellent points, and they just remind me why we need old-fashioned literary conventions.
We’re old enough to have mastered the fundamentals, and maximize the best while minimizing the worse of the digital breakthroughs. But haven’t we also gotten into some bad habits with our use of the Internet. (I haven’t read a novel this summer.)
This issue reminds me of Diana comment on another subject, about schools’ inability to fully replace parents. Of course we can’t. And of course we can’t prevent the harm that comes from the digital culture. We must fight for the values we revere. If we demonstrate enough parental-like love, and enough love for the Word, then we will have left a legacy that the kids can build on.
I love Umberto Eco’s take on this. As the printing press and the scientific method ushered in the modern world which allowed for privacy, and eventually democracy and human rights, we also lost the pre-literary communal culture. Eco predicted in the 1980s that with gated communities and the icons of that era, we were recreating much of feudalism with its castles, stained glass, and the pre-national world. His solution was not to complain about he kids but to teach them to watch MTV videos and to read cultural images, in other words to teach more cultural literacy.
Cell phones, especially, drive me crazy. But when I’m in NYC I can see why people need them and I pods, etc. to block out the excesses. Then when I go on and on about NYC in the 70s, the kids are usually polite about the way they use technology to drown me out.
Seriously, all that text messaging is also testimony to the gaps in people’s pysche due to the breakdown of the family. People are craving human contact as they use and misuse technology. It will be the younger generation that turns this stuff into art, and then we’ll see other changes. Maybe into new forms of family.
None of this means that we would necessarily disagree about the role of schools. We adults need to create buffers. When teaching, I want to slow things down as much as possible for as long as possible. If I have a unit that retains the kids’ interest while encouraging deliberation, I ride that theme as long as possible. Even with the best units after four or five weeks, though, I walk in one morning and body language tells me its time to move on. If I need to continue a unit, but the kids are getting boored, I believe, they have to have the veto in the shortrun. I will double back to it later when the motivation is right.
But isn’t that the “same as it ever was.”
No disrespect intended to the Good Grey Lady. At least not on this piece (don’t get me started, however, on their coverage of real estate, food, and sports). When I worked at TIME Magazine, we used “thumbsucker” to describe those big, sprawling, non-news-driven “how we live today” pieces that cover the waterfront without coming down on one side of the question or the other.
I’m actually agnostic on the “Is it reading?” question. I love a good book as much as anyone, and yes, Virginia, there is a canon — or at least a body of literature that you need a grasp of to be fully literate. But I’m not ready to dismiss digital tools as something less that reading. My concern is more centered on the all-at-onceness of it all, and whether the assault of digital technology may be damaging our ability to think clearly and critically.
You learn something new every day. One of my pieces of advice (I got a million of em) is that I ask students to get access to a Time or Newsweek every week, and at least leaf through it and read something. I do have a graduated senior who has been doing it and she calls periodically. I’ll teach the term thumbsucker.