Wow, this is so good. You’ve voiced so many of my thoughts. Reading is dead, but does it matter? It seems like it does because reading matters to me. But maybe it doesn’t.
Excellent article. Shame it's not 240 characters or less... I'm joking - except of course the joke isn't really funny. Unless... you suffer from gallows humour, then it's funny to think how unfunny that is. Oh. What are we to do? Humans are easily lead. We've all been led into a pit of shiny rectangles vying for 5 seconds of attention to distract us until we're replaced by robots. But... couldn't we fight back? Couldn't we make the shiny rectangles into better long-form reading environments?? Here's an irony: I loved your article, but I couldn't help but be distracted by the flotilla of ads surrounding it. I had to be good at reading, and good at ignoring distractions. Can't we gear our tech to be distraction free when it ought to be? All the shiny addictiveness of the phone, but designed for concentration, not skittishness? Maybe...? Anyone...? Anyhow... Thank you for articulating what every deep reader is thinking...
I’ve been at this about 35 years now (I teach philosophy and religious studies) and I guess I noticed this … problem/mess/issue/disaster in process/WTF … about the same time you did. I had been blaming no child left behind, where the students spent the previous 12 years of their educational experience, being trained not to wonder about anything. I have a suspicion the reading problem is related to the wondering problem.
Here’s the observation I keep coming back to: when students hit a word they don’t understand, they never look it up. It doesn’t occur to them to look it up even though they have the entire OED right there on their phone. I started to suspect that, not only does it not occur to them to look up words they don’t understand, but that the educational process they’ve been exposed to has actively trained them to avoid looking up things they don’t understand - has, in a nutshell, trained them not to wonder about anything.
Exactly! The impulse/instinct to find information by reading seems to be lacking. Many of my students don't read their email, look information up on the syllabus, etc. It makes imparting basic information very challenging. (And it does seem so odd to me, since we are now a culture that can't sit through a dinner conversation -- if we still have them -- without everyone pulling out their phones to look up every disputed fact on the internet! It's a paradox.)
Thanks for reading, and for your comment. On we go!
Wow, this is so good. You’ve voiced so many of my thoughts. Reading is dead, but does it matter? It seems like it does because reading matters to me. But maybe it doesn’t.
Thanks, Elle! I think it does, but maybe it doesn't? LOL. You pretty much summed it up right there!
Excellent article. Shame it's not 240 characters or less... I'm joking - except of course the joke isn't really funny. Unless... you suffer from gallows humour, then it's funny to think how unfunny that is. Oh. What are we to do? Humans are easily lead. We've all been led into a pit of shiny rectangles vying for 5 seconds of attention to distract us until we're replaced by robots. But... couldn't we fight back? Couldn't we make the shiny rectangles into better long-form reading environments?? Here's an irony: I loved your article, but I couldn't help but be distracted by the flotilla of ads surrounding it. I had to be good at reading, and good at ignoring distractions. Can't we gear our tech to be distraction free when it ought to be? All the shiny addictiveness of the phone, but designed for concentration, not skittishness? Maybe...? Anyone...? Anyhow... Thank you for articulating what every deep reader is thinking...
Wow, beautifully said. Yep!
I’ve been at this about 35 years now (I teach philosophy and religious studies) and I guess I noticed this … problem/mess/issue/disaster in process/WTF … about the same time you did. I had been blaming no child left behind, where the students spent the previous 12 years of their educational experience, being trained not to wonder about anything. I have a suspicion the reading problem is related to the wondering problem.
Here’s the observation I keep coming back to: when students hit a word they don’t understand, they never look it up. It doesn’t occur to them to look it up even though they have the entire OED right there on their phone. I started to suspect that, not only does it not occur to them to look up words they don’t understand, but that the educational process they’ve been exposed to has actively trained them to avoid looking up things they don’t understand - has, in a nutshell, trained them not to wonder about anything.
Anyway, it’s a working hypothesis.
Great stuff, thanks for this!
Sigh.
Exactly! The impulse/instinct to find information by reading seems to be lacking. Many of my students don't read their email, look information up on the syllabus, etc. It makes imparting basic information very challenging. (And it does seem so odd to me, since we are now a culture that can't sit through a dinner conversation -- if we still have them -- without everyone pulling out their phones to look up every disputed fact on the internet! It's a paradox.)
Thanks for reading, and for your comment. On we go!