Everything Bad is Good for You

With literacy rates falling in both the Canada and US the intellgencia need someone or something to blame. Television has been the longest standing literacy robbing villain but now video games and the internet have been added to this master list of culprits. All one has to do is plug the words “literacy” or “digital literacy” into Google and you will find the musings from the latest crop of naysayers and thanks to technology like blogs, blog comments and Diigo you will also find a vast list of rebuttals to this perpetual argument.

Please keep in mind it has only been a couple of thousands years since reading and writing was on trial in Plato’s The Phaedrus, in which Socrates objects to writing on the basis that it undermines the memory.

Just a small sampling from the latest  criticism of technology and in particular the internet include:

In Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? originally posted in the UC Newsrooom and then reposted in Science Daily Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. states:

Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not

Wiring classrooms for Internet access does not enhance learning

Similarly, in Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind Mark Bauerlein professor of English at Emory University argues:

We must recognize that screen scanning is but one kind of reading, a lesser one, and that it conspires against certain intellectual habits requisite to liberal-arts learning.

I continue to believe in the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes. I just don’t believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let’s praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire – or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector.

To support his argument against technology, Bauerlein also points to a New York State school district that  decided to drop its laptop program after years of offering it. The school-board president announced why:

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement – none.”

Not a surprising position taken by this author of a book titled, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.

These are only two of the many such articles warning against the dire consequences of our use of technology in the classroom and in a particular wide spread use of video games and the internet. To be fair to Professor Greenfield and Bauerlein they both do attempt to provide a balance in their polemics by suggesting that new media does have its place and it merits.

Perhaps one of the most balanced arguments for the merits of technology and the respect for traditional print is presented by  Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.

Johnson presents the argument that there are some very positive aspects to video games, television, films and the internet that these elements of popular culture are actually making us smarter. He points to the engagement, analytical thinking and problem solving required to navigate three dimensional worlds of video games, to the complex plot structure of modern television and film and to the collaborative, social and interactive world of the Internet where almost anyone can be a creator and contributor to media culture are only a few examples of how our modern world can and does make us smarter.

More importantly, Johnson attempts to offer a balance and accurately identifies the importance and significance of books, literature and traditional culture and argues that we need to see these most recent additions to popular culture as positive contributions not replacements for what has come before. He points to the fact that the book that he has written (and we are reading) is an example of the right technology use in the right application and argues consistently for a balanced attitude and approach.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this book is his sense of humor and wit. In the introduction he offers the notion of the “sleeper curve”  which refers to a Woody Allen mock sci-fi films where a team of scientists from 2173 are astounded that twentieth century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge. Throughout his book Johnson points to the “sleeper curve” aspect of video games, television, film and the Internet and argues that we will some day fully understand the benefits that these technologies bring and be surprised that the culture of the day missed these merits.

To clearly demonstrate this point Johnson offers the premise that if video games were popularized before books and now books are being introduced to support learning–this is how the teachers, parents and cultural authorities might react.

“Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of game-playing- which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sounds-capes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements-books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

Books are also tragically isolating. While games for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new “libraries” that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizable percentage of the population, books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia-a condition that didn’t even exist until printed text came along to stigmatize its sufferers.

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control the narratives in any fashion- you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they are powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to “follow the plot” instead of learning to lead.” (pp19-20)

This is one book that I suggest is a must read for anyone who has kids, knows kids or is involved with learning–I guess that is everyone…

Johnson, S. (2006). Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. The Berkley Publishing Group.