Reading and Writing Aren't Dead (Yet)

Working at a company that runs virtual classrooms for students across the country provides me with plenty of opportunities to observe and analyze the effects of technology on student learning. As someone dedicated to education, I'm surprised that I haven't yet fled for the mountains. Every day, I read emails that use the English language in ways that would make most professors curl up in a ball and weep. A casual disregard for grammar often clouds the meaning and content of messages so badly that I can't tell if a parent or their 2nd grade student sent it. Constant exposure to such material drives my coworkers and I ever closer to the brink of insanity, so I can certainly relate to the people who claim that Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, email, blogs, and instant messaging are the meteors, volcanoes, and tidal waves setting the reading and writing dinosaurs on a course to extinction.

There are now a good deal of studies showing how younger people interact with their computer screen. There is a corresponding number of (mostly) older alarmists crying over the "Dumbest Generation", which they have already written off as a lost cause. If my discussions with older friends are any indication, most Americans over the age of 50 are silently predicting the downfall of civilization brought on by apathetic teens and yuppies who are too enthralled by their computer screens to do anything but sit and refresh their comment counter, hoping for a hint of social acceptance. It is important to heed Ronald Reagan's warning that "freedom is always one generation away from extinction", but I get the distinct impression that what older folks (read: Boomers) fear could happen is far more dramatic than anything that will, or even could.

Until recently, I was firmly entrenched on the side of the those predicting the apocalypse, right next to my Boomer friends and relatives, readying my arsenal for the attack on English that was sure to come at any moment. Four years tutoring writing, earning a History degree and teaching certification, and a life-long debilitating dependency on coherent thoughts held me in place and gave me strength as I looked down my nose at the unwashed masses tweeting about their lives. Then a coworker sent me to a blog post that snapped me back to reality. As with any new idea, product, or technology, we must separate the tool from how the tool is used.

Obviously, I'm aware that nearly everything annoying in life (visits to the DMV not included) can be avoided, and to this day I have not visited a Twitter feed. It's just not my thing. Even without exposing myself to various social networking sites, I know that if Twitter and other social networking devices were as bad for society as people make them out to be, we would already be seeing cracks in the foundation of our republic. I'm sure that any trend showing America getting dumber started long before the dawn of YouTube, courtesy of our "everyone's a winner" educational theories and policies.

"But children don't learn when they're online!" cry our elders. In the sense that the Internet won't direct students to prepare for the SAT or learn about the Renaissance, this is probably true. The Internet won't direct kids to videos of cats playing the piano either, but that doesn't mean youngsters won't find them. The problem, then, obviously exists outside of the computer's realm altogether. Kids form interests and goals before they ever sit down at the keyboard, but they expand on these things based on what they think the Internet offers and how their online activity is monitored.

That last thought is incredibly important, so I'll repeat it: kids expand on their goals and interests based on what they think the Internet offers and how their online activity is monitored. The Internet can be an incredibly powerful tool, but if students are allowed to have a computer in their room and be on it without any restrictions, then of course their inquisitive minds will wander, followed quickly by their mouse cursor. In stark contrast to the whimsical exploration of children, computer users over the age of 30 tend to be much more cautious - almost suspicious - about new technologies. When parents and teachers alike are so intimidated by computers and the Internet, it's no wonder that youngsters have so completely taken over cyberspace for their own purposes, thus giving the older members of society the ability to hurl accusations of seflishness and apathy at their younger counterparts.

This is the ultimate challenge to professional educators and parents with regards to integrating technology into education. Without a real understanding of how students place computers in the context of their lives, we cannot hope to use these technologies to their fullest potential. I realize how silly it is to be discussing all this on a blog, but the moral of this story is that we need to start embracing new technologies instead of shunning them in order to better apply them in the processes we've created to improve our lives. If we continue to shun the use of Wiki pages, chat rooms, and yes, Twitter, then we will voluntarily surrender the control of some of our biggest assets to the people who create - and profit from - online content.

To bring this post back to where it started, it should be noted that my work also allows me to see the incredible talent of children who are excited about learning, and who love to read and write (properly). They might not always understand that the tone and syntax used in an email is completely inappropriate for a research paper, but guess whose responsibility it is to teach them the difference? Youngsters are still driven to learn, but what they focus their efforts on is still under the direct influence of parents and teachers.