KINDLE: A TECH RANT, RECANT, and TRANSPLANT

Around the Teacher Leaders Network, I have a reputation as an unrepentant Luddite—probably because I have wondered out loud if Twittering just might be overrun by twits, and have expressed my opinion that lots of the technology crusted on learning in our schools has no visible liberating effect on children’s minds or spirits. Americans are regularly mesmerized, then seduced by technologies, but aren’t particularly good at looking ahead to forecast where these torrid love affairs might end up. It is, after all, technology that makes possible things like expending a few million public dollars on data analysis systems which sort teachers into “effectiveness” quintiles, based on their students’ test data, using the ultimate opaque technology, value-added methodology.

I come, however, to praise a technology, not to bury one.

I want a Kindle. Badly. I am sitting on my hands until the second-generation version of the digital reader arrives, keeping in mind that the price has already dropped and the probability of nasty glitches when I open the box is also dropping. Mind you, I don’t own a Blackberry, have never lusted after an iPhone or learned to program my VCR (a skill which I no longer even need, thank goodness). It’s not that I can’t learn to use these and other technologies—I have just never seen them as important to the central purposes or interests of my life. 

So, you’d think I would be the kind of person who would enjoy having dinner with Mark Bauerlein, who blames the endemic stupidity (his word, not mine) of people under 30 on the digital age. Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University, has written a book called “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future” wherein he sees youthful, tech-induced ignorance as an “intellectual, economic and civic disaster in the making.”

You know right off the bat that Bauerlein is part of the ivory tower because the book title follows the time-honored academic provocative-taunt/colon/explanatory-but-worrisome-phrase pattern, and there are the usual quasi-alarming statistics. For example, in the last 52 years, we’re down 11% in the number of citizens who can identify the largest lake in North America. (I knew that it was Lake Superior, but I live in Michigan and am more than willing to excuse folks who live in, say, Rhode Island and weren’t forced to absorb that fact in 4^th grade, or may have been sidetracked by living next to the Atlantic Ocean.)

I do think Bauerlein is right about some things. In this interview in Dark Party Review (which I like better than the book), he says:

I wonder about the tech savviness of the kids. Some studies cited in the book show that for all their superficial ability to access information, they don't know what to do with it or how to judge it when it comes up. Digital culture is a tidal wave, and combined with the energies and willfulness of youth, it can't be stopped. The best I can say is for parents every day to require a reading hour for everyone, themselves included.

Yes, Professor Bauerlein, yes! But then he says:

Say that they want to go into the non-profit sector and do environmental work in Eastern  Europe. Will knowing something of the environmental record of communism help them? Or, if Africa, a little knowledge of colonialism will go a long way.  If they interview for a job with a media firm and over lunch they don't recognize the names Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather, how will the others look at them? Every tool I mention in the book could be a knowledge- and taste-inducing activity, but that's not what kids care about. They want to relate to other kids, not to grown-ups. They want to talk about what happened last week in the cafeteria, not what happened at Leningrad.

If there actually were an exciting job in Eastern Europe, wouldn’t the sponsoring organization naturally be briefing a new hire with the most current information about both politics and the environment? When would one productively display deep knowledge of colonialism in Africa or Walter Cronkite? And talking about what happened at Leningrad? I’m willing to bet that even kids in Leningrad don’t stay up all night talking about what happened in Leningrad—and it has nothing to do with technology ruining their classical education or purpose-driven life. As for “inducing taste” in shallow youth—well, good luck with that.

I’m not saying that disciplinary knowledge is unimportant—far from it. Having a broad understanding of the arts, sciences and humanities makes one educated, but having a lively imagination and curiosity makes information useful. If the whiz-bang nature of technology makes kids distractible and dumb, that has more to do with our inability to control and harness its power in our institutions, or re-shape our own national vision for what it means to be educated.

With the possible exception of television, I don’t believe that the spread of any technology has dumbed down our citizens.  Nor is it technology that threatens literacy achievement in high-needs schools. In fact—check this out:

The greatest influence on kids’ ability to learn is the quality of the teachers, and their discretion in choosing inspiring and exciting material to teach their students. Instead of spending billions on achieving such vague and nebulous objectives as “Adequate Yearly Progress”, maybe we should simply reallocate some of that money to hire really good teachers, pay them a decent wage, and let them teach the way they want. Oh yeah, and spend some of those billions on good books that the kids can take home and actually read.

It’s from a great website promoting a cool idea: Kindles for Kids. Kindles are a kind of slow-down technology, a tool that makes reading a wide variety of content portable and convenient. That’s really all a Kindle does, at least in its present version. Complaints about the first version center on its simple, leisurely style—no flashing color, no moving images, nobody talking or trying to “connect” in 140 characters. Just text, which can be clipped, highlighted, saved, dog-eared…and, gloriously, read and re-read. Little personal libraries—what a concept. I wish Kindles for Kids the very best of luck.

image: ronnieb/morguefile

Comments

[Mary Tedrow]

Nancy,
Get a Kindle! I love mine and I'm hoping the technology will end the heavy backpack issue. Imagine one kindle with all the textbooks loaded on it.
I despair all year over how to encourage kids to think analytically about what they read, write, and view. When they figure out how much fun it can be, they love the engagement - just as previous generations have. Professor Bauerlein might find the younger generation shallow but what has he done to invite them into the conversation? Presenting material is rarely going to do it. Common teaching complaint: these kids are different from what they used to be. I doubt it. Few humans turn away from questions they are curious about. Our challenge is to spur the curiosity - always has been always will be.
We just finished making one minute PSA's. The project had an effect on my students (besides the fun of running all over campus with a camera.) Many students said it "ruined television viewing" for them. They stopped watching the story and started thinking about where the camera was in the shot. Ha! That was the analytical thinking I'd struggled to get them to do all year. Now I'm thinking about moving the "fun" end of year project to the beginning. If you can analyze video you might be able to transfer that skill to text, don't you think?

[Nancy Flanagan]

Or better yet--imagine a Kindle with the useful parts of the textbook loaded into it, edited and highlighted by the teacher, with the extra blah-blah (as determined by said teacher) eliminated.

Any teacher who creates an assignment that "ruins television" for her students must be doing something right. Bravo, Mary. You just taught POV without a single worksheet, working backward toward text. Love it, love it.

[Tom Hoffman]

You really should be more concerned about the implications of accepting digital rights management for content you purchase.

Kindle is a big step in this direction: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Is a little convenience worth it?

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hi Tom. Thanks for posting, and raising the issue. Since Mary's Kindle is personal-use and I don't even have one, this is a theoretical issue at the moment, but one that would have to be thoroughly dissected before Kindle gets used in educational settings.

I have had considerable experience with use of digital as well as on-paper musical content, as a music teacher. Digital delivery with copy rights actually solves the "Xerox problem" that all music teachers are familiar with, in a cost-effective manner. It's cheaper to pay for the rights to copy up front than order single copies when the originals are lost.

I have only visited Kindle for Kids' website and did note that the Kindles came with $100 to purchase books. As I think about the way digital MP3 delivery has shaken out, and the current pricing of textbooks, there has to be a win-win solution. If, of course, there is the will to find that solution.

Thanks for raising the issue.

Nancy

[mark]

You say, Nancy, that it's clear I'm from the Ivory Tower because of the colon. In fact, I did most of the research for the book while working outside academia.

[Bob Heiny]

I like my borrowed Kendle also, but I want to write and save margin notes, etc.

As a former public and private sector employer, I'd probably not hire someone uninformed who expected "...the sponsoring organization naturally be briefing a new hire with the most current information about both politics and the environment?" I want someone who'se already up to speed and can begin working promptly. Then, I'll help her/him tune up slightly before performing.

[Bob Heiny]

Yep, "who's" vs. "who'se" in the previous post. :)

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hi Bob.
I wouldn't expect an organization to hire clueless people, either, but Bauerlein's interview, rather ironically, pointed up the fact that the knowledge explosion has made it impossible to know everything one might need to pursue a career in a particular field, before that employment occurs.

It is perhaps not fair to take snippets from an interview rather than his researched book. But if we expect college graduates to be "up to speed" on in-depth knowledge of every possible work venue, and blame their lack of knowledge on the distraction of technology, isn't there some logic disconnect apparent there?

I was perhaps a little flip, and for that, I apologize to Dr. Bauerlein. But--seriously--the prized skills these days are good communication, ability to evaluate information, working together, flexibility. You can access all kinds of background information, once you know that you need it--the trick is not knowing who Walter Cronkite is, or being able to find out. It's the personal judgment inherent in putting information into a sense-making context.

The more we feed kids facts, then test their recall, with allowing the knowledge to coalesce into ideas and mental frameworks, the less useful they are in any workplace.

[Bob Heiny]

As a good advanced graduate student, you probably already know this, or you wouldn't have asked the Q.

I don't see a logical disconnect between expecting graduates to be up to speed with technologies. That's what I expect as a (now former) employer. It's a competitive market place for employable skills, and employers share an ideology of success. Grads compete for employment (even in the non-profit and public sectors) with answers to the unspoken primary Q of every interview: What can you do for me, my organization, my profit, how soon, and what will it cost me to get that from you?.

That means employers expect applicants to have used advanced technologies in order to know enough about their industry and organization to answer the Q better than anyone else. Cooperation, communication, etc. come in down the employable skills priority line. I'd hire an informed independent highly skilled person before a go-along-to-get-along applicant.

Yes?

[Nancy Flanagan]

You missed my point, Bob--in fact, you're arguing for it here. Of course, we want people entering the work force to use technology fluently to advance employers' goals and needs.

Bauerlein offers a kind of old-think: everyone should have broad background knowledge, from Eastern Europe to colonialism in Africa, to Dan Rather, to be considered a good prospect. It's not simple knowledge that people need any more, it's the ability to understand, evaluate and synthesize targeted knowledge. And thoughtful use of technology can enhance those skills.

And who ever said anything about go along to get along?

[Ariel Sacks]

I am a big fan of Kindle, though I don't yet have one. I was swayed when I saw Toni Morrison on Amazon talking about how she uses it. I showed the demonstration on Amazon to my 8th grade students in Brooklyn this winter and asked them to write essays about how school might be if every student had a Kindle. They loved it. One student keeps bringing in a white Gameboy, trying to impress everyone saying it's a Kindle! No one, including me has actually seen a real one yet, but we all agreed it would be a big step up for our schools to be "kindled."