[etni] Fwd: The Medium Is the Medium

From: ETNI list <etni.list@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Etni <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:13:59 +0300
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From: Margie Cohen <margiecj@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Medium Is the Medium

Hi-

Interesting observations.

The world of internet may be fast and accessible, but depth is
attained the old-fashioned way!

Margie

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July 8, 2010

The Medium Is the Medium

By DAVID BROOKS

Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852
disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home
at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive
years.

Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of
Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the
students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading
scores than other students. These students were less affected by the
“summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income
students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12
books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer
school.

This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power
of books. We already knew, from research in 27 countries, that kids
who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer and do
better. This new study suggests that introducing books into homes that
may not have them also produces significant educational gains.

Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen
Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use
among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They
found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access
was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not
necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic
performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter
and Facebook took off.

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding
Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is
leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research
showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s
abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.

Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence
that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet
searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information
and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling,
not a threat.

But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who
gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of
the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the
change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home
library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different
group.

The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that
the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the
medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while
engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the
literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works
of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.

A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works
of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep,
alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is
paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The
Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it
would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but
Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is
egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new
media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity
is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.

These different cultures foster different types of learning. The great
essayist Joseph Epstein once distinguished between being well
informed, being hip and being cultivated. The Internet helps you
become well informed — knowledgeable about current events, the latest
controversies and important trends. The Internet also helps you become
hip — to learn about what’s going on, as Epstein writes, “in those
lively waters outside the boring mainstream.”

But the literary world is still better at helping you become
cultivated, mastering significant things of lasting import. To learn
these sorts of things, you have to defer to greater minds than your
own. You have to take the time to immerse yourself in a great writer’s
world. You have to respect the authority of the teacher.

Right now, the literary world is better at encouraging this kind of
identity. The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists,
but the literary culture still produces better students.

It’s better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant, and
making the important more prestigious.

Perhaps that will change. Already, more “old-fashioned” outposts are
opening up across the Web. It could be that the real debate will not
be books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet
counterculture that will better attract people to serious learning.


Margaret A. Cohen-Jackel,  M.S.S.A.
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[etni] Fwd: The Medium Is the Medium

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