Remember those silly days in the 1990s, when Clinton, Gore, and
their friends cobbled together our money to put computers in every classroom
and community center? The hope was that the computer would at last do what the
government has so far been unable to do after a century of work: make every
child literate and high-minded. It turned out that most of the new computers
gathered dust and became obsolete.
The web was dull and uneventful in those days. But no longer. It
turns out that there was a kernel of truth in the Clinton view: computers can
be a wonderful tool for learning. What looks like time-wasting provides
important technical training, a vehicle for healthy socializing, access to a
vast world of information from all ages, and crucial practice for literary
expression that will pay lifelong returns. No, it won’t turn a pig’s ear into a
silk purse, but it can give a kid an extra boost in many ways.
(Hey, my son just won the World Cup!)
Consider the major one: writing ability. For practicing writing, getting feedback from
peers, and just for the joy of composition, blog forums like
wonderful opportunities for kids, though closer knit kid-boutiques like
probably a more fruitful (and safer) venue. Such venues are a great way for
kids to meet other kids who share their interests, expand geographical
knowledge, gain broad cultural awareness, and gain technical web experience in
writing, coding, working with images, and much more.
Such venues get kids past the techno-phobia that has crippled so
many adult careers. They provide an outlet for creativity (kids at Poohblogs
upload their writings for others to critique), and they give kids what they
need most: an opportunity and excuse to write every day.
Now, I know that we are supposed to bemoan the loss of the quill pen
and parchment. We are supposed to weep because people no longer ache over long
letters and put wax seals on their missives. I know how bad punctuation and
crazy neologisms (LOL, brb, ttyl) are corrupting English.
But punctuation and abbreviations are small technical problems
compared with the major issue that plagues bad writing: pomposity, jargon,
preachiness, and prose that is stilted and labored. These are all the result of
inexperience and a lack of direction — and blogging goes a long way toward
addressing both problems.
What is true of blogs is also true of email. Don’t tell me that
emails are too informal. Informal is far better than prose, strewn with words
that the writer himself can’t deploy with competence, repeating words like
‘important’ fifty times, as in: ‘At this stage in my narrative,
I find that it is important to note the important distinction between what is
important here and what is not.’
Ask any English teacher from any age. The first articles they get
from students are riddled with these problems. The writer tries to sound smart
but just ends up sounding puffed up and absurd. They have nothing to say, as if
they composed the piece while forgetting that the main point of writing is to
communicate!
This is not only a problem in our time. Mark Twain famously
satirized the 19th-century approach to teaching writing in Tom Sawyer, in his reporting
of a schoolgirl’s composition examination:
‘A prevalent feature in these compositions
was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of
‘fine language’; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly
prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity
that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them.’
And so Twain gives an example from the first girl who read her
composition:
‘In the common walks of life, with what
delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated
scene of festivity! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy.
In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive
throng, ‘the observed of all observers.’ Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy
robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,
her step is lightest in the gay assembly. In such delicious fancies time
quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the
Elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does
everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than
the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is
vanity.’
To be sure, a high school student who wrote this well today would be
considered a genius. But it’s still insufferable. It’s artificial, affected,
puffed up, and vacuous.
Why do students write this way? They don’t have an audience, they
don’t have anything to say, and they haven’t written enough to acquire real
skill.
Let’s take the last point first. The acquisition of expertise in any
field is the product of relentless repetition. The World Series in baseball,
for example, is the culmination of tens of thousands of batting sessions and casual
games of catch in the backyard and practice field. But somehow we tend to
forget this with writing and composition. The main experience kids have with it
is through a string of high-pressure performances: term papers for class.
Email is different. It is something you write every day. You fire
off answers in a flash. You keep them short. You write and write and write, and
you get your point across. Mostly you just do it and do it, again and again,
and you get better and better at it. Writing becomes part of life, not a
phony-baloney exercise you affect to please an authority figure.
And yes, email overcomes the ‘something to say’ problem
too. The purpose is to make a point of some sort, even if it is ‘my little
brother is driving me crazy!’ That is far more substantive than ‘imagination
is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy.’
Finally, email provides an audience. Knowing who is going to read
what you are writing makes all the difference. A major cause of ‘writer’s
block’ is fear of what people you don’t know will think of what you say.
Kids need to know for whom they are writing in order to affect the
correct voice. The audience for email is listed right up top in the
‘to:’ bar.
The following happens all the time when people submit pieces to
Mises.org. Someone will send an incoherent piece, and I’ll write back:
‘What are you trying to say?’ They will write back with a crystal
clear response, which forms the basis of a new draft. The writer had an
audience in mind and it made all the difference.
Try this at home. Ask you child to write a report on
some topic. Insist that it be 5 pages. If the kid is typical, he will labor for
days and turn in pap. Give that same kid a gmail account and ask him to drop
you an email about what he knows about lizards, and you might find 5 pages
arriving in less than an hour.
This is a wonderful and underappreciated medium! It should
be exploited by all parents and educators.
Far from killing literacy, email is producing the first
fully literate society in many eons, perhaps ever. Never before has it been so
necessary that every person in the whole of the population be capable of
writing well. For the first time in history, people are practicing the craft on
a daily basis, even from the youngest ages. The sooner they begin, the better.
One last word on this topic. Do not let kids type using an
incorrect method. Download
for $20 and your kid will be typing well in a matter of weeks — without
having to endure the horrors of typing class, which is another subject
entirely.
{ 15 comments }
Jeff,
I don’t want to rain on the email/blog parade, but this literate generation is evidenced how? The numbers of blogs, numbers of websites, volumes of email?
Surely literacy implies more substance than just communication skills. If not, the greatest thinkers in our time might be culled from television and print media types.
That a murderous, Connecticut-Yankee knave, draped in the Texas (and Mexican) flag, could be elected and then re-elected by an ‘increasingly literate generation’ (and the alternatives be so equally poor) doesn’t inspire a whole lot of literary confidence.
We is litterit cuz we sez so.
IMHO, the real educational value of the Internet is that it bypasses the state controlled media. For the first time ever, kids have a chance to hear a side of the story from somewhere other than CBS. For the first time ever, many of these kids can actually face compelling arguments that statisim is trash, ones not filtered by schoolbooks, news media, nor drowned out by mass publicity.
Statist arguments posted on blogs just can’t hold up under thousands of readers critiquing the facts. I’ve noticed that on sites like Mises, they welcome statist arguemnts as a fun opportunity to shoot-em-down. But most statist sites I’ve seen have tightly controlled membership, forum groups, censorship, and hostile attitude toward dissenting opinion. They simply can’t compete and grow in an internet environment.
My comments were not directed against the internet and the wonderful possibilities of all sorts of enlightenment. Yes, there are residual benefits of communication skills, exposure to many different sorts of material, etc.
I’m simply pointing out that if there is any change of thinking amongst internet users, it seems to be following an infinitely slower pace than Moore’s law. Have a look at local politicians gearing up for the fall elections. Are there any signs of growing literacy in how they construct their spin for a supposedly growing literate base? Conversely, does increasing voter apathy suggest growing literacy due to the net? I personally would like to think so, but I don’t think the patterns of internet traffic would bear this out.
Yes, Mises.org and other fine sites might just be click away, but the library has just been a couple of turns or steps away for a century and half. Intellectual propensities are heavily entrenched. It takes more than just convenience to overcome them.
“Yes, Mises.org and other fine sites might just be click away, but the library has just been a couple of turns or steps away for a century and half. Intellectual propensities are heavily entrenched. It takes more than just convenience to overcome them.”
The young people in question have certainly not been around for a century and a half reinforcing their habits. Convenience and fun are all that it takes, which is why kids are so keen to use computers in the first place even when their parents are not.
I do not believe that e-mail, forums, or instant messengers make people proficient writers. Repetition alone does not produce excellence. Rather, repetition combined with feedback are what is required. A person who stands in their backyard swinging a baseball bat like an old woman trying to fend off a swarm of bees with a broom handle isn’t going to develop the same sort of batting proficiency that a professional baseball player player would develop.
Regarding e-mail and instant messengers, feeback is often scarce or completely nonexistant. Thus, communication tends to degenerate into whatever form is easiest for the speaker regardless of the clarity of their communication. The internet is full of people who can type sixty words a minute but don’t know what an apostrophe is for and never capitalize anything except for emphasis.
Don’t even get me started on l33tsp34k. i \/\/i11 pwn j00, n00b!!!1! CS FTW!!!! olololol
Sure. I am myself part of this generation, and there is no doubt what wonderful tools have arisen the last decade. The problem, at least for people living in social-democratic countries like me, is that the use of technology in school is more static than flexible, thus making many of my fellow students apathetic while doing simple tasks with overall adequate software (meaning, we could perform more advanced math — but we don’t). I know some “private” schools who do take advantage of the advances made, though. I’m thinking about switching to one of them to secure a stable grade and use of my intellectuall resources, as next year is my junior-high graduation year.
I actually had more benefit from my TV until Wikipedia got mainstream due to Discovery and BBC. The positive effect is of course, now that we have Wikipedia, that I now tend to abstain from watching TV most of the time and instead read either Wikipedia or (e-)books. I even gave my TV away, because I felt it was destructive to my mind. So, you can say that the Internet drove me into literacy and reading books.
Funny enough, this year’s cable pack is quite good in contrast to last year. We now have National Geographic, Showtime (excellent channel broadcasting old-ish movies), The Travel Channel, and BBC Prime; that is, among my favorite channels. So, this year I have a bigger incentive to watch more TV, but actually watch less.
Ryan: |<33|< <||_|137. _|00 |)0|\|7 |<|\|0\/\/ 7|900 |3375|”33|<
As for TV, nothing beats Trailer Park Boys. Such icons of literacy…
Without derogating from Jeffrey’s central point which has much substance, there is a downside ( but maybe thats just here in SA) …I, and some other parents, have noticed that kids doing research on the internet for school projects etc have a woefully uncritical approach to what they find: It seems to work like this:
1 project subject matter assigned by teacher. 2. Google on a few key words
3. browse the first few results looking for plausible gumph related to the topic , and stop when you have enough volume to assemble/copy/paste/paraphrase into something bulky that can be handed to the teacher.
I think it will take time for the skill of critically sifting mountains of rubbish to find relevance to develop.
It was not too long ago that the biggest problem for students was finding any or enough of the available information on any given subject from traditional ( library-based, mostly) sources. Now, the problem is not finding the information, but filtering huge amounts of it with a critical eye – and thats a new problem only faced by the current generation for the first time.
Excellent post, Jeff.
David, poor research skills are more likely to be due to lack of interest in the subject coupled with a lack of “peer review” (something you are less likely to have if you post your paper as a blog instead of simply handing it in to a teacher).
My main concern is that the “peer review” process is a double edged sword. While a child’s peers would be quick to point out the deficits in substance in a poorly researched post on their favorite subject, they are less likely to catch errors of form. In other words, blogging is just fine as long as it is coupled with some adult supervision and guidance. Expecting children to guide eachother to literacy is as bad as expecting them to teach each other manners. It’s simply another case of the blind leading the blind.
My mother, who is no slouch at anything she has ever put her mind to doing, has stated that my typing is faster, and more accurate, than anyone else she has ever seen.
This is directly a result of having been doing this “computer” thing since 1978. But then, so is my nearsightedness.
“But most statist sites I’ve seen have tightly controlled membership, forum groups, censorship, and hostile attitude toward dissenting opinion. They simply can’t compete and grow in an internet environment.”
Exactly. The most statist among us, those academics who really believe in collectivism, are the most militant of minorities. But they are just minorities.
The diehard hardliners (today they are mostly Bush-followers), don’t take much critical thinking into the collectivism/centralism that their intellectuals spout and just blindly follow it out of religious partisanship, which gives the true believers the power they need.
The iron-fisted censorship of these information outlets is a perfect example of the closed world the statists have built around them: these sites have their own planned humor, rage, sarcasm, punchlines and morals all pre-packaged and blandly repeated for the passive audience. Just like talk radio. It sort of spins off faster and faster until the whole thing collapses. In fact, this is starting to recall Fahrenheit 451 right now.
The problem is their blackout to any critical thinking and dissent may be bringing us down with them. I don’t see the centrifuge of madness breaking any time soon, as the Soviets did. We may have reached the Oceania level where the statist outlets manage to perpetuate themselves and their stale, conformist nonsense becomes Newspeak (official this time).
Lets just hope the apathetic really are beginning to see other sides of the argument instead of the asylums like Freepland and Socialdemica. Or they just are dropping out. The more the merrier, for me!
Partisanship, especially in media, gives leeway for the governing Leader to do mostly anything he wants, as it will be hysterically (you cannot watch Fox news and deny this) rationalized instantly. We here laugh at it; many people get misty eyed because of it.
Leeway to do anything Leader wants + partisan fervor to crush opposition + hysteric group behavior= collectivism. Regardless of how much liberty a Red will write about on his blog, he supports the State.
The hardliners feel that their work and shouting to get their boys in power is the very heart of freedom. To them, (I honestly believe this) it is the truest of expressions of worldly liberty they think they will ever be gifted.
As their favored boss they freely chose inhabits a big State, they will make sure their Superhero does loads of cool stuff in that State. All actions within a State imply the State will grow to ‘perform’ it.
We see then almost a fetish made out of action on most statist blogs. They will write about the sanctity of the majority at this moment that chose that action. And of course, ~*Democracy*~.
To them the principles (such as Fox) labored to falslely promote give way to Strong Belly Warming Fuzzy Feeling-type Action. They just want to see stuff done, whatever it is, and say their boss did it.
That’s the problem. While blogs like this ask about what people can do to become more literate, the statist blogs ask what people MUST do to make sure their bosses become more skilled in sophistry.
It doesn’t appear that the rise of the Internet has spawned much improvement in the general level of literariness. It does cultivate, though, a good deal of confidence by the average person in having something worthwhile to say. (And confident writers write more. And those who write more tend to get better over time. Hopefully.)
My daughter, 8, belongs to one of those exchanges — in this case, for girls only. It motivates her to write a great deal — but also reinforces lazy and uninformed habits of spelling and punctuation. Without supervision by an involved adult, all standards beyond being understood fall by the waist.
Computers in general have helped me become a much better writer. Without word processing capability I’m pretty much lost — I revise relentlessly, and that’s the only way I’ve ever found to do it with the level of efficiency that inspires me much to keep going. Email makes communications fast, cheap, and convenient.
Many years after leaving a line of work where I was called on to do much writing, I was “discovered” by an editor for a well-known book trade journal because of my book reviews on Amazon. Within a week I was being paid for capsule reviews.
Think of all the obstacles potential writers, editors, publishers, and booksellers had to face in the pre-computer era. No wonder the few who managed to succeed back then were consequently able to function as gatekeepers of knowledge and acceptable ideas.
the main point in writing or any other medium of communication is to get yourself understood and thats it.
grammar is nothing more than a medium to an end.
As a native spanish speaker I have suffered the consecuences of a language centraly ruled by a bunch of academics (the spanish royal academy of language) that like many central planners believes that a “correct language” is something that can be designed a structured in a laboratory (sounds familiar?)
the results are just a Mark Twain described them:
“….was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of ‘fine language’; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out….”
This, pretty much describe the writing approach of most intelctualas around here.
olmedo
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