What an odd thing for a principal to say.
“Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed,” said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools. Reuters
It reminds me of that annoying advertisement for Leap Pad. The scary looking guy in the frog suit is hyping how the tag reading system will develop a lifelong love of reading while comparing the system to a “boring” book. “Why would you want to read this?” He asks.
Indeed. Why bother with books? The principal of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Boston, Massachusetts says as much. At least they have a library. Stocked with novels.
And as the opening of the article states:
From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America’s classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves. Ibid.
I can’t help but wonder something else. What about socialization? Why do we worry about the social development of kids educated at home by their parents, but not about that of kids educated in front of a monitor? Education is a fundamentally human enterprise and as such, human contact…real, not virtual…is central.
What kind of a future are we preparing our youth for as we replace teachers with videos, books with blogs, community with chat rooms?
Don’t get me wrong. There is also huge potential in virtual education, allowing each student to work at his or her own pace, tailoring a unique educational program to each child and providing instant feedback. It offers wonderful opportunities for homeschool families who feel unqualified to teach a specific subject area. But somehow a room of thirty students each doing their own thing on a laptop seems sterile, allowing us to drift even more into a nation of individuals who scarcely recognize their neighbors and for whom community is almost a foreign concept unless it is organized through Facebook.
And that brings me to a quote I’ve been pondering for awhile. Unfortunately, the odd nature of Internet quote sites allows for quotes to be continually spread without source attribution, and the quote itself seems frightfully like something somebody made up and passed around. But whether Plato or some guy at a computer first penned the words, I think the underlying sentiment is valid and important to consider as we move ever more into this digital age.
Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms - they will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between knowledge and light. Plato 428 BC - 348BC (first read at The Difference Between Light and Knowledge)
Do children raised in such a media saturated environment truly grasp the difference between light and knowledge? Between skills and understanding? Between chat rooms and conversations? Between avatars and people? Between virtual reality and actual reality? Or have the lines become too blurred to draw a clear distinction?
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
If the principal was talking about not needing textbooks, I’d agree. And a library stocked with real books is a good thing, but only novels? No biographies or reference materials? That’s not a library!
Do children raised in such a media saturated environment truly grasp the difference between light and knowledge? Between skills and understanding? Between chat rooms and conversations? Between avatars and people? Between virtual reality and actual reality? Or have the lines become too blurred to draw a clear distinction?
I think this has always been a problem- that technological discovery and advancement is always good, that mastery is not necessary if mimicry will do, and when have there not been various methods of escaping responsibility and reality?
Maybe we can see it more clearly because the evidence sits in nearly every living room and on every desk.
I think the school in the article is an indication of what is to come, but as described I believe it to be too sterile. We can’t fall off that cliff either- kids need to experience life and people and develop a work ethic and breathe unfiltered air.
I don’t think I agree even if the quote refers specifically to text books. The problem with text books isn’t so much being “obsolete.” I have text books from college that are every bit as relevant today as they were while I was in college. The problem is that the political nature of the text book adoption process filters out the real meat of the subject and leaves you with something rather dry.
A good text book should provide a sort of general framework for a class and give structure to the story of the subject. Outside projects, using the library and of course the internet, should be filling in the gaps. I don’t see how students can possibly be reading the great classics, quality nonfiction and scientific research on the internet. Your eyes would cross and your brain would numb trying to read all that on the computer. The Internet is best at providing quick facts, summaries and some discussion to other works. The Great Gatsby is not something I would look forward to reading online.
Internet research also requires an entirely different kind of research skills, something I think is best honed through learning traditional research best so that you learn what good research looks like. Any and everybody can put their so-called research up on the Internet. Filtering through the garbage is the most difficult part of Internet research.
But I agree (obviously) that an education with a computer as the centerpiece rather than playing an important supporting role seems sterile. And like it is perhaps teaching our students something other than what we want to be teaching them.
Interpersonal interaction is important, and while there are certainly dangers to trusting education to technology, there are some good things that come from utilizing the difference between avatars and people.
My wife is now teaching a scripting course online along side a professor with a doctorate. As she was saying just last night: The virtual world relies on skills instead of titles. And so, since I can teach about scripting, I have the opportunity to work with someone I would never be able to work with in real life.
So, as with all things in life: We need balance. …and books. Of course, this inadvertently raises questions about the Kindle and the next generation of paperless books….
~Luke
Sam Elworthy (in a book review of Books in the Digital Age: The Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States by John B. Thompson) argued that, even with all the digital information out there, “in disciplines from math to astrophysics to ecology, the book still plays a key role. To lay out a sustained argument for a new way of understanding….[and to] fully develop a big idea and to convey it to an audience beyond a narrow circle of specialists, books and publishers still play a key role.”
There is indeed a huge shift underway in how our society handles information, and while I don’t think it will kill the book as bound paper object, it does put books (and education, learning, and research) in a new context. That new context is far from solitary, though. I suspect that our suspicions on that count stem from our experience with TV screens, which are not 2-way communications tools, and that those suspicions are less appropriate for computers, which can support conversations. When our kids crowd around a laptop teaching each other how to build and do things on Lego.com or Club Penguin, or dig up a Nova show to answer a question, it tends to generate a lot of “real world” conversation. The interactions of the people around the media are what drives these things; the glowing screen is never the only thing in the room.
(Incidentally, I’m reading some fascinating ideas about the nature of this shift–in a new book by Clay Shirky.)
I am a technology fan but I must agree with your comment on the Leap Pad commercial. My mouth was gaping as I listened to that goofy frog tell my kids that Spongebob twaddle is more exciting than reading real books. How can a talking book compare to your imagination??
I buy plenty of real literature you hold in your hand. I don’t think it would be quite the same curling up on the sofa with a Kindle. Long live paper books!!!
…and another thing. These are the same folks who are failing our school children at every turn. Illiteracy is up, test scores are down, and they think “something shiny” will make it all better? Who reads real books to their kids, to any kids, anymore? This is sad. I don’t think technology is the real issue here, it goes much deeper.
And who ever heard of a library full of fiction? That’s a collection, not a library. Another strange idea.
I agree that computers are different than the tv screen. But they are different than real human interaction as well. And as virtual media becomes more dominant, it will have an effect on relationships as well.
Not all of it is bad…the specific example used in the article actually shows some of the strengths of increased use of technology in the classroom. Each child is being challenged on their level and is engaged. Can’t really complain about that. But that is also different from what you describe, with children working together on the computer discovering something for use in the “real world.”
There is an interesting article over at the Stanford Story Bank which is really more what I was thinking of as I wrote this.
We are in a media savvy culture, and I think it is having its affect. The Thinking Mother described a few situations she had noticed on an earlier entry that I see a lot:
I’d like to add also that I am seeing teens and young 20’s people acting very differently even when in the presence of each other in real life. While at a restaurant last week I saw, while waiting for a table, two males and one female (friends). One male was having a cell phone conversation. The other male was text messaging someone the entire time. THe female was playing a video game on her cell phone. None of them were socializing with EACH OTHER which was the reason they were out to dinner together….
Increasingly, we are interacting through media rather than in person. In some ways, that’s great. Before the Internet, we were sort of dependent on the news as it was reported. Now through the Internet and blogs you can sometimes find people who were there or have been involved with the news being made. You find people who publish the entire interview they had with the journalist who took their words out of context. There is a whole other side to the story that rarely if ever came out before.
Collaboration is easier and in some ways possible where it wasn’t before. People with minority viewpoints are no longer completely isolated.
But then there are side effects. Like those mentioned in the Stanford article. Like the lack of real connections that The Thnking Mother notes. And like the trend someone wrote about recently. I wish I could remember the source, but the basic thesis was that the ability of people to find and build their own communities online centered on specific ideas or worldviews has made us less able to interact with each other, less able to live together, and is increasing the tendency of people to live “unto themselves” like tiny islands.
I’m certainly not one to trash all online media. That would be a tad hypocritical. But I do questions where all this is leading if we don’t bring some balance to it.
And I agree with Anna Marie that the real issue, particularly with the book thing, is not so much the technology itself. The misuse is more symptomatic. Something deeper is going on.
My high school alma mater is considered to be academically one of the best government-run schools in Massachusetts. It always scores in the top 10 when it comes to the state standardized tests and many years it’s been #1. >90% of the students go on to college and probably the top third of each class attends highly selective schools. Yet maybe 15 years ago it wound up being placed on probation by its accrediting agency.
The reason? The school librarian had made the logical decision that rather than purchasing 1 set of paper encyclopedias she would instead purchase multiple CD-ROM versions. That way students would be less likely to have to wait to use the encyclopedia.
I can’t recall whether the school was able to convince the accreditation folks to grant a waiver on the encyclopedia issue or whether the library had to purchase a paper set. I just remember thinking it was the dumbest reason I’d ever heard for denying a school full accreditation…
I’m down on textbooks, too. There is too much politics involved in their development, and they tend to have many mistakes. So do living documents; but the difference is that mistakes are expected and watched for in living documents and books, but not in textbooks so much.
That quote was Plato? For some reason I was going to guess E.B.White!
One of the things that attracted me to the Classical Education was the use of real books (or Great Books, if you will) rather than text books. The source is then authentic, as opposed to a textbook which is seen through the lens of secondary authors.
Also, it’s probably evident that I have a computer and enjoy using it…,
however, there’s nothing better than a good book.
**Something deeper is going on.**
Yes, scholarship is no longer held in high accord… and too often is not even seen as necessary.
Online, the “scholarship” happens after publishing, when we evaluate, filter, recommend, and share the stuff that gets published. This breaks the pattern we are used to, where the publisher filters submissions and only publishes those with a minimum level of quality. Suddenly, in a digital world, we get to see how the inellectual sausage is made…
To me, the problem is that the value of books is not understood. Many educators today do not see the real value in education. It’s all about getting to the next step and the final step is a job. I actually had a vice-principal ask me, “Why would you go to school for something if you weren’t planning to get a job in that field?” He just could not understand the idea of loving learning.
This is the same thing. It’s all about getting to the end. There is no realization that how you get there makes ALL the difference in the world with the results.
We are in a media savvy culture, and I think it is having its affect. The Thinking Mother described a few situations she had noticed on an earlier entry that I see a lot:
I’d like to add also that I am seeing teens and young 20’s people acting very differently even when in the presence of each other in real life. While at a restaurant last week I saw, while waiting for a table, two males and one female (friends). One male was having a cell phone conversation. The other male was text messaging someone the entire time. THe female was playing a video game on her cell phone. None of them were socializing with EACH OTHER which was the reason they were out to dinner together….
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I’m afraid I’ve missed the point here. If these three people had been reading books would that have been better? I have never thought of reading a book as a socializing activity. It seems like a private affair to me. What have I missed here?
Nance
Power of Story transcends technology and it’s never been a zero-sum game. Do we bemoan the printing press because the gospel became a book folks could read at home instead of sitting in church together hearing a sermon and reading the stained-glass windows?
Hmmm - and to Nance’s point, isn’t technology changing even that? Book-reading as a solitary affair, I mean. Fan fiction sites, for example. Oprah’s book club on tv, connecting women home alone in one reading experience. Young Son spent hours online last night in The Ranger’s Apprentice forums, because he and I had been discussing the pronunciation of the character name “Alyss.” He insisted it was a-LYSS and I said obviously it was Alice. Turns out he found that small point addressed specifically by someone (it’s pronounced my way on the US audiobooks, his way on the author’s native Australian audiobooks, which we decided should prevail.)
There was nothing like the Harry Potter bookstore parties and online forums when I was a bookish kid. None of my friends were reading what I was reading either, nor my parents. At school they were always shooing me outside to the playground instead of letting me read alone in the library, and at home I couldn’t stay inside and read either. Go be social, play with the other kids! My mother forbid me to read at the table (like the kids texting in the restaurant, she disapproved of it as anti-social.)
What was wrong with letting me read my books??
When I finally was given one book my mother had read and loved, and had two neighborhood friends reading it the same summer, it was pure joy! (Gone With the Wind.) But of course I had to wait years for the movie to be re-released to theatres and it was SUCH a big deal that it was my whole Christmas present that year — the family drove to the Big City for the weekend with premiere tickets, as we did years later for the King Tut museum tour.
So for me, book-loving was something society thought was self-indulgent and excessive for kids. It had almost no social component then, and only rarely came a film adaptation of a book I’d read and loved, to multiply my power of story pleasure. I remember vividly when the Mary Poppins musical came to movie theatres, and I was the only kid I knew who’d long before discovered and read all the PL Travers books the library had.
Now I cheerfully envy my kids the astonishingly media-integrated ways they experience books and power of story.
Nance, I think you missed the point. Her comment wasn’t about books or reading, but about how socialized kids are into a media savvy culture and how that may be affecting interpersonal relationships. I don’t think our culture was ever such that people sat down at restaurants together, reading separate books, or moms walking around town reading a book while ignoring her children who had books of their own as they crossed streets without looking.
The point is that some of these kids, at least, seem so focused on their virtual contacts and interacting through media that they are ignoring real people around them.
Maybe it is fair, maybe it isn’t, but studies have suggested people spending a great deal of time interacting online suffer depression at higher rates. I suspect that is because depressed people are seeking refuge in the Internet, but it could also be (or be exacerbated by the fact) that virtual contact is not an adequate substitute for real human contact.
Why research and scientific inquiry are important to us both to society and individuals, btw — so we can examine questions like Dana’s while controlling for confounding variables and our own biases, to improve the chances our knowledge IS light.
Dana: The point is that some of these kids, at least, seem so focused on their virtual contacts and interacting through media that they are ignoring real people around them.
**
Thanks for the clarification.
Along the lines of the depression studies you mention, I wonder how much of this is personality and/or the chicken/egg problem you note.
JJ was too “bookish” and should go outside and play. My DD reads too much. OTOH, DS spends too much time on the video games. Goodness knows what we could find to criticize about JJ’s son — he seems to be a multimedia addict.
On a possibly related side note, I heard a news story about the lack of popularity of e-books. Again, nobody was sure if it was the lack of fantastic readers (although a new one was being touted — but why did the “reporter” need to test whether it would survive being splashed at the pool? wouldn’t you avoid that with a book too? so many questions as I am driving along. . . ) or the choice of e-books or the newness of it. . .
It all makes me want to holler: “Dang kids, get off my lawn!”
Nance
E-books leave me cold too but OTOH, despite snarling and saying I loved the smell and rastle of real newsprint, I quickly learned to like having the world’s newspapers at my fingertips and a couple of years ago, we cancelled our home delivery of the local daily. I didn’t miss it at all.
On the other-other hand though, we recently started the New York Times daily delivery and it’s been a real adjustment for me trying to get back into the real thing!
The biggest problem with e-books in my humble opinion is that they are generally written by people who where not able to go the traditional route and lack the funds to self-publish. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but most of the e-books I have read have been poorly written and poorly researched.
There are notable exceptions, but they are typically short. Regardless of how well written they are, I still struggle with reading more than 2000 words online.
I do like the ability to get documents not widely available. Imagine the boon to historical researchers to have old letters, etc. transcribed and published online. You wouldn’t have to drive to the other side of the country to try to decipher the microfiches in some private collection. And any of us could go look at the original words and compare their conclusions.
There is also a tremendous opportunity for researchers to connect across the globe and share information and thoughts.
I’m not saying it is all bad. After all, I use this media for a lot of the same kinds of things. I am just saying that there can be other, unintended consequences. And we need to think about those as well.
Dana, that’s something I hadn’t even thought about, a loss of creative quality. I was thinking of e-books like audiobooks, you know, the same good book by the same good author that you’d read bound, except n a different format. Even given the exact same words, I would prefer to experience the book-book to either its audio or electronic versions (but I think that’s just personal preference I couldn’t justify as generally superior or healthier for society or whatever.)
I agree though, that it’s worth thinking about!
Dana said:”I don’t think our culture was ever such that people sat down at restaurants together, reading separate books, or moms walking around town reading a book while ignoring her children who had books of their own as they crossed streets without looking.”
W-e-e-e-l-l, when I was in the fourth grade we weren’t allowed to sit down during recess. I remember a teacher commenting on my ability to read and walk without running into anything. (Gifted AND Talented!) I read nearly the entire Little House series while pacing. Perhaps that’s why I homeschool. I was never properly socialized on the playground.
See, I always knew there was something counter-cultural about you.
Lisa had an interesting post about this topic. One of the articles she discussed is Is Google Making Us Stupid? The author wonders whether the internet changes the very way we think.
Thanks, Renae! I think I remember the headline, but I haven’t read it yet. It is like training for ADHD.
Btw, Dana, I agree about the principal in your original post. No excuse! He probably couldn’t follow this conversation . . .
Whoops. Or she.