Do
me a favor; put away your cell phone, turn off the music and pay
attention. If you are reading this essay to learn something, you must
actively engage with it; otherwise you may as well go back to checking
your Facebook news feed. Some academics observe the popularity of sites
like Facebook and Twitter and dismiss any possibility of using the
Internet as a tool for education. One of these pundits, a former Harvard
professor named Sven Birkerts, single-handedly catalyzed the polemic
with his writings, and it remains to be seen whether or not he was
right.
One
moment in his essay “Into the Electronic Millennium” reflects on his
encounter years ago with a professor who, because he managed a rare and
used book shop, wanted to sell him his entire book collection. When
asked to explain his divestiture, the man replied that he saw that
computers were the future, and that his books represented a lot of pain
for him. For Birkerts, a bibliophile by nature, this memory was rather
unsettling.
It
is a kind of marker in my mental life, for that afternoon I got my
first serious inkling that all was not well in the world of print and
letters. All sorts of corroborations followed. Our professor was by no
means an isolated case. Over a period of several years we met with quite
a few others like him. New men and new women who had glimpsed the
future and had decided to get while the getting was good. The selling
off of books was sometimes done for financial reasons, but the other
thing was usually there as well: the need to burn bridges. It was as if
heading to the future also required the destruction of tokens from the
past. (470)
The
author fears that the selling off of books destroys pieces of the past.
To him, people who sold their libraries and bought computers were
completely abandoning the world of print. Considering the massive
bookshelves in my home that have sat untouched for some time, though I
come from a family of readers, I am inclined to agree. Online reading is
seductively convenient compared to the process of finding and buying
books.
This
seduction raises an important question: given the convenience and
ubiquity of the Internet, how harmful could it be? As a much younger
form of communication than print, we will
only
know whether or not it caused a break with the past in posterity.
Birkerts makes a number of predictions in his essay based on inherent
problems with digital media that are not found in print.
Print,
which is bound to logic by the imperatives of syntax, requires the
active engagement of the reader. Materials are layered; they lend
themselves to rereading and to sustained inquiry. The pace of reading is
variable, with progress determined by attentiveness and comprehension.
The electronic order is in most ways the opposite because information
travels along a network. It can be passive, as with television watching,
or interactive, as with computers. With visual media, impression and
image take precedence over logic and concept. As such, the viewer
absorbs a steady wash of packaged messages. (472)
The
nature of Print as a thought-intensive medium makes it subject to
strict rules of logic and syntax, and any published work must be
supported by historical context. The Internet is not subject to this,
which encourages more and more people to use anecdotes such as ‘I once
read somewhere that...’ in their discourse. Moreover, content on the
Internet requires neither sustained reading nor processing, and is often
published with no quality control. Much of this content is thus
rendered unusable for serious purposes.
Even
so, print carries its own set of drawbacks; research is a painstaking
process that becomes even more arduous by sifting through books.
Moreover, the depth of a book depends almost entirely on the reader’s
background. Unless he has previous knowledge of Salic Law or the
foundations of European Monarchy, he would little benefit from reading
the unabridged edition of Don Quixote. Perhaps most distressing is that
written language is ambiguous, and like visual media can become
propaganda in the wrong hands. I find that the two mediums have
complementary roles; Google and Wikipedia are efficient tools for
gathering data, while books donate structure and points of debate to
one’s research. Web hyperlinks enable a deeper understanding of a
subject, and books keep one’s thought processes coherent. The comments
sections on websites provide exposure to multiple points of view, but
analytical papers ensure that an investigation stays focused. The
problem, as seen in the quote above, is persuading people that the two
can coexist.
How can they coexist when students use the Internet for everything but school?
Observing this, Birkerts argues that the Internet has worsened the
decline of America’s education systems, and warns us of the “possibility
that the young truly “know no other way,” that they are not made of the
same stuff that their elders are.” (473) He fears that it has destroyed
the work ethic of today’s youth, and that technology may be the only
“way” they know how to learn. The other “ways” are the classroom
paradigms of the lecture, the seminar, and the Western Canon. I agree
with the letter of this warning; physical textbooks hold little interest
with students who grew up with technology, especially for boys, since
they are both naturally hyperactive and mainly visual learners. But if
the lingua franca
of today’s youth is technology, then why not teach them with it? I
remember my 11th-grade Anatomy classes as being among the most
informative and enjoyable parts of high school, because our teacher used
animations to illustrate the lessons. This makes me believe that other
classes would meet success with illumination.
One
of the reasons that public school students struggle is because almost
none of their classes emphasize visual learning. Worse, much of the work
they do is so repetitive that it effectively discourages learning. The
effects of both problems are so pervasive that they can even be seen in
the “best” students; while researching for a public speaking class last
year, I found a graduation speech by Erica Goldson, the valedictorian of
Coxsackie-Athens high school, that described how the work that went
into her success ultimately stunted her education.
While
others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in
class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would
come to class without their homework done because they were reading
about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others
were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit,
even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this
position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave
educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I
have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests
because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every
subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. (4)
Erica’s
exceptional grades came at the cost of her ability to pursue
extracurricular activities. By going through school ‘by the book’, she
was unable to explore possible future areas of study. She is now
travelling around America, hoping to construct an identity for herself.
Though I often imagine it would be fun to be a perfect student, Ms.
Goldson’s story underscores the need for one to be interested in their
work in order to learn from it.
Because
few of today’s students are interested in the classics, some have
suggested that it is time to revise the Western Canon. Such a change
would cause more harm than good, because it would hinder students from
learning the foundations of western civilization. Fellow classicist and
NYU student Andrew Montalenti takes a different approach to the problem,
arguing that while people can and should still learn from the classics,
they must be taught in a different manner.
I
thus emphasize what should already be evident: the Canon does not make
the artwork within it great; it is the artwork that makes the Canon
great. By remembering this, our interpretation of these works can be
richer and much more complicated than a mere deductive confirmation of
expert opinion. (2)
Students
must be allowed to draw their own conclusions from reading these works.
This would give them the ability to be as interested in the Canon as
they are in reality shows. A number of recent movies (“Romeo and
Juliet”, “300” and “Gladiator”), shows on HBO (“John Adams” and “The
Tudors”) and video-games (the “Assassin’s Creed” series) accomplish this
by giving audiences a pleasurable, accidental introduction to the
Canon. Teachers could use these to convey lessons in the lingua franca while respecting the intellectual sovereignty of their students.
Assuming visual media to be of no use for teaching, Birkerts predicted
three major events that may come true should the status quo be kept.
With no impetus for people to develop their communication skills, the
majority of people will increasingly use “plainspeak”; a dumbed-down
language similar to “newspeak” from George Orwell’s 1984
(474). If Internet content remains shallow, there will be a collective
forgetting of historical perspectives (475). Worse, without exposure to
diverse perspectives, a social collectivization is highly probable;
people will be polarized along national, ethnic and religious lines, and
the concept of individuality will cease to exist (475). If these
predictions came true, it would spell the end of free will for everyone
but the political and economic elite. For this reason, before attempting
to counteract them, we must first make sure that they haven’t already
happened.
If
Birkerts’ assertions were correct, I would have no business using
computers to do schoolwork. If, however, I found an investigation that
dispelled his worries, my only concern would be to use technology
responsibly. I found such an investigation by the BBC regarding “the
social consequences of the Internet” (16). As the author Michael Lewis
made headway into the project, he found that the network actually encouraged the exercise of free will.
What
I was after was more like the Internet consequences of society. People
take on the new tools they are ready for, and only make use of what they
need, how they need it. If they were using the Internet to experiment
with their identities, it was probably because they found their old
identities were inadequate. If the Internet was giving the world a shove
in a certain direction, it was probably because the world already felt
inclined to move in that direction. When I realized this I stopped
worrying over the social consequences of the Internet and began simply
to watch what was actually happening on the Internet. Inadvertently, it
was telling us what we wanted to become. (16)
People
embraced the technology, not out of coercion or hypnosis, but because
they wanted to. This allowed for experimentation with their identities,
as well as the creation of entirely new ones; many youths used it to
explore interests in music, finance and law, which destabilized
institutional monopolies of these industries. This, I believe, was the
cause of peoples’ worries; thousands of jobs were at risk for every
company to go bankrupt.
This
concern over job security also helps explain Birkerts’ fears; a growing
disinterest in literature threatens his ability to teach, and it is
understandable that he would believe the Internet is to blame. It is
also possible to address these fears while meeting the needs of students
like Erica Goldson, Andrew Montalenti, and myself. Our desire to learn
is still present, but we also want to develop perspectives that are not
derived solely from our teachers. We should be able to share our
knowledge with our peers and remove the intellectual inequalities that
come from a one-way, teacher-to-student learning paradigm. This could be
rendered by a website that allowed students to discuss and collaborate
on their assignments, thus alleviating the burden on teachers to make
sure no one is left behind. By distributing our knowledge amongst
ourselves, more class time could be spent on learning new things rather
than reviewing old lessons, enabling us to more fully realize our
academic potential. I intend to create such a website, and hopefully
find a solution that would please even the likes of Sven Birkerts.
Rather than trying to prove him wrong, I want to reassure him, and
myself, that our past will not be forgotten in the electronic
revolution.
Works Cited:
Birkerts, Sven. “Into the Electronic Millennium.” Occasions for Writing. Ed. Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy II. Boston: Thomas Wadsworth, 2007. 469-76.
Montalenti, Andrew. “Questioning the Canon.” Mercer Street. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II. New York: NYU College of Arts and Science. 2003. 1-7.
Goldson, Erica. (2010, June). Here I stand. Valedictorian speech presented at Coxsackie-Athens High School. Coxsackie-Athens, New York.
Lewis, Michael. “Next. The future just happened.” New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 2001. 16-216.
