So I saw this report the other day and found it interesting in several ways. Here is one of the main headlines from the report- "Teens write a lot, but they do not think of
their emails, instant and text messages as
writing. This disconnect matters because
teens believe good writing is an essential
skill for success and that more writing
instruction at school would help them."
Why do teens feel this disconnect? Does the formal education system teach this idea? Or is a part of a larger societal philosophy on what constitutes "good" writing? I think blaming the schools really only masks the idea that many older professional writers, and parts of the older generation in general, feel about what makes writing. One of the first quotes in this report is from the Librarian of Congress who rants about electronic communication and feels that it could be destroying the "basic unit of human thought – the sentence." Anyone else feel like this may be a trifle overboard? It also seems to echo what people said about radio, TV, etc... Things have changed, maybe not for the better but certainly not this terrible that it could change the entire fabric of human thought itself.
The encouraging news from this report is the number of teens that say they write, 93%, which I think it more important that what they are writing.
Instead of attaching negativity to what they are writing, which I think that quote does, teachers and librarians should be encouraging any sort of communication that allows teens to put down their thoughts, whether a text or email. It is not our place to judge what they are writing and to impose our values on what they are doing. While the traditionalist in me agrees that the best way to get better writers is for more formal education, but to discourage other types of writing seems to be going the wrong way. Limiting what is "good" writing is much the same way as limiting what are "quality" books. While we are training to make these judgments, that does not mean we can take that training and use it to force our value sets onto a new generation that we might simply not understand.
Anyways, there is alot more interesting stuff in the report and this blog post does a much better job than me of discussing it.
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1 comment:
Tony, the librarian who said e-communication is "destroying the basic unit of human thought" is definitely going overboard. Your post reminded me of the NPR report that Daphnee wrote about (Proust, the Squid, Reading, and Computers). The librarian does indeed follow a very long line of people thinking a new technology will eliminate something else. In the NPR "On Point" broadcast, they mentioned how Socrates was against written word because it would kill off oral communication, debate, and discussion. While writing has certainly changed communication, it obviously hasn't stopped verbal communication, just like recorded music hasn't stopped live concerts, or TV stopped radio. But each kind of media changes others. And teens that text and e-mail without using proper English and spellings can understand that they need to write differently in different situations. It's exactly the same as learning that you don't write a paper in the same way that you speak.
For certain writing activities in school, such as notes, first drafts, reactions/thoughts, maybe even discussion forums, students should be able to get their thoughts expressed without worrying about conventions. Even with elementary students, some kids hold back from writing what they want to because they worry about spelling. If you free them from those conventions, they may be able to express themselves more freely and write more deeply. Then, on certain projects they should learn to take that and write it conventionally as well.
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