|
|||||
|
The Internet, Attention, Content, and Education
Recently I reviewed the engrossing new book "Einstein and Oppenheimer" by Silvan S. Schweber, which contrasts and compares the lives of these two great men of science and I also started reading another interesting book, "Convergence Culture" by Henry Jenkins. The review of "Einstein and Oppenheimer" is already published here in the North Florida News Daily and I encourage everyone to take a look at it. Reading that book, I started thinking about the type of culture these two men lived in: what both their own professional culture and immediate surroundings were like and also what the extended American and world culture of the time. Of course, they lacked cellphones and the Internet and a lot of other mechanisms of communication that we now take for granted; due to this situation, science was certainly more difficult to pursue. Just imagine what even a standard laptop computer would have allowed Albert Einstein to accomplish had he had one! Yet these men and many others got along fine with the best, cutting-edge, technologies of their day. In the atomic bomb, they also brought forth one of the most important cultural and political technologies of their time and our own. In the book "Convergence Culture", the author takes on today's technology-infused culture and discerns how various formulations of tradtional and contemporary media intermix with one and the other. Some of his points I am a little unsure about: calling television a "traditional" media when it's not quite a century old yet seems a bit premature, though I get where he is going with his concepts. I would call television more "conventional" because it has become a convention of our entertainment landscape as a subset of the American cultural landscape. What Jenkins does get right, spot-on in fact, is his approach to how the Internet and other, newer, forms of media have allowed for more personal experiences with entertainment. He writes about the fan-fiction culture of young "Harry Potter" fans who write their own stories about J.K. Rowling's characters and share these over the Internet and he also addresses reality televison and shows such as "American Idol". New technologies have allowed us greater personal and collective agency in steering the course of media experiences, but does that mean that we are in fact selecting smarter experiences? Just because we have access to the Internet to vote on a show or to communicate with other fans, does it make our entertainment smarter? When I first started using the Internet in the early 1990s about all that was online were government, military, and educational sites. Despite that, we were astounded by the scope and depth of information out there: you could look up all manner of large animal veterinary epidemiological data from Texas A&M! You could search the datasets of the National Center for Atmospheric Research! Seriously, I was excited by all this, yet I never imagined that I would be able in a few years to buy products via the Internet or even a few years beyond that be able to watch movies on it or find social networking sites spanning the entire globe. So to that extent the abilities to interact via the Internet that Jenkins talks about I find very exciting, yet the question of whether we have kept our collective level of intellect around the same as from pre-Internet days or it has sunk to a lower position or sprung up to a higher one remains. My point being, that when I first encountered the Internet, I realized that it had the ability to reach more people than most modalities of media and also to carry content in a capacity that was not time-based and therefore, unlike radio or television, the Internet would be able to allow access to minority-interest information plus topics of interest to a larger population. That is to say, there would be room for literature by Russian female writers plus room for Madonna. I had hoped that this situation would also promote content of less-common popularity to thrive and it has, but I hoped too that the overall level of quality of content would rise higher and higher. Such, alas, seems not to be the case. There are probably more Internet sites devoted to more or less the same topics we seek in television and mainstream magazines as there are to more esoteric topics, and now that the Internet is open to more and more people, the level of intellectual currency on it has if anything been reduced. This is why when I think about Einstein and Oppenheimer and the diversity of their interests I am a little puzzled over why we, as a culture, have not advanced further. It was long believed that the difference between so-called elites in society and those who had less, or who held more base interests, was mainly the lack of experience and education of the lower classes and therefore the "elite" classes always would retain an upper hand as they had control not only of money and power, but of information. Now that we know both what a valued thing information is in society and also that information is more availible to more people than ever before, you would think there would be something of a shift away from such "elites". After all, you no longer need to be in London or New York City or Boston to have access to the best books or other sources of information as so much is availible either directly or indirectly via the Internet. I do not mean to suggest that everyone should be listening to Bach instead of Britney or that watching football is less of a good use of time than reading a Jane Austen novel, but I feel that we live in the time of greatest access to the most information and culture ever, yet we fail oftentimes to take advantage of this oppurtunity. Einstein, fellow German-Jewish physicist Lise Meitner, and others of their day delighted in classical music and literature in part because their European upbringing fostered such a desire on them and in part because, perhaps, they lacked the more banal diversions we have today. I have a good friend who is a graduate student at the University of Florida from Russia and his interests extend far beyond his immediate field of biomedical sciences and into music, art, and literature in great part because he had the benefit of education in these areas. In American public schools, we see cuts in arts and music budgets and in general a lack of consummate shaping of the cultural education of our students. Now, my friend is Russian and twenty-two years of age, which means he grew up in an educational system with an even tighter budget than our own, and he still came out with a superb education in all regards. Why cannot American public school rise to that level? Part of it may be funding and the fact we do not pay teachers what people in other difficult fields can earn, but I think a lot of it is that we teach down to students too much: when I was in high school, which was not all that long ago, I recall seeing countless videos in classes instead of being assigned reading or even watching the film at home or in a lab setting. I feel that classroom time should be either for the teacher's lecture or group work which cannot be done as homework, or testing. Another thing I have learned about the Russian educational system is that they do not waste time on things like drug prevention or sex education; this is not to say these topics should not be addressed in school, but they seem to get far too much emphasis. The purpose of public education is to provide teaching on subjects needed to advance the student as a person and while "life skills" subjects can fairly be included in this arena, they should not be omnipresent. Is a special "just say no to drugs" presentation or Black History Month event at a school really going to make a larger difference in the acumen and ability of most students than comprehensive, quality, education in maths, sciences, or language arts? Are constant testing and feel-good programs like "No Child Left Behind" really the path to better education, or instead might we hold higher standards, have lectures instead of special events and videos, and if a child is left behind because he is lazy, then prompt him to improve? (If he does not after some effort is made, I'm sorry, but go on and leave him behind: I would rather have a majority of above-average students and a few that failed than a full population that were allowed to simply meet low standards.) I have some ideas about how we can improve education, and here is where my little tangent on education in fact ties right back to how I started this article about the Internet and broader culture. Here, at least to start with, is what needs to be done: 1) Encourage students to read more, and have them read challenging books. Do not bother to tie these books into what you think interests students: a book on a television show will not replace that show, but find things that should naturally interest (and always have interested) students at various reading levels. Assign real reading, real books, avoid the Internet and having students conduct most of their research (and thereby a lot of their reading) via the Internet. 2) From day one in September all the way through the school year, each teacher needs to make it known that his or her class is difficult and that slackers will not be tolerated. Too many teachers when I was in high school allowed kids to get by with whatever substandard performance they were able to muster. Challenge them to do better. 3) There are two main differences between, say, Harvard and a typical community college: the caliber of the faculty and the caliber of the students. For everyday intents and purposes, the grand libraries and cutting-edge technology of a high-end school do not make the largest difference, but the people do make such a difference. In 1950 a small, rural, college did not have the information-oriented advantages of a larger, more urban, one but still offered more or less the same basis of education. Now we have some schools, four-year schools like Georgia Southern University, offering "Information Technology" degrees that are not computer engineering degrees at all but more or less a combination of a business degree and vo-tech computer education. In 1950 an engineering degree from Georgia Southern might not have been equal to one from a larger school, but today it could be, but instead they are serving up a variant of engineering lite which seems like a shame. Again, challenge students to do more, not less. 4) If we want students to be at the top of their game, encourage that in all areas of their lives. If you're a skateboarder, be as good as you can be; if you play soccer, same applies. Dance or piano, same deal. Encourage each and every student to be his or her best. And while we are at it, do away with this practice of giving each kid on a youth soccer or basketball team a trophy: you play because you love the game, you get a prize if you win something or you, as a player, are really outstanding. That's life. 5) Education budgets will keep getting lower and lower for some time I suspect, even if President Obama plans to shore up funding in this regard. We are living in tough times, and we cannot rely on money alone to motivate and prompt results. The Russians apparently have a decent eductaional system despite very low funds. Sure, just as they have private hospitals now they also have private schools for those with more money, but their overall level of education has remained high in public institutions. Why? Because students who stay in school there know that to earn an honest wage, you need a good education and because even beyond that, kids are encouraged to develop a real love of learning which is something altogether lacking in American culture. Folks, it's sink or swim from here on out. We are in an economy that is leaving the glory days of a want-based retail economy and heading back towards a need-based industrial and services economy. That means fewer jobs such as retail and food service that require less education, and high competition for those jobs that require a four-year (or more advanced) degree. Moreover, we are in a time where we can, if we desire, learn a lot via the Internet and other technology-enabled sources and yet we often settle for things that are banal and everyday. Reading the book "Einstein and Oppenheimer" made me realize that we, as humans, are capable of so much more. Reading "Convergence Culture" reminded me of how we are currently living our lives in a technoculture. If we, as Americans, do not leave the comfort we've enjoyed for a couple decades mainly thanks to growing economies and actually work harder and become more worldly in our knowledge, other nations will take on that challenge and many already are doing so. MIKE WALKER is a writer who contributes to this and other news media on topics related to ecology, science, history, and society. He also reviews books for this newspaper. He can be reached via email at: cloudrace@pro |
      |
||||
