A couple of posts — one on education and the other on newspapers — came together for me.
Dennis Dunleavy wrote the educational bit:
There is a fascinating debate going on in education these days about how students no longer read as much as they previously had. Culture is apparently evolving away from the written word to something else with the increasing immediacy and impact of the visual that has become so pervasive in society.
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Education has always maintained a somewhat vertical and parochial view of the world in terms of the written word being a more exalted and intellectual form of communication than the visual.
Now, educators fear that in the digital universe of camera phones, PDAs, iPods, PlayStations, Hi-Def televisions, and TiVos, we might be headed for some sort of insidious slide back into the cave. The digital universe, for some educators, signifies a life tethered to machines spewing forth visual content. The visual turn amplified in a digital universe suggests the de-evolution of the literate society….
The media piece of this comes from Steve Yelvington.
Mike Smith of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center says many young people do not feel a need to seek news. If it’s important, the news will come to them one way or another.
He’s right, and this spells trouble not only for “old media” but also for reformers who mistakenly believes the answer is “give it to them in whatever medium they prefer,” because that’s code language for “put it on the Web.” That won’t work.
Flat publication on the Web is optimized to connect with seekers, not people who aren’t seeking.
There are a couple of sweeping generalizations there — youth aren’t readers, nor do they seek out news — but based on what I’ve seen of my own students they aren’t far wrong.
The two observations point to something that makes the internet age different from past periods of disruption of both journalism and education. For some time, the attitude of media leaders, and to a lesser degree educators, is that the young ‘uns are mere immature versions of what we old folk are. Not reading the newspaper? That’s okay, they will when they grow up and become mature citizens. Groaning over Faulkner? They’ll appreciate the exposure some day when they “grow up” and come back to him.
But, I think, the difference this time around is that the “changes” in youth aren’t temporary, or based on a lack of maturity. This is them, and if we’re seeing an non-seeking, visually-engaged group of 18-year-olds, what happens when today’s preteens hit the colleges?
The attitude towards news — if the news is important, it will find it’s way to them — is, to borrow a political catchphrase, reality-based. It is almost impossible to escape information in the new (and growing) mediascape. Seeking “the news” isn’t necessary.
And the idea that knowledge is locked up only in books — that you need to read to become a well-rounded, well-educated citizen — has been dented pretty hard by the wealth of learning available in thousands of “small pieces loosely joined” scattered throughout the world of print, yes, but increasingly on the web and often visually presented.
As I said, I strongly suspect this is a new reality, and not a temporary one. It presents deep challenges for newspapers and for education, two institutions that are going through some tough struggles right now. Acknowledging that things have changed — and they aren’t going back — is necessary.
This is tough stuff, but neither Dennis nor Steve seems too downbeat about it.
Dennis:
The key distinction here is to note the differences and then continue to engage each other in teaching and living out what we value.
Steve:
To connect with the new passive majority, you need to be engaged in a broad conversation (that largely isn’t about news), and professional journalism simply has not yet figured out how to do that.
Note both use the word “engage.” There are answers in there, one of which may be to tweak the emerging newspaper conventional wisdom, “give them the news where they are.” Maybe that should be put it out there — journalism, education, what have you — for who they are.
TAGS: EDUCATION, JOURNALISM, YOUTH
