Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.

meow-fiesta this conveniently articulates video/tiktok/podcasts transition, we in oral tradition now baybee

  • mayakovsky [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Articles about literacy are always a bit of a tightrope to walk, but this one did it well for the most part.

    I continue to be horrified by shit like this:

    Astonishingly, in 2022, the National Council of Teachers of English declared, “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education."

    There is so much value in having to read difficult texts (historical and contemporary), writing about it, and discussing it to further your understanding. It can be hard, but it’s worth it. These are such indespensible tools to have any kind of critical understanding of the world and your own place within it, and to be able to continue to learn after you leave the school.

    I feel like such a curmudgeon when literacy and education comes up, but instead of decentering the text, maybe we should decenter the technology whose goal is to suck your attention, feed you ads, and make you dumber than the text extruder.

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      i more meant mythical thinking proliferation, stuff happens just so and if it didn’t - never happened, is much easier to pull off orally than in a book, book is unchangeable, oral is transitory. peasant mindset (at least as popularly portrayed).

      i’m more ambivalent on the books as a whole, i do find joy in reading them, both fiction and not, but i can sympathize that (some) people just can’t learn from them as well. Although shooting down your own attention span intentionally via tiktok doesn’t seem prudent, and i would like for people to read more, i know i can’t force kids not to have phones, if it’s not society wide.