My grandfather was a teacher in NY, and thy had an experimental program in the 60s to teach kids how to write phonetically, not by English spelling, because they thought maybe it was a quicker way to learn English. My dad was one of the kids in this experiment, and to this day he struggles with spelling words despite reading consistently reading giant heady historical fiction novels. The things that you learn at those younger ages carry over so heavily into adulthood. I was super lucky that my older brother taught me how to read and we became book worms through our public library summer reading program. I was reading (but not fully understanding) John Grisham lawyer novels in middle school at the school library because the school reading program awarded more points for longer, more difficult books.
I’m not much of a reader any more but I did read 2 books this year. If I ever go on flights it’s my go to entertainment, because I can cram a book in my carry-on and hyperfocus on it with little else to do while in the air.
With the availability of iPads, screens, and algorithm driven content were cheapening the value of the content for engagement and slowing down our ability to wield language to solve complex problems. We instead learn how to use language to farm engagement from other people and to appear interesting or topical. It’s scary to hear how children are participating in a system that’s programmed to collapse their vocabulary to memes and subsequently shrink their comprehension of complexity.
If there is something bipartisan that can be done at the federal DOE level, it should be a sweeping control on how technology companies present content to children AND adults and to set limits on their engagement at any cost race-to-bottom (speaking at Dept of Education, which is currently being led by the wife of the chairman of Worldwide Wrestling and Entertainment – seriously, the one with the guys in spandex who play macho characters for the proletariat). Were cooked until our congresspeople stop engaging in poopslinging and start understanding the real, measurable societal problems that matter… and that requires a stronger, more engaged government. One that’s not authoritarian and power-hungry, but that’s engaged in the real civic duty that will enhance quality of life for everyone. It’s a race against time before we are grandparents who cannot communicate with their children beyond the everyday simplistic.
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