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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
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Life is But a Dream I know a couple with two boys, ages three and five, and every time the boys go for a ride in the Land Rover, they are carefully strapped in to very safe child seats. In front of each of the boys is a big tv screen -- that is, each boy has his own screen -- which is turned on for the duration of the trip. They are carefully strapped in and made to watch nothing but jigging images on a loud colorful screen. Eyes riveted. Indifferent to the world whizzing by, not looking at a picture book or talking to their parents. Not even sharing a screen, but, from the age of three, secured within the streaming dream world of each. When the boys get where they’re going - toy store, kiddie haircut salon, doctor’s office, ice cream parlor - there are televisions everywhere. When they get home, the multiple televisions in their big house, including those in their bedrooms, are always on. How surprised do you plan to be when these wealthy children test semi-literate after graduating from an expensive private college? “The issue,” a professor writes in today’s Inside Higher Ed, talking about the study everyone is talking about, “is the declining ability to learn. The problem we face, in all but the most privileged institutions, is a pronounced and increasing deficiency of student readiness, knowledge, and capacity. …the inability of students to assimilate information at all." |