Driven or Distracted?

A number of people have asked me what I thought of Matt Richtel's piece in the Sunday Times, "Growing Up Digital, Wired For Distraction," the latest in the Times' "Your Brain On Computers" series. It's been in heavy rotation in the Twittoblogosphere for the past 48 hours, so I'm going to assume some familiarity with the story and argument here. (If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, despite my misgivings.)

First, I do really respect that Richtel is trying to present a balanced case here; he's thankfully chosen as the main subject--17-year-old Vishal Singh--someone who is not dropping out of school thanks to his Facebook addiction, or getting preyed on by child molesters or some other digital moral panic. Richtel quotes more concerned voices than enthusiastic ones, but both sides get an airing.

That said, I do find something puzzling about the whole choice of Vishal as a central study, because the piece assumes that his lessening interest in books and (some) of his coursework is due to the siren song of the digital screen. But what's clearly obsessing Vishal is his love affair with video editing. There's no reason to think the 1985 version of Vishal wouldn't have been equally distracted from his schoolwork by the very same hobby. He just seems like such a clear type to me--the exact kind of kid that I knew growing up, in fact that I partially *was* growing up--the obsessive kid who is so into his movies/painting/model rockets/whatever that he doesn't pay as much attention to his schoolwork. I knew a bunch of kids who really wanted to be filmmakers, and kind of blew off school for a while. By far, the biggest difference between them and this Vishal is that Vishal has access to editing equipment that my friends in 1985 could only dream about.

I read the descriptions of Vishal building his composite shots for his video and thought: here's a kid who is actually learning a high-level skill with immediate commercial value in the job market, that also exercises his creative faculties -- and he's doing it for fun! Maybe it shouldn't be a zero sum game between learning to use complex video software and learning Algebra, but if I had to choose one over the other for the kid, I'd say he's making the right choice.

The problem, of course, is that if he fails Algebra, he'll potentially have trouble getting into a good college, which could have long-term negative effects on his professional options. But if the colleges aren't smart enough to recognize that high-level software skills are as valuable a signal of merit as algebra grades, then I think it's the priorities of the college admissions team that are skewed, not Vishal's.

I think the piece would have also been helped if Richtel had spent at least some time with the kids who are doing great by traditional standards.  I mean, everything I hear about the college admission process is that it's more competitive than ever, and the problem is the surplus of super-talented kids. Are all these over-achievers somehow using Facebook less than the Vishals of the world? Maybe they are, but until we hear about them, it doesn't really matter that some kids are getting distracted  by games or social networks and doing less well in school because of it. Teenagers have a long history of being distracted by things, after all.

And of course, where reading is concerned -- the piece starts with Vishal choosing between the computer and his summer reading -- we actually have a real apples-to-apples comparison of US high school reading skills, dating back to the pre-Web era. They are essentially flat since 1992 for Vishal's cohort, and slightly up for 8th-graders. How could reading skills not be damaged by all these distracting technologies? One potential answer is that--distracting as they are--they are immersing children in a world of *text*--so different from the television/telephone-driven teen culture that I grew up in during the 1980s. If reading skills aren't in fact in decline, shouldn't the burden of proof be on the tech critics?

By the way, my favorite critic in the piece is Alan Eaton, the school's Latin teacher, who calls the new tech a "catastrophe" and blames it for a steady decline in attendance in his advanced classes. Latin! You can't make this stuff up. Why on earth are these children choosing to spend time exploring the communicative possibilities of new software when they can learn the communicative properties of a language no one has spoken for five hundred years? If Facebook and Twitter only manage to eliminate Latin from the extended options of a good high school education, they will have done us all a great service.

UPDATE: I've been getting a little pushback in the comments for that last line about Latin. It was intended to be a little tongue in cheek, but for the record, my feeling about Latin in high school is this: if the school has the resources to offer Latin alongside at least one or two courses that teach modern programming languages and an existing foreign language that's not just French or Spanish (Mandarin Chinese, for instance) then I'm all for the school offering Latin as well. But if the resources are limited, then I think those much more relevant (and equally intellectually rich) languages should take priority.

Comments

[ugg sale]

I grew up in during the 1980s. If reading skills aren't in fact in decline, shouldn't the burden of proof be on the tech critics?

[twitter.com/PaulSweeney]

Just a point on your abundance of over achievers line: the "grind school" and strict time management of those seeking to do well in the "highly structured" admissions process means that those that need to meet these admissions criteria, are de-facto managing their time in activities that gain points.

[Ed Schlesinger]

Students NEED an environment, platform, tools that THEY can leverage for their own benefit. They have to create it, mold it to their own personal advantage as no one method fits all.

www.studentforce.com

[Scott Yates]

If people don't know Latin, then they may not know the roots of words. Like 'peto' and 'filos' gives us the word 'pedophile.'

[JoViKe]

No, it's better to have some Latin. It enhances the enjoyment of language, reading and logical thought.

[Lindaperrybarr]

So u didn't take Latin, or took it but didn't get it. My Bronx Science daughter has been taking Latin since 5th grade. A senior now, maybe translating Vergil wasn't the most fun thing she did, but translate she did. Maybe learning about an ancient culture seems ridiculous to some, but it opens doors for others. Forget that it helps with word origins, learning the language and culture does much more for a chid, Along with thousands of fb friends, her twitter acct, her loving iMac, her theater reviews, tv chats and everything else she does, she studies Latin. No reason to put that down.

[Roger Travis]

Good lord, why does Latin have to take it on the chin because of this faux-"charismatic" Latin teacher?

I beg of you, take a look at what my team and I are doing to demonstrate how relevant the ancient world and its languages are to the very foundations of critical thinking that will let these students comprehend that text.

http://livingepic.blogspot.com/2010/08/operation-lapis-is-ite.html

[Aaron B.]

You made a lot of good points until the cheap shot at Latin. Latin is the foundation of many modern languages, so learning Latin gives you a strong foundation for other language studies. The structured grammar of Latin trains the mind for organization and logic. Latin introduces you to the classics, from Virgil and Caesar to medieval theologians and Gregorian chant.

In short, learning Latin isn't about how many people you can talk to, any more than you study algebra because you expect to spend a lot of your adulthood calculating the values of polynomials. It's about learning to think.

[Cheap Louis Vuitton]

jin tian yangguang mingmei,shi ge da qingtian, wo xihuan. bu zhidao ni xihuan bu.

[rex]

Steve,

On a totally unrelated note. I was reading 'The Ghost Map' - Latest Edition. There is a typographical error on page 237. 1 row above the last row. It says 'Poplation' instead of 'Population'. Great book by the way!

[Laurel L. Russwurm]

In my day, newspapers whined about kids rotting their brains from too much TV, or worried that violent films would turn kids into axe murderers.

Latin, which was an enormously rich experience for me, is no longer taught at my son's High School here in Ontario. Instead, High School "programming" courses are in reality proprietary software training. Quite frankly, Latin was a better deal.

My kid doesn't much like the proprietary Dreamweaver program (foisted on students by the school board) since it can't produce compliant web pages; so he hand codes XHTML instead. He doesn't use Facebook or Twitter, just IRC. His ComTech teacher is disappointed that his University applications are all for Medieval Studies.

All schools are different, as are all kids.

[Vic Kley]

Having only read this blog, your bio and your book "Where Good ideas come from" I am surprised at your comment on Latin and your Apology appended to yesterday's blog.

Steven Berlin Johnson is an English major and apparently has never asked the accomplished programmers like Berners Lee he praises what is the best background for a good to great programmer, in high school or college.

You haven't a clue!

Ask someone you respect who has done something special like the google guys or the boys down the street at Pixar. I won't waste my time telling you something you'll put down or ignore.

[chavisory]

I couldn't agree more about Vishal. He's using the creative tools available to him on the internet to develop real, high-level skills, and the school complains that he doesn't quietly lap up its standard-issue, mediocrity-guarantying curriculum? Why should he?

But he does need to read. Whoever in the article noted that he can't write films if he doesn't read is correct. If I were his parent, I'd take him out of school entirely so that he didn't have to choose between filmmaking and reading; he'd have time for both without wandering the school halls wasting his time for 7 hours a day.

I might agree entirely that the time that school-age kids spend tied to screens these days is a problem, but I don't believe that Vishal is representative of the problem.

[Joe Riener]

I'm a high school English teacher. I have students texting all the time in class. I've just finished "Everything Bad ...." I find the argument pursuasive. I extropolate the book's idea for the cognitive value of student texting. When they text, my students' minds are active, aware,connecting, expressive of what they are thinking and feeling at that moment. They may not be as absorbed in Hamlet or Huck Finn as I would prefer, but they ain't bored or dead-minded. I've found I've been able to bring them into the discussion, or focus them on my ideas, if they are using language themselves."Go ahead, text away," I tell them in September. I love their subsequent incredulous stare, the possibilities it portends of their interest in what else I might say in the coming months.

[angular]

These young people are being evaluated based on a dead/dying F.W. Taylor-influenced model (do one thing at a time and finish one thing before moving on to the next thing)- this is dead & overwith & the jobs based on it have long since flown the coop.
We would do well not to guilt-jerk and harangue them about what they're doing. We should make sure they stay safe, take care of their needs and yes, make Latin texts available, but these kids are off and running with What's Next. Unless we have a better idea in this country, we need to be a LOT more supportive of what they're into.

[coach handbags clearance]

I had to refresh the page 2 times to view this page for some reason, however, the information here was worth the wait.

[Dweingrod]

Really enjoyed this as I constantly have struggled with my belief that the kids are, in fact, all right and that they will figure it out.

Example: My son after getting back into studying and good grades told me that he would have done so sooner if we had pulled him out of his World of Warcraft and Deviant Art sessions.

I pointed out to him that this was where he learned Photoshop along with 3D modeling and animation software and the fact that he pulled himself out of that world was a more important achievement. He's now a freshman at college getting good grades and multitasking like a madman.

The point is that sometimes this all feels like my parents' generation complaining about that loud longhair music and how it was going to destroy culture. Well in fact, it did to a degree, but to say that these new values are somehow less important and less relevant than existing values reflects a lack of confidence and a loss of historical perspective

[abendmode]

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[Danblondell]

As a recent graduate - and a pretty successful one - I can say personally that an Internet addiction has its pros and cons. Applying for jobs now, the skills and knowledge that come most in handy, besides general writing and speaking skills, were learned online. My knowledge of the Internet, social media, and tech are much more important in applying for work than what I know about Hegel (I studied philosophy).

[Ursula]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say a core purpose to education is to provide a framework for critical thinking: a lense to view life and the world and the means to use, adjust, change and update that lense. However brief the commo on facebook and some social media, taken in context, in a whole, how different is the blog and the networked elements of social media from classroom essays and notes passed in the hall? I'll admit it, I went to HS in the 80s, manhattan, at a school focused on math and science, so my norm's a little skewed. The point remains, that learning takes place on many platforms, and rote memorization of repetative tasks is only a small portion. Perhaps we need to update our model to suit our current times and future needs, vs. preserve what may have outlived some usefullness. You know, let's stop smashing looms and lamenting the loss of the independent weaver, because maybe this thing called technology can work for us? And maybe both have a position that is workable, it just needs reworking?

[Mukhopadhaya]

Definitely, ol' chum.

[starcraft 2 cheats]

Fully agreed with your points on this post.

[Pat]

LOL I have to agree. I grew up in the 60s when I, as a girl in high school, wasn't allowed to take drafting, but had to take home ec. I hated home ec (still do). That's about as educational as basketweaving and much less exciting.

Schools are, in general, so far behind technology. Kids get a more technological education at home than they do at school, usually (not 100%, but the avg kid).

I spent my algebra studying time collecting insects and drawing/studying them. Failing my first year of algebra didn't hurt my getting invited to study physics at a local university, a subject I'd never taken in my life, nor getting a job in R&D.

I'm a firm believer that timing is everything and sometimes the time just isn't "ripe" for us to ace algebra. I believe that the "adjacent possible" for kids, now and in the future, is allowing them to obsess. Where would we be if Einstein hadn't had time to obsess over those silly math equations?

[Taobao.com china]

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[Taobao.com china]

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