Comments on: Book review – Everything bad is good for you

By: Durff

Durff — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

“…his risks instilling a general passivity in our children…”
BUT if they learn to think, which is what reading comprehension is all about, they are learning to actively participate in their education.
When I get home, granted I make coffee first, but then I open 7 homepages, log in to Meebo so students or parents can IM me, turn on iTunes to listen to podcasts at the same time I check email, the RSS reeder, check homework, & plan lessons. I am a digital immigrant. Think what the natives must do when they get home! Why can’t we do this in school?

By: Glenn E. Malone

Glenn E. Malone — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Great book…Ian Jukes recommended it to our admin team before his keynote last summer. Steven has an interesting but unrelated TedTalk on his book The Ghost Map here:
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=s_johnson

By: Dennis Harter

Dennis Harter — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

I will be attending sessions with Ian Jukes tomorrow and in the next couple of days at the ETC conference in Bangkok…what a coincidence that he’s mentioned here.

I am intrigued by this book…but I think it’ll be a hard sell to our English department. I like what he is saying, but telling people that books are not engaging enough is going to get some teacher backs up. It’s just sooo counterintuitive.

How do we approach this conversation with teachers?

By: Scott McLeod

Scott McLeod — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Actually that’s not what Johnson is saying at all, Dennis. He’s just saying that we shouldn’t be so harsh to judge modern multimedia. Read the book first. It’s excellent.

By: Glenn E. Malone

Glenn E. Malone — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Stephen Johnson writes book and he thinks his books are very engaging…his focus in this book is on the untold benefits of today’s TV shows, video games and media in general. I agree with Ian & Scott..it’s in the must read category.

By: Daniel Livingstone

Daniel Livingstone — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Johnson points to increasingly complexity in popular media as evidence that popular culture is making people smarter.

In contrast Neil Postman pointed out 20 years ago (Amusing Ourselves to Death) that popular media was exposing people to ever increasing amounts of ‘news’ and (often irrelevant) information with less and less context and analysis. This, he argued very well in the book, was leading to a dumbing down of public discourse (Note: he didn’t say at any point that it made people dumb or stupid in any general sense). Reading the introduction of a recent edition, I noted many comments from modern students about how relevant and true many of his comments remain.

Personally I am unconvinced that increased ability to deal with rapidly changing visual stimuli is evidence of increased ‘smarts’ in any meaningful way. Honestly, is Pirates of the Caribbean II a ‘smarter’ film than “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”? A better made film in many regards, but smarter?

Nor (in my experience of lecturing a course on computer game technology) does ability and skills at playing games correlate well with much other than ability to play games well.

Is the ability to follow a verbal argument (without flashy visuals!), sorting out nuances and recalling and making connections between points made earlier in the argument an aspect of smarts? How do you think we compare with previous generations on this count? And with the next?

I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree, nor do I agree with every point made in the book, but I do recommend the Postman book highly. At least it provides food for thought.

By: Scott McLeod

Scott McLeod — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Daniel, thanks for the thoughtful comments. For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, I encourage you to also read Daniel’s post on his own blog about this:

http://tinyurl.com/38yfho

By: Kelly Christopherson

Kelly Christopherson — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Ah. What do we mean by “smart”? That age old question. Is it IQ? Or are we looking for a different type of smart? By being “smarter”, how is this being measured? Therein lies the crux of the problem as each era in society needs to have particular “smarts” in order to function well within the society. I believe that, in some ways, we are smarter in certain respects while, in other areas we may not be. As an administrator, I see students who have a greater understanding of world events but who have a more difficult time following a logical argument and defending their point of view. We gain in some areas while other areas seem to decrease depending on what we focus upon. Do we need to acknowledge that one gains from both reading and the gaming and we need to find a balance.