The Effects of Media and Reading

I go to the market. I see preschoolers sitting in shopping carts hooked into Ipods and other forms of electronics, watching cartoons, listening to music. I go to the doctor’s office. A young teen walks in, sits down and puts on earphones connected to something in her pocket. Another young person walks in, already plugged into his earphones.

According to the New York Times, studies link a drop in test scores to a decline in time spent reading. I am not as concerned about ‘test scores’ as I am about the fact I see electronics everywhere, at the park, at the beach, in airports, on airplanes and in places where a generation ago, people brought books and read.

According to a report based on an analysis of data from about two-dozen studies from the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor and the Census Bureau, less than half of all Americans over 18 read. They no longer read novels, short stories, plays or poetry. There is a drop off in reading for pleasure as we progress from elementary to high school. The drop continues even through college. Some continue to read newspapers and magazines. But not enough.

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts says, “we live in a society where the media does not recognize, celebrate or discuss reading, literature and authors.” In his 99-page report, Mr. Gioia described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.”

I’m alarmed. A society that doesn’t read is susceptible to being manipulated by hearsay and propaganda. A society that doesn’t read, doesn’t think as clearly or as analytically as a society that reads and questions. An illiterate society doesn’t know how to gather information and make individual decisions. A society that doesn’t read, loses a valuable part of its culture. Worse, a society that doesn’t read, doesn’t write, doesn’t encourage writers, doesn’t buy books. If we lose our writers, we lose independent thought. We lose individual perspective. We run the risk of losing our intellectual freedom and maybe freedom itself…all for an electronic quick fix.

Reaching Out to a Support Community

I write. I like writing. But sometimes writing is a lonely sport. You do it alone, whether it’s sitting at a WiFi internet café, on the beach, or in your living room. When I write, I am alone with my thoughts. That is the good news. But it is also an isolating experience. Then the phone rings. It is my friend Dave, 1000 miles away in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. We talk. We connect. He is writing a book, too. “Email? O.K., send me your draft…I’ll give you my thoughts if you want.” Then back to isolation. A half hour later the phone rings. Chuck? Wow! Did you get my email? 2,000 miles in the opposite direction. Upstate New York. Then a flurry of exchange of ideas. I stop to check my inbox. An email from Julie in Chicago. She’s going to Kona in a few months. Got to connect her to Dave. Their two families would love each other.

So, maybe I’m not so isolated. Maybe it just feels like that until I connect to someone with whom I can share my innermost thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, I feel alone.

I used to feel alone, too, as a child…especially on Sunday afternoon. We had a big family lunch every Sunday and then everyone went off to do their own thing. I remember sitting on the porch steps, feeling the time go by. Unscheduled and not knowing what I wanted to do next. Isolated and bored. As an educator, I wonder how many children feel isolated and alone in school? With no avenue to share their thoughts and feelings…and maybe the lunch yard is not the place…I wonder if they feel what I felt on those Sunday afternoons? I wonder if, during their classroom activities or assignments, they feel isolated and alone? I wonder what would happen if, in some part of each school day, teachers had a share time…a time and a place to create a ‘safe place’ where kids go share their innermost thoughts and feelings? Maybe one-on-one with the teacher, or small groups or just with friends. I wonder have many children feel alone during their day, isolated and don’t even recognize that that’s what they are feeling? I just wonder.

Socialization…What is it?

I hear this word often, particularly as a homeschooler. What about socialization? I think to myself, “Thank goodness my kids are not socialized to the current society!” What do I see when I look at our local high schools?

I see competition over cooperation. And I want my kids to be cooperative. I also want my kids to be so strong in their self-concepts, that the only competition they will ever need is to stretch their personal limits to the best of their ability and help everyone else along the way.

I see psychological pressure to conform. I want my children to be able to stand calm in the rising tide of social confusion and reactive behaviors. I want them to be able to evaluate their path along the way and not automatically ‘be like everyone else.’ I do not intend to raise lemmings. I want my children to be able to connect with everyone. Raised in a multi-aged environment, my kids learned to deal with kids of many ages and a variety of adults under different circumstances daily. I look at them now and am delighted they can reach out and connect to anyone regardless of age or social standing.

I see a lot of angry kids in high school. Do we call that social? I see an angry culture that listens to anxiety- producing music and violent lyrics. I don’t wonder why. Kids who have no internal direction, who have never had an opportunity to find their passions and talents, who are told all day, everyday, what to do….have a tendency to be angry and defiant. I am grateful my children have been directing their own daily activities since they were little. I am happy to see they are never at a loss as to what to do. They are active, productive and creative thanks to years of self-directed activity and the ability to create in the real world. They are not angry.

So, what about socialization? I think to myself, we dodged that bullet. If conforming, angry, non-cooperative kids are part of the social norm…we’ll pass. Thank you.

Identity

I am sitting on a beach at Newport, California. A kayak passes. It is red, long and narrow and obviously requires a great deal of skill to keep upright. The man powering this vessel is skinny, muscular and old. His weathered skin belies a seasoned life in the outdoors. He is bare-chested and wears a funny cowboy hat…also worn. Who is he, I wonder? What is his story? I wonder how much of who he thinks he is, is colored by his personal story-line, his history. I wonder if he had been born in another time, at another place, how his story-line would evolve. Would he experience himself differently? How would that affect his sense of personal identity? Who is he really?

It seems to me that the search for identity begins at birth. It is the relationship between child and parent that initially forms our sense of self-worth and value in life. What happens after that?

The world steps in. We begin to form our sense of self, based on feedback from the world-at-large. We begin to create our sense of identity based on a storyline created by our interactions with the people and events around us. Our siblings, teachers, neighbors and friends all tell us who we are by our interactions with them. As our story unfolds, we graduate school, get a job, find romance, raise a family—all these events frame our personal histories. I just wonder if that’s who we really are? I believe that each of us have an essence with which we were born…a core being, regardless of what happens to us or what we do, that’s closer to our inner truth. I suspect that the closer we live our inner truth, our truer identity, the more we feel like ourselves. The more we feel like ourselves, the more fulfilled we are and the more at peace we’ll be.

When we raise our children to connect to their deeper selves, we raise children who have a greater sense of who they are…one not completely dependent on storylines. How do we do this? There is a simple way: when we connect our children to their own innate interests and talents, to their own creative processes, to their own internal sense of direction, then we have children who are connected to themselves. Children connected to themselves become adults who are connected to themselves, no matter where the current may take them. And isn’t that ultimately what we want for our children?

Musing on Expectations and Environment

I am sitting here on the third tier of the black no-slip rubber-stepped stepstool, laptop perched on my knees, writing in the garage. To my right is a white-painted 1x4 piece of wood, one end leaning on a waist high stack of (to-be-laid) patio tiles and the other on a trash can. This is an experiment. First it was a necessity. Then it BECAME an experiment.

I have a cleaning crew over to clean my house today. I usually do it (or don’t do it) myself. Actually, that’s why I ended up with a crew today…I needed a little catch-up…a little extra help. It became clear that, with the number of hours I actually had available to work on the house, I needed a miracle (and it wasn’t going to be by my own hand.)

So, why am I in the garage? Because the dogs had to go into the garage. They are not used to having people they don’t know in our house, and I wasn’t exactly sure what they were going to do. Also, the crew had to go in and out the front and sliding doors. Our dogs have been known, on occasion, to go exploring when no one was looking. We put a stop to that. I have no intention of starting it up again. Now I am in the garage.

It’s a little like a large enclosed junk yard where beloved furniture, nick-nacks, holiday decorations, gift wrap and things we might need one day on the moon, go to rest. We haven’t had a car in there since the eighties.

So, why am I ambling? I’m thinking I’m just fine in here. I’m engaged in this silly little blog and I really don’t mind the mess. If this were my living room, I’d be having a cow.
But, knowing that in a couple of hours, the crew will be gone and I will be let out (along with the dogs), makes it all alright. I would have said environment is everything. But having a particular set of expectations (I expect to be let out in two hours) changes my perception of the environment. I’m not really sure what to make of this insight, but I’ll tell you this, I’m asking this crew to come back next week!

Perception

This morning, as almost all Saturday mornings, I drove the forty-five miles at 7a.m. to take my mom to get her hair done because she is afraid to take the door-to-door senior dropoff at $1.70 a trip. I am tired, and a bit cranky. I’m feeling slightly unappreciated and a little used, even though I willingly volunteer. I really don’t have the time. And I really don’t have the extra money. With gas prices at almost $5.00 a gallon, it costs me $20 a trip, $80 a month. I’m also tired. Mother spent the night with me last night. She doesn’t need much sleep. We were up way too late, past midnight. Then, we were up at the crack of dawn, so she had time to dress and eat breakfast, take her pills and follow her morning routine. I love her dearly, but by now I am a little grumpy.

The beauty salon is on a busy, heavily-trafficked street. It is just a little shop. I can’t say how many times we’ve driven right passed it and missed it. We usually park right in front. There are two meters. They are usually empty. I usually pull right into the slot, pull out her handicap sticker, her wheel chair and escort her into the shop. Today, we are late. It’s my fault. I couldn’t get my act together. SO…I pull up and both slots are taken. There is a driveway just past the two parking spots. I double park in the driveway, unload my mom, get her into the shop because I am panicked. NOW, we are really late. What if she misses her appointment?

As I come out of the shop to retrieve my illegally-parked car, (I am now slightly calmer), I look at the street. There are three empty parking spaces. Apparently, in spite of my expectations, there were three spots not two in front of the shop. There are also two empty spaces on the other side of the driveway where I illegally parked. Why hadn’t I seen this?

Our emotional state, our frame-of-mind, our preset conclusions, all effects our perceptions. In my mind there were only two spaces! So, that was all I saw. I was feeling slightly anxious (we were late) and I was overly tired. So the manner in which I took in information was flawed, leading to a flawed conclusion.

I think about this. Why don’t we teach perception in school? Why don’t we point out that sometimes what we perceive as ‘fact’ is influenced by our emotional state at the moment? Instead, we treat data as law (except even law is susceptible to interpretation). I think about all the information we feed children. Never do we include the consciousness that human perception definitely influences all information, including history, science and current events. Don’t we think this is important?

Online Education

On the front page of the New York Times reads the headline: "Half a million American Children Take Classes Online.” It continues to report, “with a significant group...getting all their schooling from virtual public schools."

So, I think back to my experience homeschooling my three kids. And yes, they took plenty of classes in the community and with other homeschoolers. And yes, there may have been times when an online class would have been helpful. But I can’t help but wonder about learning from a teacher who loves doing what he/she does as opposed to getting information from a computer. Where is the interaction? Where is the spontaneous burst of questions and answers, dialogue, rapport? Where is the passion?

Then, I think about situations I have seen in our public schools: Teachers with far too many students to be affective or to know what any of those students are getting from classroom-based presentations short of their test scores: Teachers who are far too burdened with state and district requirements to have the time and energy to connect to their passions, let alone communicate them.

I think about the ghetto schools I have seen. I taught in a couple for a while. I remember asking kids to hand in their knives. I saw a gun battle at the gas station across the street from the high school. I dealt with fires set in trashcans and the need to lock myself and my students into our classroom for our own protection.

I think about burned-out, crabby teachers and the interactions they might be creating with their students. I think about all the students who are pushed to move on, when, with a little bit of extra time, they could have mastered that skill or got the concept.

I put it all together and come to the conclusion that sitting in the living room, studying from a computer screen might be O.K. if it keeps a child out of a less-than-optimal situation, but wouldn’t it be better if there where passionate classrooms that met every child’s needs everywhere?