There is a fascinating debate going on in education these days about how students no longer read as much as they previously had. Culture is apparently evolving away from the written word to something else with the increasing immediacy and impact of the visual that has become so pervasive in society.
A few years ago, I became aware of this trend when only 18 of 78 students actually bought the text book I was teaching from. Now, there could be a lot reasons for the lack of interest in the textbook, especially high prices. Another reason could be disinterest in the subject matter.
Nevertheless, assuming that we are truly moving away from the written text as a primary tool for learning, then, we must ask ourselves what's next?
Jane Healy in "Endangered Minds" observes, "Fast-paced lifestyles, coupled with heavy media diets of visual immediacy, beget brains misfitted to traditional modes of academic learning."
As Fred Guterl argues, "The lure of the visual in today's electronic media, it would seem, is proving too much for the increasingly antiquated pleasures of the written word."
Education has always maintained a somewhat vertical and parochial view of the world in terms of the written word being a more exalted and intellectual form of communication than the visual. After all, hasn't history shown us that writing was a step up from the oral tradition and cave paintings.
Now, educators fear that in the digital universe of camera phones, PDAs, iPods, PlayStations, Hi-Def televisions, and TiVos, we might be headed for some sort of insidious slide back into the cave. The digital universe, for some educators, signifies a life tethered to machines spewing forth visual content. The visual turn amplified in a digital universe suggests the de-evolution of the literate society and a push back toward the immediate gratification of images.
Does a paradigm shift in the ways in which we are informed and entertained represent a threat to democracy and a participatory government? I am inclined to think that the digital universe of the millennial and gizmo generations, those people born from 1985 to present, learn differently than the "bookish" boomers. The key distinction here is to note the differences and then continue to engage each other in teaching and living out what we value.