[lbo-talk] U.S. working class: functionally literate

Matthew Snyder mwsnyder at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 17:40:16 PST 2005


Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> I am not talking about "behavior problems"
> but about general interest in learning new things - which seems to be
> vanishing.

joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
> The current coming-of-age generation has grown up in a virtually
> content-free world. It has all been about filling in the form, attending
> the right school, knowing the right people, mirrorring the right stuff.
> There is no there there.

Seriously, and with all due respect, WTF? This is just insulting. Isn't it possible that the "new things" kids are interested in learning about have changed in the past couple of decades? And that the ways in which kids learn have progressed at the same time?

As someone who is a little older than but is taking courses with typical undergrads, I just don't see the evidence. It's the course material and teaching strategies that haven't kept up, not the students. Students are as eager to learn as (I imagine) they always were. With incredible advances in classroom technology, 24x7 networked resources, etc. it's not that students aren't interested in learning new things, it's that instructors for the most part are stuck in an older paradigm. A classroom is a different learning environment than a computer and an ethernet cable, or a video game console, or whatever is on the horizon. Finding the intersection is a challenge and not something that comes naturally for most people. Blaming the students for a general lack of interest is the easy answer.

I'm not trying to suggest that there's something wrong with reading and writing papers, or that older people can't deal with technology, or anything like that. It's just that anytime I hear insults about younger people and their disinterest and their lack of substance and how much more serious it all used to be, I can't help but cry bullshit.

-- Matthew Snyder Philadelphia, PA



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