The Washington Post ran a deeply disturbing story about a boy who became addicted to multi-player video gaming on the Internet. His life was consumed with gaming. His parents were distraught. When they tried to get him to turn off the computer, he had outbursts of rage.
His mother asked him, please, turn off the computer. It’s late.
Their voices got louder. She doesn’t remember exactly what made him reach for the glass on his bedside table. He threw it with such force that it spun across the room and shattered against his closet door, carving a two-inch gash in the white painted wood. Tiny shards glinted on the striped rug.
By then, the family’s stately home in New York was riddled with such scars — nicks in the walls, scratches in the floor, a divot in the marble countertop lining the kitchen sink. All remnants of the boy’s outbursts, which had intensified over the years, almost always triggered by a simple request from his parents: Byrne, please turn off the game. Please get off the computer.
When Byrne threw the glass, his mother, Robin, didn’t panic; she mostly felt numb. For five years, she and her husband, Terrence, had felt their son slipping away — descending deeper and deeper into a realm they didn’t like or understand, consumed by the virtual worlds shared by millions of strangers, all reachable through his Xbox and his computer. Robin and Terrence had conferred with therapists, medical experts and school counselors to try to help their son.
Just weeks before, they had turned to an education consultant, who helped them come up with a plan: Byrne had to go away — first, to a summerlong wilderness therapy program, where he could reconnect with himself and the real world around him, and then to a boarding school. He had to start over, in a place with strict structure, where he couldn’t spend his days immersed in video games.
This is a story that should concern all parents and educators. What is technology addiction doing to children?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I have a feeling that this is just one example of what will become an epidemic. Kids are so addicted to their technology that they are unable to be away from it for more than a few minutes without suffering the early signs of withdrawal.
The sad thing is that when California attempted to put into place responsible laws restricting the sale of violent video games to minors (under the Schwarzenegger admin), SCOTUS struck this down in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/08-1448, arguing that video games were covered under free speech. This, despite the compelling interest of the state demonstrated by the research (largely ignored) on the impact of said games on children: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/violgametime.htm
If anyone is interested, Werner Herzog’s film from this summer entitled Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World is really worth seeing…this issue is addressed amongst others….
Our district has just given every student k-8 a new chrome book. Every teacher in the district the same. Not one teacher raised any objection. Not one piece of supporting data delivered to the board of Ed. was from a source outside of the tech industry. My objections were laughed off and continue to be.
“Technology in the classroom” is the real show of Ed reform. It’s the real backbreaker of the classroom teacher. It’s the real union buster.
And teachers themselves love it.
Public schools as such are being colonized wholesale by corporations. It will soon hardly matter if a school is officially labeled “charter” “private” or “public.” All will be right and proper spaces of corporate domination.
This is why time is of the essence. Right now actual unionized teachers still physically occupy the space of public education. This fact will not stand much longer.
God speed public education.
NYSTEACHER,
I’ve seen school districts with “credit recovery” where kids get credit (which they should have done IN CLASS) for working on a computer program. The union doesn’t say anything. The teachers don’t say anything. I’ve had administrators suggest using Rosetta Stone to teach languages instead of teachers. Nobody says anything. I’ve heard “education experts” come in to schools and do presentations and say we don’t need foreign language teachers now because we have Google Translate. Nobody says a word. I guess the teachers in all the other subject areas think it can’t happen to them, so they say nothing. I don’t understand it. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!! Yes! It CAN happen to you (and probably WILL)!
Agree. Parents seem to really want to see tech too. They think it will give kids a leg up in the work world, but what kids are doing with the technology has nothing to do with high paying tech jobs. In fact, the only people that caution about using it too much are parents who work in the tech industry!! I don’t know what to do about this. Whenever I speak up, people just consider me an old Luddite, even though my job is “Digital Project Manager.”
I see a lot of this in my classroom….
I don’t mind chrome books if they are restricted use and used appropriately. There should be more tech in the classroom because our classrooms are woefully outdated. That being said video game/cellphone addiction. When I wasn’t doing well in school my parents took my devices and locked them up. Not saying it is the solution. But it is one and reading the article, it doesn’t seem the parents explored that.
Supervision is key to all behavior of children.
I locked up the device when my son first reacted badly, unable to detach, even with a countdown of five minutes.
One acquaintance threw the game device in the trash when her child exhibited lack of control with the device.
Both of these children were diagnosed with disorders: ADD, OD, bi-polar. Let’s say impulse control and anxiety.
One student of mine stayed up all night playing games. Parent refused to come for a conference as she was to busy and tired from her job. The principal threatened to give him an opportunity transfer to a school with a reputation for violence and that got her attention. Meanwhile, she became pregnant. Another child she won’t have time for who can contribute to low scores.
On the other hand. My son whose friend was diagnosed bi-polar was just allowed to play games and then drop out of school. Now he works as a computer consultant.
So, no judgment. Individuals are different.
Technology is a tool and not one that requires a lot of workers. Use it as a tool, not an end in itself.
I don’t know why they had to bring it into schools. Kids have plenty of time to noodle around online outside school. I know they say it’s “equity” because poorer kids don’t have access to tech but my son’s school is 50% lower income and every one of them has a phone and a cheap data plan by age 14. They do everything on the phone adults would do on a computer.
The part that disturbs me the most is the US Department of Ed selling these products.
Why do they sell this so hard? If it’s great and useful and has value school will adopt it organically and slowly in ways that make sense at that school. They’re having superintendents sign vows to buy devices. It’s ridiculous.
One game I like is Garage Band. My son and his friends play it. They can actually make music with all the instruments. It looks like a lot of fun. But when he’s in school I’d much rather he work with the band director- a human being he likes and admires and who taught all his brothers and sisters. He can (and does) play Garage Band on his own time 🙂
Most of the time I am content to simply read the blog and sit back and watch the discussion play out on the comments. This time I feel compelled to throw in my two cents.
I am a 32-year-old teacher, which means I was a child of the 90s and early 2000s. While technology has certainly changed over the last 10-12 years, many of the things that are sometimes considered bogeymen – the internet, video games, computers – were a part of my daily life growing up.
I was and remain an avid video and computer gamer. It didn’t prevent me from making friends. It didn’t keep me out of activities – I took 9 AP courses, was an active musician in school, extracurricular and community orchestras, prepared for my college auditions at top music schools, went to All-County and All-State music festivals, was a member of the mock trial team, an Eagle Scout, etc.
My point is that playing video games – even for hours, something teachers and parents of older generations have a hard time understanding but is second-nature to someone of my age and younger – is not automatically a destructive thing. In many cases it is a much-needed release from the pressures and stresses of daily life (to this day, after putting my two children to sleep after a long day of work, I’ll log into World of Warcraft or reach for my PS4 controller).
It’s easy to blame everything on the games and overlook everything else going on. Does the child have behavioral issues or an addictive personality that the parents have fed into by being overly permissive? Did the parents allow the purchase and play of age-inappropriate games? Are parental controls not being used? Is participation in activities and socialization being encouraged?
There is absolutely a corrosive element in online multiplayer gaming and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about how to manage its effect on my own children. Maybe that’s the advantage I have going for me – having lived through this era of gaming and technology myself, I’m a little more prepared for what’s coming.
Thank you for this comment…I feel the same way.
“The Dangers of Knee-Jerk Reactions To Articles About The Dangers of Addiction To Video Gaming.”
Already the extrapolation begins to a story about one kid, and one type of game. Nowhere does the author try and differentiate between different types of games. Minecraft is not mentioned. Coding games are not mentioned. Scratch is not mentioned. These types of video-game-scare articles are not helpful, just like articles about how your children may be abducted by online predators.
“Kids are so addicted to their technology that they are unable to be away from it for more than a few minutes without suffering the early signs of withdrawal.”
How about adults? Maybe we should look at the way adults use technology before we freak out about kids. Parents, do you spend time sitting with your child as they use a screen? Do you take the time to ask questions about the games their playing, or even try to play them yourselves? Do you do research so you can suggest games for them? Are you constantly looking at your phone when your kids are present?
I think before we lay blame on video games, we need to look at how we can better use technology in general for ourselves and WITH our kids, instead of just letting technology be a babysitting tool than we then incredulously look at later as something that has taken over our kids on its own.
Nailed it. Gaming is not just Grand Theft Auto and blood and guts and gore. A lot of great, intellectually stimulating games out there that foster creativity. If the parents don’t act as filters on content, is the child to blame? Many parents who are gaming-illiterate or technologically challenged aren’t in a position to curate smart, fun games for their kids.
I concur with both. Video games aren’t real. We know this. Kids know this.
Especially the part about adults. As if we are not addicted to our phones and tablets.
IMO, one of the main roots of “dysfunctional learners” is a brain, mind and soul overstimulated and conditioned by excessive technological entertainment and social media. My science class is “boring” because it is not like a video game. Students only read 120 character tweets, so a long essay or novel is boring. Compared to the internet everything is “boring”.
Interesting that these techno-induced afflictions and conditioned-iresponsibility may happen at a higher incidence with richer kids, who can purchase all the techno-toys, and is less frequent among the poorer????
IMO, after 25 years of science teaching the number one factor that is “dragging the mind down” is the overuse of the cellphone. I deal with more challenges in the last 6-8 years, than in the previous 20. Why, because divorce rates have doubles (I don’t think so), but because every child is now an abusive-user of cell phones.
I totally agree, Rick.
On the other hand, being able to tell my music students that they can download a free metronome and chromatic tuner on their smartphones, and having access to vast repositories of public domain sheet music, ePrint music, instant access to recordings, the ability to record student performances for instant playback…we paint technology with too broad a brush as corrosive when it can be exceptionally, exceptionally useful when used right.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, author of Glow Kid (which is an insightful book) is coming to speak to our community at Villanova University next spring. He directly addresses ed tech and the opportunistic edupreneurs who put profit before quality instruction. There is too much screen time in schools and it is going to get worse.
Check out the Nellie May Foundation
on “personalized learning”: http://www.nmefoundation.org/our-vision/personalization
This is how they will get rid of special ed (and have IEP’s for all), will implement online learning (anytime, anywhere learning), and cut out critical thinking by implementing competency-based learning.
Emily Talmage wrote a great post about Nellie May:
https://emilytalmage.com/2016/03/30/who-is-nellie-mae/
The jargon they stole from real teachers is misused and suggests that adaptive tech can be more effective than real teachers and that it is “student centered.”
Ask kids if they like adaptive tech like Teen Biz, every time I ask, they hate it.
I had to sub for a special ed class today. Most of the kids had laptops with special programs and headphones.
Also, Glow Kids, By Nicholas Kadaras includes the impact of screen time and screen addiction on adults.
“There is too much screen time in schools and it is going to get worse.”
Danielle, this is an unfortunate and simplistic conclusion. You are correct about, “opportunistic edupreneurs who put profit before quality instruction.” However, I am equally worried about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As a tech educator for more than 12 years, I know there are useful, inspiring, creative technologies that can be used appropriately within a school environment. The blanket, thoughtless deployment of technology for profit is threatening the progress made by ed tech pioneers like Seymour Papert, Mitch Resnick, and others. Just like with video games, attention must be paid to the types of technology used for education and how it is used. Simply calling for less screen time is not the answer.
And THERE is also a lot of violence on video gaming, too. Seems this SELLS. I have also seen parents use their cell phones, and other devices to keep their children entertained. I actually had one male parent tell me: “I just hook him up when he misbehaves.” HUH? Hook the kid up to a screen, no less. Unbelievable.
The new drug “hook up” — video gaming.
THANKS for this, DIANE!
What we have here is a war between the tech industry; their profits vs raising and educating children properly to grow up and become responsible citizens with critical thinking and problem solving skills.
In most cases, the profit agenda always wins, especially since Citizens United turned corporations and/or money into people. The more money one has, the more power they have to win battles in the public arena that is also under attack.
The goal is to turn everyone into an obedient drone consumer on autopilot that questions nothing their overlord’s do. When the overlords tell these drones to walk through a specific door into a huge oven to get their promised award/reward, the drones obediently do it and then wait patiently for a few seconds for their next thrill. By the time they realize this is their last thrill, a brief and painful one, the oven door is closed, locked and the heat is turned way up.
Donald Trump is an expert at making promises and breaking them.
I think this has marked implications for the push to gamify learning in elementary school (and younger.) and on up. I want no part of it, unless it is actually studied for its health effects as well as learning effects in ethical ways.
It has been studied, for decades.
“Collectively, this body of work shows a consistent pattern: Exposure to media (this includes video games) violence increases the risk of subsequent aggregation.”
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/value-violent-video-games-research-roundup
Take a look at this program. http://digitaldetox.org/retreats/
Screenagers is a new documentary focusing on managing media, we just hosted a screening in our community. Tech is everywhere now and we need to figure this out together.
http://www.screenagersmovie.com
It’s also important to look at addiction holistically. Many people use video games (or substances) to escape their current reality, and there’s always the likelihood that the child’s offline life was not as rewarding as his online life. Of course, withdrawing into games won’t ever fix that — the answer is to have fulfilling offline experiences that present a compelling alternative to in-game life. Easier said than done, I know, but that’s where parents hopefully have some experience finding those things in life that are worth living for.
Are we writing posts to get reblogged on The Blaze and Breitbart now? Interesting that the parts of the article you chose to quote don’t mention the pre-existing social and emotional problems he was having long before his video game addiction.
Does it exist? Yes. Screen addiction is a real thing which needs to be addressed. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be using technology with our students. Anyone who questions the addition of Chromebooks or Tablets to the classroom has their head stuck in the sand.
I’ve been teaching technology in public schools for 20 years and using it as an educational tool for even longer than that. If your children are using their school issued equipment to only play games or socialize, the problem is with your school, not the technology.
Instead of crying about the use of tech in schools, we need to focus on how to use it the right way. We need to expose sites like Kahn Academy for what they are and train our teachers how to integrate tech into their instruction rather than just using it for drill and kill practice. Students should be using devices to consume information and create product. Not regurgitate facts like an overpriced flash card. We need to make sure that teachers have training before spending money on device and then continued training after. Professional development is a huge component of a successful technology program.
This I like. It amazes me in 2016 there are not tablets or laptops always available. Maybe some in a good school.
“Students should be using devices to consume information and create product.”
Horse manure!
Court,
The article in the Wash Post is not anti-technology. It is a warning that video games can be highly addictive for some children.
True, but the way you have presented it has a very anti-tech slant. I clicked the link and read the article. I wonder how many of your readers just read your selected quotes.
Court,
I have the expectation that everyone will read the entire article. I am not legally allowed to post it in full.
The readers here are very intelligent.
They also know that I am skeptical of almost everything that does not have proof and evidence behind it.
If it were up to me, I would limit TV watching to one hour a day for children. As a parent/grandparent, I loathe violent video games.
We never bought a video game for our daughter, and it was her decision to never spend her own money to buy video games. We also never bought a TV for her bedroom, and we controlled when the TV was on and what was watched. TV time in our house, when she was growing up, was family time usually with a bowl of popcorn and often only on Friday or Sunday for an hour or two. The rest of the week, the TV was off. In addition, visits to the local library were weekly. Her main source of entertainment when school work was done was reading books.
She graduated from Stanford in June 2014, and is an extremely social person who loves to dance. I’ve never seen her nose buried in a computer screen of any type. She’s is a people person, a face-to-face people person.
Oh, and we didn’t hook up a computer in her bedroom to the internet. There was one computer for that for the entire family and it was in the family room.
Yes, but Diane, you end your post with this question, “What is technology addiction doing to children?”
Peter,
Yes, that is an important question. Perhaps you read the article in the NY Times a few years ago about a Waldorf School in Silicon Valley where high=tech executives send their own children. It has no technology at all. Kids learn to use their hands to make things and do things, not to watch screens.
Technology should of course be used in schools as a tool. But we should control the tool, the tool should not control us. Children who are addicted to online gaming are controlled by the machine.
The question of kids being addicted to certain kinds of violent video games is a much different question than whether kids are addicted to technology in general, and if so, what to do about it. Technology in education is yet another very different question.
Your Waldorf reference presents an either/or scenario, but screens can be used in conjunction with kids using their hands to make things and do things. That is part of my own curriculum. But even screens alone are not inherently bad. I urge you to look into the work of Mitch Resnick at MIT and his Lifelong Kindergarten Group.
Children who are addicted to online gaming are not controlled by the machine, if you define the machine as a faceless gaming company. But perhaps they are if you define the machine as the children’s family and social network.
I understand the suspicion and fear towards technology in education, given how it is being deployed by reformers and profiteers. But a retreat to a technology-free Waldorf education is not the answer, and it sadly ignores the progress and potential in the field which is trully exciting and wonderful.
Every time you open a computer and go onto the Internet, your data are mined by others.
Peter,
I would love to be convinced that the incorporation of tech into schools has been a net gain for education. In our school, almost EVERY professional development of the past 15 years has been about tech. We get bombarded with complex software and devices, urged to use them, encounter endless glitches, have much of our thinking siphoned off into tech issues, watch content delivery degrade because we’re thinking about tech instead of thinking about our subjects and the kids’ minds, and then have the tech we’ve grappled with for two years get thrown out and replaced with something “better’ that has its own time-consuming learning curve… As a veteran teacher, I can think of a thousand better ways to develop professionally, but these are not credited by anybody in our tech-besotted culture. Meanwhile kids dive into the Internet, find porn, do cyberbullying, play addictive games, socialize, share photos, learn about bomb making (true example from my students) and on and on. They are not using the tech to read War and Peace. There is SOME edifying use, but it seems far outweighed by the educationally null or downright anti-social or harmful use. Tech proponents would have a hard time convincing me that tech has bettered our schools or bettered students as human beings. But if all you know is tech, it’s hard to conceive of any better use of a human mind, isn’t it?
I’d add that the uncurated, Wild West nature of the Internet has allowed the rapid dissemination of civility-eroding Nazi-like ideology. Too many of our kids are getting an education in Nazi-ism and ISIS-radicalism thanks to this anarchic, destabilizing invention. I know the Internet has many upsides, but these are HUGE downsides.
Diane, judging by your completely non-contextual comment in this conversation,
“Every time you open a computer and go onto the Internet, your data are mined by others.”
I would have to assume that means you do not approve of any child using the internet, in school or otherwise. That’s a valid, if not altogether practical viewpoint. Unfortunately it reveals your lack understanding of the good things that are happening in technology in education, even if they are being overshadowed by the reformers’ agenda.
ponderosa, I am not arguing that the state of technology in education today in general is a good one. However, I am stating that there are good things being done, which unfortunately are in danger of being overlooked and unsupported as we anti-reformists fight off the bad technology deployment.
Peter, it behooves all of us to understand both the benefits and the risks associated with the Internet.
“it behooves all of us to understand both the benefits and the risks associated with the Internet.”
I agree wholeheartedly with that statement, Diane.
My beef is that there never seems to be any celebration, let alone acknowledgment of the truly wonderful and progressive things being done in technology in eduction. At least on this blog, there are dire warnings about video gaming addiction, reporting on bureaucratic iPad deployment disasters, student data-mining, etc. (all important topics), but never a mention, for example, of the annual world-wide Scratch Day (https://day.scratch.mit.edu/), that has brought so many children together in the spirit of creativity and curiosity.
Please continue to call out the bad use of technology in education, but when you make a statement like, “What is technology addiction doing to our children?” you invite a dogmatic conversation rather than a nuanced, differentiated one.
A lot of back and forth about the positives and negatives of things like video games and all that. Easy to get in the weeds there.
How about this simple idea:
School is a place where OTHER skills are focused upon, enshrined, taught, and examined.
Lets assume that kids have a metric-ton of screen time and technology exposure daily. Lets assume that they are completely fluent in the navigation of said technology. Ok good.
Lets let school be a place where you learn by reading stuff and writing stuff and ciphering stuff out. Why do we reflexively think that literally every other skill in the world is somehow rendered obsolete in the face of technology?
School should be a refuge FROM some things sometimes. A refuge from corporate colonization of everything. A refuge from every force in society that is forcing students to become consumers from cradle to grave and nothing more. How about that?
Not a Luddite position here, just trying to look at reality clean.
I will say I much prefer video gaming to video viewing. Gaming can be engaging, interactive, and constructive in ways that viewing cannot.
Exactly, FLERP! A point that seems to be lost on the ones who post here about all screens being bad. And there are studies which back up your observations.
Just as there are important differences between passive viewing and interactive play/activity, there are also differences between rote drill-and-kill computer use (with its data-based corollary), and constructive, creative applications (such as Scratch), the latter of which should be highlighted and supported better by blogs such as these, instead of being a mere footnote, at best, in the discussion of technology use in education.
FLERP and Peter, you both demonstrate how progressive ed ideology has permeated our culture. One hoary plank of this ideology is that listening or viewing is “passive” and therefore bad. We all “know” that interaction and constructing are superior.
Only…it’s not true. Listening and viewing are the primary means of learning. How did we learn English? How do we know about the election results? So even if listening and learning were purely passive, there’s no reason to prejudiced against them. However, they’re not purely passive as John Dewey and his successors have led us to believe. The brain actively handles the auditory and visual information stream and processes it: it categorizes, it uses it to refine previous understandings, combines it with other knowledge… There is a welter of activity going on in the neurons, but it’s invisible and thus, to the thoughtless unwitting adherent of Dewey, it does not exist.
What’s educationally superior, engaged play on Minecraft, or watching a good documentary about Gothic cathedrals?
There is a huge gulf between actively learning something like the English language, and sitting passively at a desk and/or in front of a computer and repeating drills.
Children do not learn to speak English by listening and viewing. They actively engage with the language as they mature. In Finland, for instance, children do not start school until age 7, but by the time they do start school, most of these children are already literate because their parents actively engaged them in learning to speak and read in the home by modeling reading in front of the children. Many studies show that a child growing up in a home rich in printed books, magazines, and newspapers ,and parents who read, also becomes literate, an avid reader, and a life long learner.
And children don’t learn the mechanics and grammar of English without being actively engaged in manipulating written language. The rules of the English language were born in the UK around the time of Shakespeare. Before that, for centuries, there were no rules of spelling, mechanics, and grammar, but children learned how to speak the language and even write it anyway by being actively immersed in the language.
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/23/12874.full
“Children do not learn to speak English by listening and viewing”. Lloyd, it’s almost all listening and viewing. Parents are constantly telling kids things. Mini-lectures. Sometimes that telling is accompanying by showing as well. Even kids who never read acquire a large oral vocabulary by listening to people around them and inferring meanings from context. There really is no such thing as a passive brain. The brain is always active, even when its asleep!
Granted, some lectures, videos and educational software are stultifying, fruitless and dull. But many are enriching, fruitful and interesting. There’s nothing inherently bad about their being “passive” (which is not really passive). Conversely, many progressive ed favorites like project-based-learning and problem-solving activities are stultifying, fruitless and dull (though not all are). I think we should judge curriculum based on its fruits, not its adherence to progressive ed dogma.
There is a vast gulf between what happens at home between child and parents and what takes place in a classroom. One is a one-on-one setting that is fluid and often active with roll modeling as a powerful element. Parents/guardians that set an example by doing and the child learns from them just be being in the same environment.
The other one is a group setting where there are negative roll models that offset the positive roll models in the classroom. Children often sit passively at their desks, listening to lectures, etc., and then doing work on paper to demonstrate and reinforce what was learned if it was learned.
But at home, it is completely different. For me, my mother spend a few months making sure I learned the basics of literacy, and the child that wasn’t supposed to ever read or write learned to do it. Then it was all me actively reading the books I wanted to read, hundreds and thousands of them that were not assigned by teachers or studied in class.
Children that grow up in a home environment rich with literature and material with postive parent/guardian roll models start out ahead in school and stay that way. Children that don’t grow up in this literate-rich environment start out behind and often stay that way.
Both of my high school drop-out parents were avid readers of paperback books, and I grew up as a child seeing them read and once I had the literate skills to read on my own, I copied them.
No classroom environment filled with children sitting at desks matches that.
Each to his own. I never thought of my interest in video games as my unwitting adherence to Dewey. Of course viewing isn’t purely passive. Getting punched in the face also isn’t purely passive, as the brain actively handles and processes the sensory information and categorizes it etc. A documentary about gothic cathedrals is a fine thing, but it’s a poor substitute for play, especially to a 9 year old. If you asked the 9-year-old me if I wanted to watch a video about gothic cathedrals, I probably would ask if I could go play with my legos. Even ask me today, and it’s even odds that I’ll say I’d rather go play my guitar or go to the driving range.
Lloyd, I agree that spending time at home with literate parents is extremely educational –often better than the best classroom lessons (though I would submit that much of your ability to read on your own came from hearing your parents use rich vocabulary, thus pre-loading your brain with a critical starter-kit of world knowledge). But that doesn’t mean that classroom lectures can’t be extremely enriching. Our universally admired middle school science teacher was famous for lecturing and having us take notes. To this day I vividly remember her descriptions of the inner workings of a cell. Yet this kind of teaching is dubbed malpractice by the Progressivist Central Committee at Teachers College, the Vatican of the ed world (I know I just mixed metaphors). Common Core and NGSS are often construed to mean less teacher-talk, more floundering around with gnarly word problems. Folly!
I also vividly remember a project I did on anatomy: I made a large human tongue out of clay. I don’t remember much about tongues’ function and structure, however. I just remember spending a lot of time in the basement molding clay. Yet this very inefficient use of learning time is glorified as vastly superior to those effective lectures. This is why we must overthrow the progressive ed orthodoxy –it is retarding the development of Americans’ minds.
My parents didn’t talk much. My dad was an alcoholic, chain smoking gambler, who loved betting on the horses, who also cheated on my mother repeatedly even with her best friend.
My mother had her nose buried in a sanitized romance novel or the Bible. If she ran into a graphic sex scene in her romance novels, she threw the book in the fireplace.
When my dad wasn’t drinking or gambling, his nose was buried in mysteries and westerns he bought mostly from a used book store for a dime or less. He did stop drinking before he turned 60, but he never stopped smoking tobacco. That killed him early at 79. I suspect he stopped cheating on my mother when his thing stopped working thanks to the booze and tobacco.
What I remember the most from my dad was his repeated, “Why vote? All politicians are crooks.” My parents never voted. I found out much later that my mother carried guilt with her all the time because her father molested her when she was a teenager. She blamed herself but ran away from home at 14 and supported herself after that starting as a waitress.
Lloyd,
I’m sorry to hear about your difficult childhood. Still, I believe the mechanism for becoming a competent reader is first learning words and concepts orally. Without this starter kit, comprehension breaks down and reading becomes a discouraging and arduous struggle. With the starter kit, the reading is feasible and the reading itself adds to the knowledge base, which in turn enables reading of more difficult texts. But it’s the prior knowledge, not some growing reading “muscle”, that unlocks the meaning of texts. Studies show that you must be able to recognize at least 95% of the words if you’re going to have a shot at inferring the meaning of the other words. If you do recognize 95%+ of the words, you will learn the other unfamiliar words, and thereby add to the base vocabulary in your brain. Though your parents didn’t talk much, do you think that when they did talk, their talk might have been freighted with empowering vocabulary knowledge? While your dad dismissed politics, he did at least bring up the subject. That doesn’t happen in every family.
If you disagree with this theory, can you explain precisely what WAS the mechanism that triggered you to become a good reader?
Nothing to be sorry about. In life, everything is relative, and the environment I grew up in was “my normal”. I had nothing else to compare it to since I didn’t live with anyone else. My parents world was my world. I had an older brother and sister from my mother’s first marriage and another half sister from my dad’s first marriage, who was illiterate, spent 15 years of his life in and out of prison before he died at 64. He worked poverty wage jobs, hard labor, and was exposed to toxic chemicals. He chain drank. He chain smoked. He did drugs. I still loved my brother, who was married twice and had 7 children with his two wives. Most of them grew up just like him.
My parents were a product of the world and environment they grew up in, the great depression. I still love them. I don’t blame them for anything. They did the best job they were equipped for in raising me. My dad’s mother died soon after he was born and in his grief, his father went off on a drunk that lasted several decades. My dad ended up going from Illinois to California to be raised by an aunt. The great depression, jobs that paid only poverty wages, all had a roll in my dad’s life as he drew up. His first job at 14 was cleaning out horse stalls at Santa Anita after he dropped out of school.
What was the single element that led to me becoming an avid reader? Seeing my parents reading every night after they were both home from work and dinner was done.
The TV would be there droning on while all three of us read and mostly ignored “I Love Lucy”, a movie, or some silly game show. My mother sat on a couch and read. My dad sat in a stuffed chair at the other end of the room and read. I lay on the floor and read. Not a lot of talking. Any conversations I had was with my friends at school, and I spent a lot of time in the town or school library where it was quiet and not a lot of talking went on. I even worked as a student assistant in the high school library for three years.
I went to work washing dishes nights and weekends at 15 and sat in classrooms on school days reading and doing just enough school work to scrape by. By then the only topic was girls, girls, and more girls, and that wasn’t intellectual, but it never reached the level of Donald Trump’s “locker room talk” or his behavior with the women he groped. Trump is a total pig and should be living in a pig pen.
I loved to read what I wanted to read, and hated school for most of k-12. With no desire to go to college, I joined the Marines out of high school and fought in Vietnam. After leaving the military, I went to college on the GI Bill, and it was in college where I was introduced to intellectualism. That didn’t change my reading habits.
If I hadn’t been an avid reader, I would never have been able to earn an AS, BA in journalism, a teaching credential after a year long urban residency, and an MFA in writing. All it took was reading hundreds/thousands of books to give me the literacy level to do college level work.
This remains relevant today.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/alan-a-video-junkie/81302474/
Lloyd Lofthouse up at 1:36 PM: you nailed it. We had a neighbor who used to marvel at how we were able to get our toddler, then primary school-aged daughter to go to bed. We simply had a schedule & a routine…& no Atari (that was the thing at the time), no tv in her bedroom, & always a bedtime story–read by me or her dad or by her to us–& books, toys & writing & drawing supplies for the “down” time. Anyway, milder tech/games, I think, back then–problem w/said neighbor’s kids were Atari, addiction to Mario Bros. & tv in bedroom.
Finally, so many violent video games now &, certainly, NOT to be used by, well, children of any disposition. Worst case scenarios, & lesson that must be learned: Sandy Hook shooter, Columbine killers.
I meant to add–most importantly–kudos to these parents for doing everything in their power to help their son (&, in so doing, their younger son, as well). & many thanks to that family for telling their heart-wrenching story.
My daughter has a Chromebook she works in for homework when she has to. As soon as she is done, she closes it and we have to fight her to keep her from reading until morning. Many of the lessons, especially the math lessons, allow for better explanations than traditional textbooks. But who wants to do homework when Harry Potter awaits?
Her father, meanwhile, is sort of addicted to this web site, and I really enjoyed being able to go to Gutenberg and download Locke’s Two Treatiese on Civil Government.
So I am a bit attached to the iPad and she reads while she brushes her teeth.
I would like to seize this opportunity to go further about addiction in many other aspects in reality.
Addiction will cause people to behave dangerously and inhumanely.
Please take a close look at President elect and his new cabinet. Please examine their ADDICTED behaviors through the reflection of their career and their daily interaction with other people, like subordinates, colleagues, and judges in the Supreme Court.
In short, crazy people will deny that they are crazy. In the same vein, addicted people will vehemently declare that they are NOT addicted to money, fame, and sexual fulfillment.
It is up to the INTELLIGENT and PERSEVERING educators to lead the mass into action which will prevent ADDICTED GOVERNMENT to loot and rob the tax payers’ fund into private coffer. Back2basic