February 21, 2010
A Book?
“Back in my day, we didn’t have TV. We read books.”
Great, gramps.
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26810211@N06/2914543497/
As an educator, I am constantly shocked by the way in which books do not factor into the life of the average individual. Getting my 7th graders to read books, even books that they choose, is like getting a cat to take a bath. Even my mid-twenties peers consistently choose television shows over reading. This trend has nothing to do with intelligence, it’s simply that books have become an anachronistic form of entertainment and knowledge.
The main idea for today:
The written word is no longer immortal.
Books are an archaic form of acquiring and publishing information. (Case in point: look at me publishing my own thoughts out here on the inter-webs!) Now on the one hand, this can be a good thing: new information can be acquired, and digital sources can be updated immediately. But on the other hand, what is our legacy without the written word? With constant updating of information, the written word-nouveau is only written to be re-written. Thus, the written word is no longer immortal.
It used to be that books were a sign of the wealthy and the educated – an instant status symbol for respect. Libraries were a shrine of academic prostration where literate leaders could convene. Flash forward to the modern era: books are reduced to a ramshackle bookshelf relegated shamelessly to the back of the apartment where they can be hidden, not shared or discussed. My how times have changed: even 100 years ago average people would have given a limb to possess the dusty bookshelf in the back of your apartment. (And yet, I suppose the fact that what was worth a limb 100 years ago is now simply a sinus infection waiting to happen could be called progress – thank you, supply & demand.)
The cause of my [super old-school] lament is that the books at my school seem to be more at home on the floor of the building than on a library shelf. Not only does the newer generation in my classroom fight against the non-digital word, but the written word is so actively disrespected that a book can be kicked unceremoniously from one side of the school to the other and back again; not even worth the time and effort of a spry, young individual to bend over and remove it from harm’s way. The power of books is dead. Welcome to the disposable language of the modern age.
