News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
We're on tap for a big snowstorm starting tonight. It should be a good weekend to sit by the fire, drink some tea, and read a book.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays on great books, pecans, and local bars.
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Robert Jensen interviews Wes Jackson about his childhood and intellectual influences. As Wes remarks, "My late brother Elmer said to me once, 'You’re always quoting somebody else—don’t you have a mind of your own.' The fact of the matter is that I don’t. No one really does, and if we did it would be a real mess."
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Rebekah Curtis commends the recent adoption of household liturgies: "Households run on order, but they are quickened by joy. Families need days to look forward to, a reason to clear clutter this afternoon, little things to brighten weeks without big things."
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Elizabeth Stice questions the hype around digital textbooks. She argues that "there are many reasons for faculty and universities to reject a wholehearted embrace of digital books that have nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with economics and the mission of the university."
I’ve had occasion recently to revisit Kentaro Toyama’s Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology for a book chapter I’m working on. It's an insightful analysis of the ways in which technology tends to amplify social dynamics—for good and ill—rather than magically solving challenges. For example, Toyama writes about the inability of computers to somehow fix educational inequities:
If the Labors of Hercules had an intellectual equivalent, it would be modern education. By the end of high school, we expect a student to know about 60,000 words; read To Kill a Mockingbird; learn the Pythagorean theorem; absorb a national history; and have peered through a microscope. Advanced students will put on Greek tragedies; rediscover the principles of calculus; memorize the Gettysburg Address; and measure the pull of gravity. In effect, students have twelve years to reconstruct the world’s profoundest thoughts—discoveries that history’s greatest thinkers took centuries to hit upon.
This is not casual play, and it requires directed motivation. It doesn’t matter what flashy interactive graphics exist to teach this material unless a child does the hard internal work to digest it. To persevere, children need guidance and encouragement for all the hours of a school day, at least nine months of the year, sustained over twelve years. Electronic technology is simply not up to the task. What’s worse, it distracts students from the necessary effort with blingy rewards and cognitive candy. The essence of quality children’s education continues to be caring, knowledgeable, adult attention.