Friday, March 18, 2011
Wordling Ozymandias
I like to play around at Wordle.net. It's pretty fun to see words arranged according to how many times they've been mentioned in a given text. The more frequent the mentions, the larger the word appears. I've created a Wordle image of one of my favorite poems, "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
On Reading and Thinking
So I’m reading David Ulin’s The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, and I must say I agree with much of what he says. I’m not done with the slim book yet, but I’m annotating along the margins like I’m back in grad school.
His argument is that we’re remaining in a superficial intellectual morass, unable to engage in deep critical thinking, unable to follow (much less make) an argument supported by logic and evidence, and unable to deeply concentrate long enough in order to sustain thought. This results from our lack of reading and instead giving into and becoming distracted by the glut of information that’s available on the interwebs.
One of the skills I teach my composition students is the critical evaluation of ideas and argument (and of sources, too). To become literate citizens, we must be able to vet information, especially since there’s so much information available on the internet and not all of it is any good or worthwhile. As I tell my students, just because it’s on the web doesn’t make it credible.
Unfortunately, as each semester passes, it seems as if students are finding it increasingly difficult to evaluate ideas and argument, much less information.
In The Lost Art of Reading, Ulin examines what’s involved in the act of reading, especially the reading of books. Because books tend to be long, we’re forced to slow down, take our time, and actively participate in the narrative unfolding in the book. As a result, we’re forced to acknowledge another perspective, thereby strengthening our empathy skills. Is it any wonder that with the decline in reading, we see an upswing in reality shows--the worst kind of reality shows, at that? We’re finding out that reality shows encourage meanness in their viewers. Even Cracked.com recently featured an article listing academic studies that show civilization’s decline thanks to reality shows.
But what do reality shows and our changing (devolving?) personalities have to do with reading? Is there a connection, somewhere, within the reality that reality shows are increasingly popular while reading is a declining activity? Is there a connection within the reality that while people seem to be losing / are losing their ability to critically evaluate information they are also losing their empathy? Empathy has even become a bad word in some circles! I don’t think these events are mutually exclusive, nor do I think they’re random occurrences.
And yet we chatter on.
We’re becoming increasingly unable to sustain a narrative, much less recognize a frame for that narrative. Instead we flit from one “argument” to another, not even able to recognize that some of these so-called arguments are actually false arguments and totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. Take the whole teacher-as-greedy-public employee argument, for instance. Teachers are being blamed for budget shortfalls. They’re accused of feeding from the public trough (disturbing image as it is, with the direct link of teachers to farmyard animals). Their pensions and benefits are being blamed for holes in state budgets. Yet no one is arguing the real topics, namely that excessive tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations are what’s destroying the economy. No one’s talking about how the framers of this false argument are pitting worker against worker in the form of painting teachers as receiving top money for what’s erroneously perceived as a part-time, “cush” job. No one’s talking about how the real issue is academic freedom and the ability to examine controversial ideas (in the college classroom, specifically) without fear of being fired for holding divergent beliefs (tenure ensures faculty the safe space to engage in an exchange of ideas that may be controversial yet are nonetheless necessary for intellectual growth).
As Ulin says, “[W]e are a culture that seems unable to concentrate, to pursue a line of thought or tolerate a conflicting point of view” (67). And yet we keep getting demagoguery and fools who take pride in their unchanging attitudes, as if stiffness in mental thought is something to be proud of. To be admired. To be aspired to.
We need to read more. More now than ever, we need to read.
We need to just take the time, sit down with a book, immerse ourselves in the unfolding narrative, and read. We need to turn off the distractions (the television and my iPhone are my two personal distractions). We need to challenge our thoughts, ideas, and preconceptions. We need to work on evaluating lines of thought and argument. To strive for nuanced understandings of the complexities of argument and ideas. We need to work towards being able to hold two or more opposing ideas at the same time while “still retain[ing] the ability to function,” to quote Fitzgerald.
Being mentally flexible while being mentally rigorous IS intelligence. We should strive for intelligence. Enough of this anti-intellectualism crap. And, unfortunately, the more we stray from reading choosing to, instead, veer towards the banality of reality shows and other insipid distractions, the closer we inch to self-annihilation.
His argument is that we’re remaining in a superficial intellectual morass, unable to engage in deep critical thinking, unable to follow (much less make) an argument supported by logic and evidence, and unable to deeply concentrate long enough in order to sustain thought. This results from our lack of reading and instead giving into and becoming distracted by the glut of information that’s available on the interwebs.
One of the skills I teach my composition students is the critical evaluation of ideas and argument (and of sources, too). To become literate citizens, we must be able to vet information, especially since there’s so much information available on the internet and not all of it is any good or worthwhile. As I tell my students, just because it’s on the web doesn’t make it credible.
Unfortunately, as each semester passes, it seems as if students are finding it increasingly difficult to evaluate ideas and argument, much less information.
In The Lost Art of Reading, Ulin examines what’s involved in the act of reading, especially the reading of books. Because books tend to be long, we’re forced to slow down, take our time, and actively participate in the narrative unfolding in the book. As a result, we’re forced to acknowledge another perspective, thereby strengthening our empathy skills. Is it any wonder that with the decline in reading, we see an upswing in reality shows--the worst kind of reality shows, at that? We’re finding out that reality shows encourage meanness in their viewers. Even Cracked.com recently featured an article listing academic studies that show civilization’s decline thanks to reality shows.
But what do reality shows and our changing (devolving?) personalities have to do with reading? Is there a connection, somewhere, within the reality that reality shows are increasingly popular while reading is a declining activity? Is there a connection within the reality that while people seem to be losing / are losing their ability to critically evaluate information they are also losing their empathy? Empathy has even become a bad word in some circles! I don’t think these events are mutually exclusive, nor do I think they’re random occurrences.
And yet we chatter on.
We’re becoming increasingly unable to sustain a narrative, much less recognize a frame for that narrative. Instead we flit from one “argument” to another, not even able to recognize that some of these so-called arguments are actually false arguments and totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. Take the whole teacher-as-greedy-public employee argument, for instance. Teachers are being blamed for budget shortfalls. They’re accused of feeding from the public trough (disturbing image as it is, with the direct link of teachers to farmyard animals). Their pensions and benefits are being blamed for holes in state budgets. Yet no one is arguing the real topics, namely that excessive tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations are what’s destroying the economy. No one’s talking about how the framers of this false argument are pitting worker against worker in the form of painting teachers as receiving top money for what’s erroneously perceived as a part-time, “cush” job. No one’s talking about how the real issue is academic freedom and the ability to examine controversial ideas (in the college classroom, specifically) without fear of being fired for holding divergent beliefs (tenure ensures faculty the safe space to engage in an exchange of ideas that may be controversial yet are nonetheless necessary for intellectual growth).
As Ulin says, “[W]e are a culture that seems unable to concentrate, to pursue a line of thought or tolerate a conflicting point of view” (67). And yet we keep getting demagoguery and fools who take pride in their unchanging attitudes, as if stiffness in mental thought is something to be proud of. To be admired. To be aspired to.
We need to read more. More now than ever, we need to read.
We need to just take the time, sit down with a book, immerse ourselves in the unfolding narrative, and read. We need to turn off the distractions (the television and my iPhone are my two personal distractions). We need to challenge our thoughts, ideas, and preconceptions. We need to work on evaluating lines of thought and argument. To strive for nuanced understandings of the complexities of argument and ideas. We need to work towards being able to hold two or more opposing ideas at the same time while “still retain[ing] the ability to function,” to quote Fitzgerald.
Being mentally flexible while being mentally rigorous IS intelligence. We should strive for intelligence. Enough of this anti-intellectualism crap. And, unfortunately, the more we stray from reading choosing to, instead, veer towards the banality of reality shows and other insipid distractions, the closer we inch to self-annihilation.
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