Is the Web Rescuing Literacy…?
As a follow-up to my recent post on whether Google is making us stupid, I found this article that discusses whether or not the Web actually increases the literacy of our youth — back to the ‘ol Reading at Any Cost idea…
From the Digital Journal:
The pro-Web faction in the debate about literacy are sure that the Web is the salvation of literacy. That’s not totally baseless as an idea, because the Web is very much based on exploring and getting information. Which is more than can be said for compulsorily slogging through the verbal mud of some book which has been forced upon you for reasons you don’t understand, or want to understand.
…In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.
Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.
The worry is that the Internet effectively does away with structures which are common in print media. Instead of a straight line of narrative, the internet produces a series of sources, producing a compounded mass.
That argument’s not all old-fogy logic. Some things need a structure to make sense. Some forms of reason don’t work too well if you don’t know what the premise was, or the answer gets stuck in the middle of the question. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the internet reader will get something wrong, purely on the basis of lack of structure. But the chances of fragmenting information are increased. That would, naturally, be a worry for educators.
The value of internet reading is the issue in question. The National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t seem in any doubt about it:
“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media,” Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., wrote in the report’s introduction, “they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”
So, what do you think? Is the Web making us stupid or saving the literacy of our youth?
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