Comments on: O NOES teh intertubes R killin ur litracy!!!1 (yes, again)

By: Nathan E. Lilly

Nathan E. Lilly — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:43:55 +0000

Hi Paul,

I co-opted the title for a panel suggestion on this topic to be held at Philcon (I hope you don’t mind). It made the first cut – and most likely will make the second.

By: Paul Raven

Paul Raven — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:05:07 +0000

Not refuting what you’re saying, Mike, but I’d be interested to see figures that confirm the decline in concrete terms. There’s a similar observed slump in the UK, but when you look at the numbers it seems to disappear, which gives the nod to the psychologist’s article again. Sure, for example, more kids drop out of high school now – but don’t a higher percentage of kids go to high school in the first place?

By: ZZMike

ZZMike — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:38:39 +0000

OK, so Plato was down on the youth of his day, and while we may have made it quite a way since then, we peaked a few decades ago, and are doing the roller-coaster bit now. Consider the failure (dropout, flunk out) rate of most schools. Consider the number of high-school graduates who can write a coherent article (very small), or the number of job applicants whose resumes and applications are filled with errors of spelling and grammar (very large).

And that’s just here. Let the developed nations take care of themselves.

The fault lies not in our children, but in our “educators” – almost entirely the teachers unions (in whose pockets Mr Obama seems comfortably situated).

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:21:21 +0000

Balderdash. When I was just a lad in rural Indiana, I had a small local library and read a lot. Now, my daughter has the entire world, and reads a lot. I frankly don’t see a difference. I couldn’t have written fiction and posted it on fanfiction.net for immediate feedback — it just was impossible for me to participate in a literate community that way. And lest you scoff that fanfiction.net is not a literate community, let me introduce you to Exhibit A: New Castle, Indiana, circa 1975.

This is just fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the headlong plunge into the future which we all find exhilarating and inevitable.

Plus, regarding your angst: if there are sites around the Intertubes which contribute to the degradation of our youth, rest assured that Futurismic is not one of those sites.

By: Ali S.

Ali S. — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:06:14 +0000

I can’t say I really agree 100% to this since all one has to do is look at the parts of the World where education and literacy is in demand. Like for instance places in Africa where textbooks and such were nonexistant the Internet allowed many a classroom of kids to learn how to read and such. Of course, there is the exception where some kids (oddly enough in most developed nations) think that with ONLY the Internet they can sidestep learning the basics. Like…literacy. :p

I can attest to this as I’ve seen many classmates fall down the cracks of Internet addiction and speaking in tongues (ie. LOLCat speak). My method of avoiding this? Books. Glorious tomes of knowledge and imagination.