The troubles

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Reading has fallen on hard times at least in quality if not in quantity,
> and getting students to work with a text in light of  competition from TV,
> computers, radio, and other printed media is no mean feat.

I'm getting tired of this particular item of received knowledge. It just
isn't so that TV is responsible for the sorry tastes of our students. We
have many students who can appreciate a good book, good music, etc. They
should not all be categorized as vidiots. The quality of reading that is
available today surely can't be less than it was fifty years ago because
all the literature which existed then still exists! Samuel Clemens is
dead, but Mark Twain still lives.

I don't know how it happened, but we raised four Gegenbeispielen in our
home. I watch more TV than any other member of our family ever did, so
TV was definitely available in our home. The only censoring we did was
to forbid the children to watch game shows ("The Price is Right", etc.),
and they didn't. Evelyn and all four children were hooked on books from
the time they learned to read. I wish I could tell you how that happened;
I can't, but I'm glad it did.

We've got to get over attributing our teaching problems to TV and video
games. More constructive approaches must be taken. In my view the
quality of the students has, indeed, declined. To attribute this to the
causes mentioned is to commit the logical error of *post hoc ergo
propter hoc*, the attribution of causality solely based upon the time
order of two events. Lots more has changed in our society (and these
students' social environments) than just TV. There was TV in my parents'
home since I turned twelve, back in 1947. This is not even a recent
phenomenon. Moreover, finding the cause of our difficulties will not
help alleviate them (unless by some miracle we can, by identifying them,
convince others in the society to attack these problems). I'm afraid we
must learn to teach them as we get them.

Leigh