Re: The troubles

[George Spagna <gspagna@rmc.edu>]

At 12:04 PM 10/7/97 -0700, Leigh Palmer wrote:
> 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.

Indeed - students are neither identical nor interchangeable.  Many do
appreciate the same literature and music which we grew to love, others have
different tastes.  And ... our students are not the ones who produce the
popular culture.  Rather, they are very much consumers of what the
collective we put out there for their consumption.

> 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.

Congratulations  -  our rule was "not on Saturday morning" so my daughters
grew up listening to whatever music my wife and I put on either radio or
stereo.  An eclectic mix, too.

> 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.
I think we also have an obligation to influence the educational enterprise
through which they pass before they come to us.  As Leigh clearly points
out, the world in which our students are growing up is very different from
the one we knew only a few years back.  (Oh, my.  I sound like somebody's
father!)
George Spagna           **********************************************
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