I, too, have been underwhelmed by this video. Thank you, Jeff. I was
afraid I was alone.
It barely seems to have a coherent thesis and the fragments of ideas
that cluster around the fringe of it are neither new nor very
intersting. For instance, I was an undergraduate before the Web and
certainly before laptops or cell phones were commonly available. Yet 20
years ago I also bought expensive textbooks that I never used and spent
my spare time doing many more things than studying. While I was in
class, I sometimes talked with my neighbors and frequently was not very
interested in what the professor was writing on the board. Honestly, I
wish I hadn't wasted so much time. Nonetheless, learning took place
through engagement with ideas in a range of media (narrower than what's
available today) largely due to my own initiative and to contact with a
few people whom I found intriguing. This is not to say that technology
hasn't wrought some significant changes in societal norms, but merely to
question how far they extend into qualitative measures.
And this popular notion that students today are being prepared for
mysterious careers that we can't even fathom today strikes me as
hopelessly uncritical futurespeak. No doubt rapid changes in technology
will hew out some new fields and subfields that only the most
aggressively forward-looking could imagine now ("technology evangelists"
seem to be proliferating already, though it's not clear to me what they
do). But it seems obvious that soldiers, carpenters, attorneys,
physicians, chemists, engineers, teachers, foreign service officers, and
economists (all professions that date to the 19th century or earlier),
as well as filmmakers, computer programmers, airline pilots, and
nonprofit administrators, all will play significant roles in
ameliorating the social and economic ills alluded to in this video, if
it is to be done at all.
---Bob.
/************************************************/
/* Bob Hassett, Head Librarian */
/* Luther Jackson Middle School (081) */
/* 3020 Gallows Road */
/* Falls Church, Virginia 22042 */
/* (703) 204-8133 */
/* Bob.Hassett@fcps.edu */
/************************************************/
See you in the Library!
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Hastings, Jeff
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 12:43 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: GEN: Vision of students today: Pretty dismal.
Colleagues:
Maybe I'm just in a sour mood--it is a Monday, after all. But, for
whatever reason, I have to say that I was completely unimpressed by the
"Vision of Students Today" video.
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=122
I mean--don't we already know all the proferred "kids these days" memes
inside-out based on what we do for a living? Were there really any
revelations offered up?
Or solutions?
I not only found the ideas pretty tired, but I tended to side with some
of those who left comments about the video on YouTube indicating that
they found it to be basically a montage of chronically bored American
brats; the 'stupid and contagious,' as Cobain once sang.
I mean look: yeah, we all need to stay reasonably hip to the current
zeitgeist and do our best to tap it. But if a student chooses to spend
vastly more time attending to superficial digital chatter (and there was
really no suggestion of it being anything else) than academic substance,
utimately, should that really be my problem?
Instead, I'd rather reciprocate with a most hearty "whatever, dude."
I'm sure we can "outsource" some decent students from parts of the world
that still have reserve stockpiles of ambition.
Jeffrey Hastings,
School Library Media Specialist, Cranky-butt Curmudgeon
Highlander Way Middle School
hastingj at howellschools dot com
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