Too Dumb For Complex Texts? Not Necessarily...

Earlier in the year, we read an article called "Too Dumb for Complex Texts?" which essentially argued that the current (and future) generations of high school students do not have the ability nor attention capacity to read scholarly texts required in college courses. The article raises some interesting points- I agree that we are shifting more as a society towards "skimming" while in-depth reading is falling by the wayside. We (as in students) are taking in a far greater quantity of information at a far more rapid pace than in generations past, and consequently, we quickly lose interest or simply skim for important points in longer, more complicated texts. Is this attributable to social media? Are we all just Twitter junkies who can't stay focused for more than a few seconds? Personally, I don't think so- in my opinion, it's a simple matter of cost/benefit analysis; why invest a large amount of attention and energy learning about one particular topic when that energy could be spent learning about 10 different things in the same time span? There's so much interesting and engaging information on the Internet, and I don't think our generation is any "dumber" than those in the past, we are simply curious individuals, and would much rather get the main idea of something and move on rather than become experts on a topic we don't particularly care for.

Unless you are extremely interested in a given topic, complex scholarly texts like those mentioned in the article are inherently boring, no matter how old you are. I wrote a research paper my sophomore year at TCU on England's economy during the Hundred Years' War- I poured over old books and research on the subject, spending hours in the library trying to find the information I needed. It was a challenge for me to stay focused while doing all the reading I did, and while the article would suggest it's because my brain functions differently than my parents' do, I think the real reason is that I just didn't care about the topic and I didn't find it relevant at all to what I want to learn in college and pursue in my post-grad career. I had to do the reading, and I did, but in the back of my mind was the constant question: "Why?"

What I'm getting at here is that there's no going back to the old ways now- whether or not students are getting "dumber" because they can't read complex texts is irrelevant, because that trend is not going to revert back any time soon. If anything, what I think needs to change is the organization of college courses. Unless the student is in a major-specific course they are actually interested in pursing, I think it's inadvisable for professors to assign complex texts that the student will inevitably just skim for key points. English majors don't sign up for upper-division Engineering classes, Biology majors don't sign up for upper-division Economics classes, so why should incoming students be expected to read complex texts if they are not necessarily interested/skilled in the subject in question?

Reader Interview Synopsis

There were some interesting similarities, but more importantly, some interesting differences between the responses on my reader surveys. Reading habits are a fascinating topic, and from my experience, I think that all ends of the spectrum are represented in my age group. I have friends and family that read almost every day, and can burn through books in as quickly as a week. I also have friends that probably haven’t picked up a book since they had to read “The Great Gatsby” in our senior year of high school. While that degree of difference wasn’t necessarily reflected in the 4 surveys I conducted over the course of the past week, I think that the reading habits of college students in general are widely varied.

                First and foremost, all four of my respondents stated that they considered themselves as someone who likes to read. However, all four had different genres of literature that they preferred to read for pleasure; nonfiction, historical fiction, fantasy, magazines, fiction, comedy and war novels, were all mentioned once throughout the surveys. There was also a wide range of responses for the number of hardbound books my respondents had, ranging from 4 to 60+. What this seems to suggest is that the number of physical books an individual has does not necessarily reflect reading habits. Whether or not this can be attributed to increasing usage of technology or simply due to the fact that they are all college students I can’t confidently say one way or the other, but interestingly enough, the individual who only had “3-4” books spent the least amount of time on social media, the least amount of time watching TV, listed reading as one of his favorite forms of relaxation/entertainment, and stated that he/she normally reads “until I fall asleep.”

                It was a commonly-held opinion among my respondents that reading is an important societal endeavor, with ¾ suggesting that reading has major educational or developmental implications. What that specific benefit is, however, is another story; my respondents seemed to have a difficult time with the question: “The word literary refers to . . .” giving responses that ranged simply from “books” to “teaching/emphasizing proper punctuation and grammar.” The responses to the question about poetry were also varied, and no clear consensus was evident between the responses. My take on these two findings is that reading is a personal characteristic with personal implications. It means something different to each individual depending on their experiences and their personality. However, while it may be a confusing or difficult topic to eloquently describe and discuss, the findings here are clear—reading is important to the respondents in my survey, and in my opinion, that sentiment is fairly commonly held amongst college students.

Writing on the Wall

So far, I have really enjoyed reading Tom Standage's Writing on the Wall: Social Media- The First 2,000 Years. I think it is an interesting take on the concept of social media, and one that is particularly relevant given the astronomical rise of modern social media over the course of the past decade. In the text, Standage argues that the idea of social media is intrinsically tied to humanity's need for self-expression, and asserts that social media, along with its societal connotations and implications on the human psyche (positive and negative), are not new concepts; in fact, Standage argues, the practice of "sharing" information amongst social networks is as old as writing itself. As Standage includes in the text, famous scholars like Socrates were concerned with the availability and accessibility of media as far back as the ancient Greeks: "[people would become] hearers of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear omniscient and will generally know nothing." This quote sounds eerily similar to the qualms we (read: young adults) hear almost daily from our parents, professors, and employers- they think that the ability to share opinions and connect with others through social media is somehow making us ignorant, shallow, and dumb, as if sending a meaningless Tweet or Facebook status is indicative of our personal and academic potential. While to some degree the question of shallowness has some validity--we are all guilty of "manufacturing our online image,"--the connection to the past and the overall conclusion that modern social media is simply the inevitable progression of technology is refreshing to hear. For once, our ancestors are condemned rather than the current generation.

The sections of Writing on the Wall that I found most interesting, however, were the comparisons of ancient social media to modern social media. Standage mentions graffiti in Pompeii, comparing them to wall posts, and suggests that Luther's 95 theses "went viral," to name a few examples. While the connections may be a bit far-fetched in some instances due to the vastly different technical processes, there is definitely some theoretical validity to the comparisons. What I would be interested in reading about is how experts think social media will progress in the future. 1,000 years from now, will people look back on social media of our era the same way we look back on the eras of Socrates and Luther? What more could be done that would revolutionize social media? We can already instantaneously communicate with individuals across the world, does this mean we have reached the peak of social media? I think it is an interesting topic to think about, and I look forward to our class discussions on the topic.