I read in the Daily Mail today a side bar story on page 33 and to be honest it caught my eye and I fell in love with it. At the start of my People and Politics course our lecturer told us to create a blog and then update it frequently, well my opinion on this was that it was a great idea.
The story was that teenagers prefer blogging to the classic reading list of books to help further their intellectual minds. The poll found that 11-14 year olds pore over celebrity riddles magazines such as Heat and Bliss which base their population on the lifestyle format. The survey was carried out by the National Year of Reading by the social networking site Piczo; this website contains many blogs man made websites by teenagers.
1,340 youngsters who took part in the poll and admitted they had been told off by an adult who taught they were not reading ‘proper’ literature… but I put this question to you; what can be called proper literature nowadays? In the generation we are in now New Media Technologies, online Journalism
There are however some books that the survey should teenagers liked including Happy Potter and The Diary of Anne Frank, the least liked books read by teenagers are anything to do with homework or books with more then 100 pages… but I guess university students and teenagers have something in common, they hate to read pages and pages of black and white words printed on paper. I am very thankful that blogs give a teenager the opportunity to voice their opinions, fears, worries and loves to anyone who is willing to log on and read what they have written. It is the best and only way that helps those students further their speech and intelligence and no other person other then their peers give better criticism.
The Director of the National Tear of Reading insisted: “We should all appreciate that many young people are reading creatively, parents need to accept that their children prefer to read online resources rather then read through a book.” I think he is correct and if any of what has been shown then there is one simple statement…. Isn’t reading still reading, no matter what material it is?
One Comment
Yeah – my own kids are like that. They are v.intelligent and doing v.well at school (Boast, boast – proud parent) but they are on the net big-time to an extent that most of their parental generation would have no idea (talking to students and David Dunkley, you see, keeps me young). They also use lots of audio books. They have them on in the background while they are blogging or doing bebo or playing interactive games. That we they can hear like the whole of Great Expectations or The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in one sitting of five hours or something; meaning they can assimilate huge amounts.
Despite the talk of dumbing down, I think there is an intellectual revolution going on.
But what about people who do not have access to broadband, or people to point them at the worthwhile stuff and not the tidal wave of rubbish on then net?
I think that the respect for reading and writing will persist for a long time however, a but like Latin and Greek were taught in grammar schools and used by doctors long after this was actually needed.
Culture I think always lags behind technology because people are naturally conservative with a small C). Others of course have a vested interest supremacy of in the written word – eg schoolteachers.