Adaptation needed to find middle ground over reading

張貼日期：Feb 02, 2011 6:37:42 AM

引自 China Post, January 30, 2011

A few days ago, a very famous and accomplished scholar cautioned the nation's kids against reading materials purely from Internet. The simple text, according to Chi Nan University professor and IEEE fellow Lee Chia-tung, was detrimental to the future generation's literacy due to the fact that writings online were often absent of logical thought, hence unlikely to foster critical thinking.

Lee, a recognized published author himself, was earnest in his encouragement to get the nation's students to fall in love with reading again (perusing classics in lieu of watching the movie and TV adaptations). His admonishments were met with backlash, much of it coming from director and author Giddens Ko. Ko is a new-wave writer who published his first novel online and 50 subsequent others after his work amassed a fervent student following.

With series of books featuring dark characters in perverse circumstances, Ko's running themes of death, horror and absurdity greatly resonated with young audiences, causing many to adapt his work into student films, online video games and other media forms.

In light of Lee's comments, the 33-year-old author backed-up his audience base by hinting that Lee needed to adapt to the times and give due credit to kids riding the technological wave, one that gives birth to manifold forms of self-expression and creativity.

Both authors make a good point — to the point where they both fail to converge and somehow end up missing each other's good intentions. Yes, the nation's youth should read more and Lee's personal favorites (Melville's “Moby Dick,” “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding and “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley to name a few) are great recommendations. Yes, the tech-savvyness of the nation's youth and countless online platforms allow them to come across texts with a literary freedom not enjoyed by previous generations.

One can argue that as long as children are reading, that something out there is holding their interest in the form of the written (or typed) word, this has to be a good thing. However, Lee's argument over “what” is read is valid; continuous exposure to writings absent of logical thought, structure, or even sentences with proper syntax can be harmful to an impressionable, learning mind. As harmful as a diet of only candy, so too is only consuming online “food for thought.”

This version of “Internet literacy” has long been a matter of concern. In the U.S., middle school teachers have watched “Webspeak” escape from cyberspace and Wi-Fi and seep into school essays. “Webspeak,” for the uninitiated, consists of abbreviating words to make for more efficient and expedient online or text communication, often accompanied with a lack of capitalization and punctuation. It might be unimaginable for older generations to see in a paper, “ur” instead of “your,” but that's the reality in many American schools.

Taiwan, and the Chinese language, has its own set of “Webspeak” that is too complicated to translate and innumerate. Might this be what Lee is alluding to, a side effect of only reading things online? While Lee's suggestion of analyzing court documents to get a sense of logical process and conclusions backed by evidence sounds as appealing as memorizing a textbook, it is much more alarming to imagine a classroom of students conversing in a Morse code of truncated sentences.

So how do we synergize the Old Guard with the New Zeitgeist? How do we get students as excited to pick up a copy of Moby Dick as they would the newest “novel” by Giddens Ko? Classrooms in the (developed) world over, as witnessed in Japan, have increasingly incorporated technology in education, knowing that one will not advance without the other and realizing the importance of inculcating knowledge in the language of youths. Adaptation on both sides is a must; once the medium has been agreed upon, perhaps the quality of a classic will speak for itself — on a school-provided iPad, no less.