Digital Nation

I’ve seen parts of this program before but really did not think much about it as I had much less interest then.  Now, as I watched the chapters, I thought there was little that was really new about the stories.  These are the same old complaints from older people about younger people.  Yes, kids are addicted to games and my sister-in-law is addicted to gambling.  My parents became addicted to the ding, ding, and ding of the Casino too after retiring.  That, I never understood.  But then, I am cynical and I think I am savvy.  I know that I am naïve sometimes.  My brother used to drive his kids to a video game store on Saturday about 9:00AM and pick them up at about 9:00PM.  I never understood that either.  However, as a teen, I played pin ball for hours on end.  So what is different?  Well, we didn’t have pinball machines in school for one thing.  I think the reason that we don’t ban games from school computers is because we want to have something to keep bad kids from driving us crazy.  So, we let them and their bad behavior win.  What choice do we have?  It’s hard to expel them, right?  There is little we can do to control them otherwise, right?  If that is so, then why is it that when bad kids are placed in alternative programs as a last chance for schooling, they generally exhibit near perfect socialization?

I think when they get to this point students experience a catharsis and finally understand the real long-term consequences of poor behaviors.  We are making terrible mistakes with kids in some schools.  We are teaching bad behaviors.  Elementary teachers work so hard to socialize little kids.  Then, when we get them to middle school, they are allowed to revert to selfish, disrespectful behavior.  Watch a cat with her kittens.  Swift, harsh correction works and is a salvation. 

An analogy of the way we wrong kids is when we drug them after making them overactive with sugar.  Kids don’t need these drugs and I believe they hurt way more than they help.

I also do not agree with the teacher interviewed in the video report who said that kids should be allowed to multitask, and that they should be trained to multitask.  Evidence to support my opinion is the following portions of the video discussing the decline in reading and writing abilities of students.  And, a quick perusal of our class blogs supports the contention that the younger generation is less able to carry on a sustained train of thought and write about it.  If I were like them, I would have finished the course last week.  How many of our class blogs can really be labeled as essays?

Does the I add to longevity?

No, it does not!  Any activity that keeps a body interested and happy in life extends it.  Have you known people who just gave up?  My friend, Bob Jones, died one night when he was not ill (he was 88).  But, he was lonely because all of his friends including his wife had died.  He was not particularly entertained by his children and only had one grandchild.  I drank the whiskey that he had hidden under his bed after he was hauled away and after we all came in from deer hunting.  Now, my neighbor is in her mid-80s and you would never know it because she is so active.  She knows little of the I.

Is the fantasy world new?

I really don’t think so.  As children we all had our games and other ways to escape and rest our minds from worries.  People played cards at night either at a friends house or at the club.  Others seemed addicted to soap operas on TV.  But, they were not available 24/7 like the I is today.  If there is something new, I believe that it is the extension of childlike fantasy into adult years.  Science fiction writers warned us of this in the 1950s and 1960s.  We were also told that the U.S. economy would go to hell about 2010.  See, these dire predictions never come true.

Virtual Worlds, Etc

I do not believe that video games are emotionally safe learning environments.  The video tried to convince that children really know the difference between reality and fantasy.  They do not.  Many adults do not.  If you kill somebody in a fantasy world and do it over and over, your subconscious can develop dangerous illusions.  This is a form of brainwashing and it’s successfully practiced in many forms such as TV advertising, the socialization of children in public schools and in political messages where people vacation such as the Epcot Center.  In military basic training soldiers are socialized to obey their commanders without questioning.  These examples are not all bad, certainly.  But, how many people have you killed for real?  Or, how many times have you watched people die for real?  These events are usually very sobering and virtual worlds can not simulate it accurately.  A game that did would not be fun.  During the 1960s, there was a sneak preview of a movie in which John Lennin starred playing an English soldier.  This was a very effective anti war movie which the U.S. government banned within 5 days of its release.  You can rent it today, but you can not see what I saw because the scenes that made the movie so effective have been removed.  These were scenes made from real footage of people being killed.  The cameras recorded their faces up close and very personal.  The cameras captured the light leaving their eyes and the terror.  In our society we are removed from these scenes in movies and in reality.  We live in a pseudo-reality where most of us are shielded from the horrible consequences of violent acts.  Several months ago, I watched a computer screen as some of our soldiers unleashed a barrage of 20mm cannon fire from an aircraft in Iraq disintegrating the bodies of several unsuspecting people on the ground below.  Were they guilty of something?  We’ll never know.  For me, the experience of spectator was both sobering and disturbing.  It was not virtual.  It was real!  Think about the word, sobering.  Have we been raising successive cohorts of stupefied youth who will be incapable of handling reality as adults?  Interesting, Cicero has written significant thoughts about this very subject in his letter to Terrentia.  He, as a youth, was protected from the ugly realities of evil men until his father died when he was a teen.  Then, when forced to face evil from unexpected places, he suffered emotionally in ways that he never fully recovered from according to his letter.  His recommendation to us is to teach reality and not to allow children too much fantasy.  Children must be prepared to face realities that they are certain to encounter later in life.  Embrace the good in people but beware of the evil.   

The Digital Nation video highlights and whines about several concerns regarding the use of new technologies and then misses the point.  Does the Internet give people, especially youth, a false sense of reality.  Is virtual reality, fantasy and gaming keeping youth from getting a real education regarding real issues?