If you’re reading this (and, hey, you haven’t stopped yet, but don’t look at that squirrel in the corner of your room) (you looked), then you’ve (add jelly to the grocery list) experienced (get that driver’s license soon) the horrors (did you feed the cat, the ferret, the badger, and [where’s the husband <push interrupt onto stack>] the baby? <pop!>) of distracted (wait, whose baby is this, anyways?!) reading. Where was I going with that, and in which tense? Pluperfect?
(Just as an example from true reality, by which I mean something that happened to me, since I started this post I washed about three days worth of dishes, watched a bit of CSI Las Vegas) (and took a shower).
Anyways. For those of us who used to not be on the Internet, because the damn thing only existed in University-land, we may remember reading long-form literary forms: essays, stories, novels, even textbooks. Sit. Down. And. Read. Finish it in one sitting. Remember the pleasures, bookworms? Maybe they’re more devoted than I, but nowadays I have about twenty books in process, because I skip from book to book – one (by Burke) is now at about the 20 year mark. Something about defining the sublime. Anyways. Back to the point. Then there’s the magazines, all the online stuff [place big freakin’ rock right HERE], the glares of my blog-widow, and, oh yeah, work.
OK, OK. Katherine Martinko @ TreeHugger.com points (rather frenziedly) at recent research from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). An excerpt from the summary of their book:
But while PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] results suggest that limited use of computers at school may be better than not using computers at all, using them more intensively than the current OECD average tends to be associated with significantly poorer student performance. ICT [Information and Computer Technology] is linked to better student performance only in certain contexts, such as when computer software and Internet connections help to increase study time and practice.
Katherine found this lovely bit:
Is it any surprise that kids have difficulty staying focused on schoolwork when there are so many other things to do online? Even I, as an adult who works online, feel the same temptation on a regular basis!
That’s me, in a big way. And I find it frustrating to sit down and read a book – there’s always some sort of distraction. So that leads to my thesis: along with learning how to think, and learning all those facts, comes the problem of learning how to focus. Certainly, we’ve tried to medicate our way to a good focus (here is a comparison of ADD/ADHD diagnoses in the USA and France), but given how my formerly good focus has gone to pot because I’ve allowed the distractions to get to me. I know how it used to be; how much harder must it be for kids who’ve never learned what it’s like to be properly focused?
