About The Dumbest GenerationThis shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today’s underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture.For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more aware, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports from the National Endowment for the Arts, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map.
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American culture and democracy.Over the last few decades, how we view adolescence itself has changed, growing from a pitstop on the road to adulthood to its own space in society, wholly separate from adult life. This change in adolescent culture has gone hand in hand with an insidious infantilization of our culture at large; as adolescents continue to disengage from the adult world, they have built their own, acquiring more spending money, steering classrooms and culture towards their own needs and interests, and now using the technology once promoted as the greatest hope for their futures to indulge in diversions, from MySpace to multiplayer video games, 24/7.Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up? Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents a portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies. The Dumbest Generation pulls no punches as it reveals the true cost of the digital age—and our last chance to fix it.
About The Dumbest GenerationThis shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today’s underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture.For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more aware, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports from the National Endowment for the Arts, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote.
They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American culture and democracy.Over the last few decades, how we view adolescence itself has changed, growing from a pitstop on the road to adulthood to its own space in society, wholly separate from adult life. This change in adolescent culture has gone hand in hand with an insidious infantilization of our culture at large; as adolescents continue to disengage from the adult world, they have built their own, acquiring more spending money, steering classrooms and culture towards their own needs and interests, and now using the technology once promoted as the greatest hope for their futures to indulge in diversions, from MySpace to multiplayer video games, 24/7.Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up? Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents a portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies. The Dumbest Generation pulls no punches as it reveals the true cost of the digital age—and our last chance to fix it.
Praise“If you’re the parent of someone under 20 and read only one non-fiction book this fall, make it this one. Bauerlein’s simple but jarring thesis is that technology and the digital culture it has created are not broadening the horizon of the younger generation; they are narrowing it to a self-absorbed social universe that blocks out virtually everything else.”-Don Campbell, USA Today“An urgent and pragmatic book on the very dark topic of the virtual end of reading among the young.”-Harold Bloom“Never have American students had it so easy, and never have they achieved less. Bauerlein delivers this bad news in a surprisingly brisk and engaging fashion, blowing holes in a lot of conventional educational wisdom.”-Charles McGrath, The New York Times“It wouldn’t be going too far to call this book the Why Johnny Can’t Readfor the digital age.”– Booklist“Throughout The Dumbest Generation, there are. Keen insights into how the new digital world really is changing the way young people engage with information and the obstacles they face in integrating any of it meaningfully. These are insights that educators, parents, and other adults ignore at their peril.”-Lee Drutman, Los Angeles Times.
Slow reading counterbalances Web skimmingBy MARK BAUERLEINWhen Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, tested 232 people for how they read pages on screens, a curious disposition emerged. Dubbed by The New York Times 'the guru of Web page 'usability,' Nielsen has gauged user habits and screen experiences for years, charting people's online navigations and aims, using eye-tracking tools to map how vision moves and rests. In this study, he found that people took in hundreds of pages 'in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.' It looks like a capital letter F. At the top, users read all the way across, but as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page. Near the bottom, eyes move almost vertically, the lower-right corner of the page largely ignored.
It happens quickly, too. 'F for fast,' Nielsen wrote in a column. 'That's how users read your precious content.' The F-pattern isn't the only odd feature of online reading that Nielsen has uncovered in studies conducted through the consulting business Nielsen Norman Group (Donald A. Norman is a cognitive scientist who came from Apple; Nielsen was at Sun Microsystems). A decade ago, he issued an 'alert' entitled 'How Users Read on the Web.'
It opened bluntly: 'They don't.' In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news feeds, Nielsen exclaimed, 'Reading' is not even the right word.' The subjects usually read only the first two words in headlines, and they ignored the introductory sections. They wanted the 'nut' and nothing else.
A 2003 Nielsen warning asserted that a PDF file strikes users as a 'content blob,' and they won't read it unless they print it out. A 'booklike' page on screen, it seems, turns them off and sends them away. Another Nielsen test found that teenagers skip through the Web even faster than adults do, but with a lower success rate for completing tasks online (55 percent compared to 66 percent). Nielsen writes: 'Teens have a short attention span and want to be stimulated.
That's also why they leave sites that are difficult to figure out.' For them, the Web isn't a place for reading and study and knowledge.
It spells the opposite. 'Teenagers don't like to read a lot on the Web.
They get enough of that at school.' Those and other trials by Nielsen amount to an important research project that helps explain one of the great disappointments of education in our time. I mean the huge investment schools have made in technology, and the meager returns such funds have earned. Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, money has poured into public-school classrooms. At the same time, colleges have raced to out-technologize one another. But while enthusiasm swells, e-bills are passed, smart classrooms multiply, and students cheer — the results keep coming back negative.
When the Texas Education Agency evaluated its Technology Immersion Pilot, a $14-million program to install wireless tools in middle schools, the conclusion was unequivocal: 'There were no statistically significant effects of immersion in the first year on either reading or mathematics achievement.' When University of Chicago economists evaluated California schools before and after federal technology subsidies (the E-Rate program) had granted 30 percent more schools in the state Internet access, they determined that 'the additional investments in technology generated by E-Rate had no immediate impact on meas-ured student outcomes.'
In March 2007, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance evaluated 16 award-winning education technologies and found that 'test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using selected reading and mathematics software products.' Last spring a New York State school district decided to drop its laptop program after years of offering it. The school-board president announced why: 'After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none.' Those conclusions apply to middle-school and high-school programs, not to higher education (which has yet to produce any similarly large-scale evaluations). Nevertheless, the results bear consideration by those pushing for more e-learning on campuses.Backers, providers, and fans of new technology explain the disappointing measures as a matter of circumstance.
Teachers didn't get enough training, they say, or schoolwide coordination was spotty, parents not sufficiently involved. Maybe so, to some extent, but Nielsen's studies indicate another source. Digitized classrooms don't come through for an off-campus reason, a factor largely overlooked by educators. When they add laptops to classes and equip kids with on-campus digital tools, they add something else, too: the reading habits kids have developed after thousands of hours with those same tools in leisure time.To teachers and professors, a row of glistening new laptops in their classroom after a dozen years with nothing but chalk and blackboard, or a podium that has been transformed from a wooden stand into a multimedia console, can appear a stunning conversion. But to the average freshman walking through the door and finding a seat, it's nothing new.
Our students have worked and played with computers for years. The Horatio Alger Association found that students in high school use the Internet four and a half hours per week for help with homework (The State of Our Nation's Youth, 2008-2009), while the National School Boards Association measures social networking at nine hours per week, much of it spent on homework help. The gap between viewpoints is huge. Educators envision a whole new pedagogy with the tools, but students see only the chance to extend long-established postures toward the screen. If digitized classrooms did pose strong, novel intellectual challenges to students, we should see some pushback on their part, but few of them complain about having to learn in new ways.Once again, this is not so much about the content students prefer — Facebook, YouTube, etc. — or whether they use the Web for homework or not. It is about the reading styles they employ.
They race across the surface, dicing language and ideas into bullets and graphics, seeking what they already want and shunning the rest. They convert history, philosophy, literature, civics, and fine art into information, material to retrieve and pass along.That's the drift of screen reading. Yes, it's a kind of literacy, but it breaks down in the face of a dense argument, a Modernist poem, a long political tract, and other texts that require steady focus and linear attention — in a word, slow reading. Fast scanning doesn't foster flexible minds that can adapt to all kinds of texts, and it doesn't translate into academic reading. If it did, then in a 2006 Chronicle survey of college professors, fully 41 percent wouldn't have labeled students 'not well prepared' in reading (48 percent rated them 'somewhat well prepared'). Dazzle fusion drivers windows 7.
We would not find that the percentage of college graduates who reached 'proficiency' literacy in 1992 was 40 percent, while in 2003 only 31 percent scored 'proficient.' We would see reading scores inching upward, instead of seeing, for instance, that the percentage of high-school students who reached proficiency dropped from 40 percent to 35 percent from 1992 to 2005.And we wouldn't see even the better students struggling with 'slow reading' tasks. In an 'Introduction to Poetry' class awhile back, when I asked students to memorize 20 lines of verse and recite them to the others at the next meeting, a voice blurted, 'Why?' The student wasn't being impudent or sullen. She just didn't see any purpose or value in the task. Canny and quick, she judged the plodding process of recording others' words a primitive exercise.
Besides, if you can call up the verse any time with a click, why remember it? Last year when I required students in a literature survey course to obtain obituaries of famous writers without using the Internet, they stared in confusion.
Checking a reference book, asking a librarian, and finding a microfiche didn't occur to them. So many free deliveries through the screen had sapped that initiative.This is to say that advocates of e-learning in higher education pursue a risky policy, striving to unite liberal-arts learning with the very devices of acceleration that hinder it. Professors think they can help students adjust to using tools in a more sophisticated way than scattershot e-reading, but it's a lopsided battle. To repeat, college students have spent thousands of hours online acquiring faster and faster eyes and fingers before they even enter college, and they like the pace. It is unrealistic to expect 19-year-olds to perch before a screen and brake the headlong flight, even if it is the Declaration of Independence in hypertext coming through, not a buddy's message.Some educators spot the momentum and shrug their shoulders, elevating screen scanning to equal status with slow reading. A notable instance occurred last year, when in an essay in The New York Times, Leah Price, a professor of English at Harvard University, criticized a report from the National Endowment for the Arts — 'To Read or Not to Read' (to which I contributed) — precisely for downgrading digital scanning. Her article contained some errors of fact, such as that the 2004 NEA report 'Reading at Risk' excluded nonfiction, but correctly singled out the NEA distinction between screen reading and print reading.
To Price, it's a false one: 'Bafflingly, the NEA's time-use charts classify 'e-mailing' and 'surfing Web sites' as competitors to reading, not subsets of it.' Indeed, she said, to do so smacks of guile: 'It takes some gerrymandering to make a generation logging ever more years in school, and ever more hours on the BlackBerry, look like nonreaders.'
(In truth, high-school students do no more in-class reading today than they did 20 years ago, according to a 2004 Department of Education report.)What we are seeing is a strange flattening of the act of reading. It equates handheld screens with Madame Bovary, as if they made the same cognitive demands and inculcated the same habits of attention. It casts peeking at a text message and plowing through Middlemarch as subsets of one general activity.
And it treats those quick bursts of words and icons as fully sufficient to sustain the reading culture. The long book may go, Price concluded, but reading will carry on just as it did before: 'The file, the list, the label, the memo: These are the genres that will keep reading alive.' The step not taken here is a crucial one, namely to determine the relative effects of reading different 'genres.' We need an approach that doesn't let teachers and professors so cavalierly violate their charge as stewards of literacy. We must recognize that screen scanning is but one kind of reading, a lesser one, and that it conspires against certain intellectual habits requisite to liberal-arts learning.
The inclination to read a huge Victorian novel, the capacity to untangle a metaphor in a line of verse, the desire to study and emulate a distant historical figure, the urge to ponder a concept such as Heidegger's ontic-ontological difference over and over and around and around until it breaks through as a transformative insight — those dispositions melt away with every 100 hours of browsing, blogging, IMing, Twittering, and Facebooking. The shape and tempo of online texts differ so much from academic texts that e-learning initiatives in college classrooms can't bridge them. Screen reading is a mind-set, and we should accept its variance from academic thinking. Nielsen concisely outlines the difference: 'I continue to believe in the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes. I just don't believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let's praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire — or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector,' he says.
'We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to make sense of the facts.'
So let's restrain the digitizing of all liberal-arts classrooms. More than that, given the tidal wave of technology in young people's lives, let's frame a number of classrooms and courses as slow-reading (and slow-writing) spaces. Digital technology has become an imperial force, and it should meet more antagonists. Educators must keep a portion of the undergraduate experience disconnected, unplugged, and logged off. Pencils, blackboards, and books are no longer the primary instruments of learning, true, but they still play a critical role in the formation of intelligence, as countermeasures to information-age mores. That is a new mission for educators parallel to the mad rush to digitize learning, one that may seem reactionary and retrograde, but in fact strives to keep students' minds open and literacy broad.
Students need to decelerate, and they can't do it by themselves, especially if every inch of the campus is on the grid.Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University. His latest book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30), was published by Jeremy P.
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Author by: Mark BauerleinLanguage: enPublisher by: PenguinFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 68Total Download: 581File Size: 47,6 MbDescription: This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings. The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture. For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children.
The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era. That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more aware, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect.
According to recent reports from the National Endowment for the Arts, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American culture and democracy.
Over the last few decades, how we view adolescence itself has changed, growing from a pitstop on the road to adulthood to its own space in society, wholly separate from adult life. This change in adolescent culture has gone hand in hand with an insidious infantilization of our culture at large; as adolescents continue to disengage from the adult world, they have built their own, acquiring more spending money, steering classrooms and culture towards their own needs and interests, and now using the technology once promoted as the greatest hope for their futures to indulge in diversions, from MySpace to multiplayer video games, 24/7. Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up? Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents a portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.
The Dumbest Generation pulls no punches as it reveals the true cost of the digital age—and our last chance to fix it. Author by: Michael GrahamLanguage: enPublisher by: Hachette UKFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 15Total Download: 911File Size: 54,5 MbDescription: Michael Graham has met the enemy, and they is us. Fifty years after the Greatest Generation fought and died on foreign soil to rescue democracy from fascism, the question facing America is Can we survive the Dumbest Generation? Can a nation of uniquely uninformed idiots living in a culture that celebrates stupidity possibly govern themselves?
If the question sounds harsh, you havent read The Dumbest Generation or (author Michael Graham would argue) the Palm Beach Post. From the bumbling balloteers of Florida to the crush of Dumb-and-Dumber culture filling the neighborhood multi-plex, Graham sees a nation of people who should be denied the right to vote in any election not sponsored by TV Guide. Graham, a former-stand-up comic turned GOP political consultant reveals what people inside the election business have known for years: In the America of the year 2001, ignorant voters arent a problem, theyre a target demographic.
They were the foundation and the demise of the ill-fated Gore campaign, and continuing efforts by both political parties to court rather than shun them put American democracy at risk. Author by: Jon HuerLanguage: enPublisher by: Rowman & LittlefieldFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 93Total Download: 395File Size: 40,7 MbDescription: The book explains how America’s consumer capitalism created a generation of mindless citizens, steeped in the ever-present rounds of entertainment and distraction, who found their leader in Donald Trump.
The Dumbest Generation Book
Riding the wave of white populism, Trump challenges Corporate America and its entrenched control of the American Masses. Author by: Sharon M. KayeLanguage: enPublisher by: Open CourtFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 72Total Download: 750File Size: 47,6 MbDescription: The Onion, with its unique brand of deadpan satirical humor, has become a familiar part of the American scene.
The newspaper has a readership of over a million, and reaches millions more with its spin-off books and Onion News Network. The Onion has shown us that standard ways of thinking about the news have their grotesque and silly side, and this invites philosophical examination. Twenty-one philosophers were commissioned to provide witty philosophical perspectives on just what makes the Onion so truthful and insightful. Former Governor Sarah Palin reported: “I just couldn’t put it down. The Onion and Philosophy is the most exciting book I’ve read since Principia Mathematica.” Are the Onion writers truly cynical, or just cynically faking it? Does the Onion really have a serious point of view on religion? Who cares what Area Man thinks?
If everyone’s so dumb, how come so many Onion readers keep on laughing at how dumb they are? Author by: Don TapscottLanguage: enPublisher by: McGraw Hill ProfessionalFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 89Total Download: 245File Size: 51,7 MbDescription: SELECTED AS A 2008 BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST The Net Generation Has Arrived. Are you ready for it? Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace.
They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital-and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay. The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer: This is your field guide. A fascinating inside look at the Net Generation, Grown Up Digital is inspired by a $4 million private research study. New York Times bestselling author Don Tapscott has surveyed more than 11,000 young people.
Instead of a bunch of spoiled “screenagers” with short attention spans and zero social skills, he discovered a remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing. Grown Up Digital reveals: How the brain of the Net Generation processes information Seven ways to attract and engage young talent in the workforce Seven guidelines for educators to tap the Net Gen potential Parenting 2.0: There's no place like the new home Citizen Net: How young people and the Internet are transforming democracy Today's young people are using technology in ways you could never imagine. Instead of passively watching television, the “Net Geners” are actively participating in the distribution of entertainment and information. For the first time in history, youth are the authorities on something really important. And they're changing every aspect of our society-from the workplace to the marketplace, from the classroom to the living room, from the voting booth to the Oval Office.
The Digital Age is here. The Net Generation has arrived.
Meet the future. Author by: Dr. WolfeLanguage: enPublisher by: Xlibris CorporationFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 39Total Download: 738File Size: 52,8 MbDescription: Baby Boomers are lingering in the workplace.
Gen Xers are growing impatient. Gen Ys are knocking at HR’s door in record numbers. And technology, including social media, is transforming the mode and pace of communication.
The workplace has become a potential battlefield between four generations struggling to exert their influence and hold on to their world views and attitudes. This convergence of young, old, and technology is simultaneously creating opportunity and crisis. Uno nessuno centomila english.
In Geeks, Geezers and Googlization, readers will learn from workforce management expert/author Ira S. Wolfe about how each generation defines itself, the unintentional consequences of generational crowding, and how to turn this generational and technology convergence into a strategic opportunity.
“Yes, there have been many books written on the generations. This could be the only one you’ll really need to keep on your shelf.” Beverly Kaye, CEO/Founder Career Systems International “FABULOUS book!!
This will be the best read that any organization can have for their leaders. I just love it! Read it in one sitting!!” Gloria Washington, Regional Training Manager Dollar Tree Stores Inc “The elephant in the room has been exposed. This is a must read for every Company President and HR Professional.” Amos Dienner, HR / Safety Manager Smucker Company.
Author by: Jana Marguerite BennettLanguage: enPublisher by: Bloomsbury PublishingFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 55Total Download: 516File Size: 51,9 MbDescription: The “problem” of the internet has plagued theologians for the past decade: some have claimed it as “gnostic” and evil because it denies the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and lacks serious engagement with others. Some have viewed the internet as presenting good possibilities for theological work because it provides a democratic arena for sharing ideas, unrestricted by traditional hierarchies and concerns. None of these considerations quite capture the problems or benefits that the internet provides.
Jana Bennett reviews critically how Web 2.0 both develops from traditional theology and also how Web 2.0 may change the way traditional theology is done. Web 2.0 spaces do invite many more lay people to participate in theological conversations than in the past, but the conversations frequently become constricted because of the medium. At the same time, Web 2.0 also offers surprising spaces for renewing or revisiting questions that theologians have left aside.
The book explores how theologians and other interested persons might carefully respond, neither totally rejecting nor wholly embracing Web 2.0 technology. Author by: Sarah Himsel BurconLanguage: enPublisher by: Cambridge Scholars PublishingFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 9Total Download: 851File Size: 54,9 MbDescription: Fabricating the Body: Effects of Obligation and Exchange in Contemporary Discourse is comprised of nine chapters that revolve around the body, and more specifically, issues related to identity. The text draws on a variety of criticism—including disability, gender, and psychoanalytic studies—to theorize aspects relevant to the human body historically. For example, Rachel Herzl-Betz’s “A Paratactic ‘Missing Link’: Dorian Gray and the Performance of Embodied Modernity” uses disability studies as a lens through which to examine Oscar Wilde’s literary debt to the atavistic discourse of late-Victorian freak shows. Moving forward in time, Melissa Ames’s chapter, “Bodies of Debt: Interrogating the Costs of Technological Progress, Scientific Advancement, and Social Conquests through Dystopian Literature” is a pedagogy-focused chapter.
In the chapter, Ames discusses a college course in which she asked students to consider contemporary debates, such as cloning, stem cell research, human trafficking, and so forth, in tandem with fictional texts that relate these issues. Ultimately, the class wrestled with the question of: what do we do when human survival and societal progress come at extreme costs? As a whole, the text works to stimulate conversations surrounding the body, and specifically, bodies that can be labeled “indebted.” Fabricating the Body brings together issues of gender, class, and identity, and investigates ethical concerns along with topics related to marginalization and the mind/body split. Ultimately, the text situates the body as a productive space for academic research. Author by: Leigh A. BortinsLanguage: enPublisher by: St.
Martin's PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 70Total Download: 135File Size: 52,7 MbDescription: In the past, correct spelling, the multiplication tables, the names of the state capitals and the American presidents were basics that all children were taught in school. Today, many children graduate without this essential knowledge. Most curricula today follow a haphazard sampling of topics with a focus on political correctness instead of teaching students how to study. Leigh Bortins, a leading figure in the homeschooling community, is having none of it. She believes that there are core areas of knowledge that are essential to master. Without knowing the multiplication tables, children can't advance to algebra. Without mastery of grammar, students will have difficulty expressing themselves.
Without these essential building blocks of knowledge, students may remember information but they will never possess a broad and deep understanding of how the world works. In The Core, Bortins gives parents the tools and methodology to implement a rigorous, thorough, and broad curriculum based on the classical model, including: - Rote memorization to cement knowledge - Systematic learning of geography, historical facts, and timelines - Reading the great books and seminal historical documents instead of adaptations and abridged editions - Rigorous training in math and the natural sciences.