Here it is for the records. My key gripe is about the writer's rather narrow definition of learning, especially with regards to how the web serves as a learning tool.
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I refer to the commentary by David Brooks, 13 July, “Would you rather be hip or cultivated?”
Given the data that the writer has used to substantiate his piece, we would be inclined to believe his key idea - that there is a distinction between learning from books and learning from the Internet, and that we would be better off dedicating more effort to the first.
But the commentary is flawed in its main point of consideration. Brooks rightfully attempted to dispute the McLuhan theory that the media is the message, but falters again when deciding that the Internet, as it is today, needs to break out of its hip and conversational mode of imparting knowledge, and by implication, align more to books to attain better learning for its readers.
Regardless of the media, learning happens, and the mode it happens in is determined less by where you read, but how you read it.
Granted, internet users are more inclined to respond with their opinions than read out the full measure of the prose before their eyes. However, that should not be conflated with the notion that they do not, even once, process the text and internalise for their own knowledge.
To assume so, as Brooks has done, is to assume that we never, even once, pick up a book, read the prologue or even the first two paragraphs, and decide straight off that it is not worth more of our time.
Brooks might have shed more light on the situation if he has analysed the situation of online learning differently - that our current generation of education has propagated the speedy gathering of information, from books as much as from online sources, without teaching our students to critically analyse it and convert it to a knowledge that can only be uniquely their own.
The fault, then, is not the media, but the context of learning. And this should have been the direction of his investigation - what happens when students bring home books for the summer holidays? And while we congratulate the 800-odd who have done well in their studies because of the free books, have we taken another measure against those who spent their time learning online instead?
In reaching his conclusion without a proper analysis, is Brooks perhaps also guilty of the same hip and conversational culture that he claims plagues the Internet generation?
Conversely, as Brooks pointed out, because the online world defies traditional hierarchies of knowledge, online readers are more aware that their own knowledge, gleaned from all sources, be it in print or in bytes, is as valuable as any other expert's. It is at once a humbling and enlightening realisation, and challenges the mind to be even more open to new ideas and critical analysis.
As such, the Internet is about engendering a mindset change in learning, more so than any book - one way and authoritative - can hope offer. N
