The Importance of Hard-Copy Books
They Can't Be Changed On a Political Whim
As always, feel free to push back on this. I’m not anti-technology. I’m anti-being-manipulated. I’m anti-people-manipulating-the-next-generation . The onlinization of books and information provides for unique and subtle ways of being manipulated.
As Frederick M. Hess said in a recent AEI podcast called Report Card, the greatest innovation in education was the book.
Rick Hess said this in an episode titled “On the Great School Rethink.” The foundation for this re-thinking is the enduring importance of hard copy book.
Here’s the fuller quote from exactly minute 55 of that episode linked above:
“When does technology work well ? Technology works well when it gives kids and teachers more time to do the stuff that drives and deepens learning. So the best edtech I know is the book ... What did the book do that was such great technology ? Before it, the only way you could learn stuff from somebody was by being in the same room with them. Which meant, if you were in a learning environment you sat there and somebody talked at you … And if somebody in your town didn’t know about math or science, you couldn’t learn about it.
What the book did was you could suddenly go home and flip the classroom. You could go home and read and then come and ask questions and get explanations and talk about it. You could read about it even if the person who knew about it lived a thousand miles away.
What that did is that it brought the opportunities for knowledge and understanding and mastery to kids and it created opportunities for teachers and students to build on that. Now even five centuries later, lots of classrooms do this terribly. Kids will be assigned a book to read at home at then they will spend a class, even now in 2023, reading paragraphs aloud because the teacher didn’t trust that they actually did what they were supposed to at home.
I have no idea how AI is supposed to help with that.
The hard copy book is still is the single greatest educational innovation in human history, made even more relevant by the advances in technology. Advances in technology do not automatically , or even probably, result in educational advances, for education requires focus, which is nourished by a freedom from distraction. There are no ads in books, no pop ups, no other tabs, no instant letters (we call them “emails”, or phone texts). If the child has a hard time giving up the devices to concentrate on a book for substantial periods of time, that’s a sign that the devices are undermining the educational habits that form the basis for a free socieity.
I’m going to direct you off site for this one.
Please buy hard-copy , good, large used Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Please have copies of important books in your home.
The space is worth it.
This is a safe link (I checked it and read it carefully). It’s about a guy who doesn’t hate technology (I don’t either), but has his eyes wide open to the tendencies in human nature to let things slide, to put it mildly. Enjoy this short article on the relevance, today, of print encyclopedias. (Thank you Kevin Johnson).
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2023/06/rejoice-its-2023-and-you-can-still-buy-a-22-volume-paper-encyclopedia/2/?fbclid=IwAR2SwbsaNV45Ln0Q-G4Ck0aay7H6S4bzzoXBkGHt6k-593KQgG2LWhX6beE
Warmly,
Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D.
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