Drew Asked: At the risk of sounding like a "crotchety old fart", can we set a trend back towards making reading fun, engaging, and not something reserved only for doing research via a wikipedia entry?
I must admit, here at the beginning that I am such a "crotchety old fart": My preferred musical genre is classical...and my preferred medium thereof is vinyl...I smoke a pipe...I play chess...I care about grammar and language. I am an old man.
I mention this only with the humility of a viewpoint that is not entirely disinterested.
That having been said, I am in euphoric agreement with everything Drew mentioned in his blog post.
Literature provides a unique medium through which learning can be achieved. There is a power and durability of a lesson learned via literature that is lost on the ephemeral data of lectures. The lessons strike deeper and last longer. The reader may not even know that she learned something, such is the insidiousness of potent prose. Tolkien and Twain may not teach us algebra, Shakespeare and Poe shall not chemistry show, but the interest incited and the passion provoked is valuable all the more.
The onus of promoting interest in reading comes long before education; it is that of the parents. The obstacle of technology is intimidating. Video games and technology hold the interest of a child without the needed time and effort of the parent. It is, though not solely, for this reason it has become a more dominant hobby. As a child I was allowed neither television nor video games until middle school, and even then, they were introduced quite restrictively. I was turned to books, and I am so glad I was. So setting this trend must begin in the home, though of course, continued in the schools, but I agree strenuously that it is a necessary step.
Question: Despite my antiquated tirades, learning can happen via technology; is there, as I suspect there is, something superior to lessons learned via literature?
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