ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠPrompted by an intriguing review in The New Yorker, I've put Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad is Good For You on my summer reading list. According to reviewer Malcolm Gladwell, Johnson posits that popular culture doesn't solely “dumb us down.” In fact, he maintains that various forms of popular culture enhance thinking abilities, particularly one's ability to solve problems fluidly and simultaneously gather and bring meaning to related bits and patterns of information.
ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠJohnson points out that television shows, for example, no longer follow linear, single, excruciatingly simple and slow-paced plot lines. Contemporary shows regularly weave together multiple narrative threads, involving numerous characters and situations. In addition, they also require a lot of what Johnson calls “filling in,” calling on the viewer to tie together constant, indirect “allusions to politics or cinema or pop culture.” Similarly, he asserts, today's videos games are no longer “simple exercises in motor coordination, pattern recognition… and instant gratification. The contemporary video game involves a fully realized world, dense with detail and levels of complexity… They don't have a set of unambiguous rules… Players are required to manage a dizzying array of information and options… [and] have to explore and sort through hypotheses in order to make sense of a game's environment.”
ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠAmidst all the clutter there may indeed be, as Johnson believes, some powerful, even positive, thinking forces at work in the stuff of popular culture. However, I look forward to reading what he makes of all the violence and inappropriate subject matter that forms the substance of so much that constantly bombards our children. I suspect I'll still emerge a believer in great moderation and significant parental guidance when it comes to elementary and middle school children's interaction with much of popular culture.
ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠIn the meantime, The Country School continues unabashedly to believe in the value of a traditional summer change of pace and schedule for children, one that includes a mix of unstructured time, structured activities, and a chance to explore something different. At the same time, there needs to be a regular dose of summer reading, math, and writing if children are to maintain their skills at a level close to what they have achieved by the end of the school year. That is one reason, as you learned in a recent letter from our division heads, we are now requiring summer math work of all students, as well as summer reading. Again, moderation and balance are the keys to children's gaining full benefit from all that summer offers - particularly since the jury is still out on how popular culture impacts the equation.