At the California Academy for Liberal Studies Early College High School at Los Angeles, Shannon Meyer threw a challenge to her students. They had to survive an entire week without any electronic devices. That means, no TV, no Ipod, no Blackberrys, no Facebook, and no cellphones. (via)
“Kids these days are wired to everything but connected to nothing meaningful” says Meyer. If she sees a student in class take a little too long searching for a pencil in a backpack, she knows what's really going on.
"These kids are really bright, but they're quickly bored," Meyer says. She believes the constant electronic stimulation and sensory overload make kids ill-equipped to follow the slower rhythms of classroom dialogue or to interact with one another in meaningful ways.
So, how did they cope with the ordeal that was worse than the torture at Guantanamo Bay?
Cesar Rodriguez knew he was addicted to electronic devices. But the Los Angeles 10th-grader had no idea just how sick he was."I can't stand it," he wrote in his journal on the second day of a one-week attempt to survive without television, iPods, cellphones, BlackBerrys and computers. "I woke up last night but I was still kind of asleep and I was having a dream about my phone and I started to bang my head against the pillow. I AM GOING CRAZY!!!"
Mario Canaba was turned so upside down, he actually played with some of his mother's day-care kids, but described the experience in a single word: "Painful."
Angie Gaytan lost track of the days and had a strange episode of disorientation in which she found herself staring at a piece of chicken
"I felt weird and out of order," Valerie Lira wrote in describing the experience of waking up and not turning on the television.
Daniel Romero read a book for the first time this year.
Lopez actually communicated with an uncle during a rare conversation about swine flu, politics and history.
Jenny Corona connected with her autistic brother, and, to her utter amazement, read an entire Harry Potter book in four days.
Without her headphones blocking out the real world, Flor Salvador heard strange chirping sounds. "I didn't know we had birds!" she wrote in her journal.
Note to self: Must try this experiment at home with teenaged daughters……..
9 comments:
Note to self: Must try this experiment at home with teenaged daughters……..Don't. I'll bet you'll go crazy first. Assuming you're not, already!!!
My kids are only 9 & 7. And I cannot imagine a day with them without TV, internet etc. etc. to keep them occupied. :-)
Vee Cee; you have a point.
Raj - why only teenagers ? How many of the so called grown up and responsible executives these days can survive a week without a mobile / bberry, laptop ? When you travel by air ( or for that matter even by rail ), almost all open up their laptop or yap on their mobile till the hostess asks them to shut up. Also, the moment the plane lands, you find folks flipping their mobiles to hook up for transport. How on earth did they manage during pre mobile days ? End of the day the "toy" factor is more than the actual "utility" factor...me thinks.
Priya Sivan, don't know how that comment got deleted. Mobile phones are fine, but not when it is used simultaneously with iPhone, TV, Facebook....
Balaji: Yeah, the kids are better. Big boys need their toys....
An escalation of the kind of restrictions we'd like to impose on, to balance the ups and highs, with a horrible low.
The pre mobile days eg. is Ghandhiji practicing Maun Vrat, once a week.
I dont know if we have to impose such terrible lows artificially, of course, may be Man's deed isn't an average by itself, but a netting of ups and downs. A better way of justifying such ideas is may be- as Morgan freeman says in Shawshank Redemption- "he did it just to feel normal". Ought to keep redefining what normal life is :)
Deleted my comment in order to rewrite it. Mobile phone is fine if used properly. But like any other gadget, it has its disadvantages, like, constant texting leads to back pain, blisters in fingertips and thumb, and the extra features like walkman and radio affects eardrums. Ipods and social networks (eg:Facebook) adds fuel to the fire.
quartyc : "may be Man's deed isn't an average by itself, but a netting of ups and downs:. That's nicely put.Let's have some wild highs and deep lows!
Priya: My daughters' moibile phones add fuel to the fire and add to my expenses as well!
Maybe classrooms need to modernize and meet the needs of the changing students. Instead of trying to limit the students & restrict the global communications of these adolescents; education should be teaching them how to effectively communicate in an rapidly evolving world. As media expert Marshall McLuhan once said, "The Medium is the Massage" and teachers today are ill equipped to do their job effectively. Work with technology not against it.
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