After reading the New York Times article on technology and how it is taking over and affecting student's lives, I thought of the main character Vishal Singh. Now I do believe there is such a thing as internet/technology addiction, but to try to say that it is the reason he hasn't read his Kurt Vonnegut's book is absolutely ridiculous. World famous chef Bobby Flay nearly flunked out of school and was always disinterested in subjects, was it because of technology? no! it was because his passion and expertise didn't fit in the cookie cutter public education system. Vishal seams the same way to me, he likes making movies, which although there are electives for that, it is not where the importance is stressed. I think that he was a poor example for the article to use in what they were trying to portray. What about kids that just want to work on cars all the time, all day every day? I knew a few kids like this in school, thy were intelligent guys who scraped by in school because it was of no interest to them. I think that there are more distractions than ever for students which may make it harder to focus or concentrate, but to try and place blame on technology, or to use it as an excuse seems a little bizarre to me, what high school kid wants to read Vonnegut anyways?
1 comment:
I agree with you to an extent. Just as you mentioned I know plenty of kids who were very smart but "scraped by" because they weren't interested, but I also knew others who were too enraptured with technology and video games. Apparently, there was a World of Warcraft machine at my branch campus and it had to be removed because a student failed out as a result of his obsession with it. There are countless others whose grades and motivation suffer because they text or search the web for the entirety of class.
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