1 post tagged “affordances”

...this makes it simply impossible now to expect young people to read in the older manner, other than as the learning of a specialised form of reading, where clear reasons are given about that difference, and the purposes for maintaining it.  Where that is not done, the tasks of that learning are made difficult for many and impossible for some.  The screen trains its readers in certain ways, just as the page had trained its readers in its ways:  the latter had its uses and functions and purposes, which were the uses and functions and purposes of the society in which it existed.  The new forms have their uses and functions and purposes in relation to new social, cultural, political and economic demands.  It is not the task of the young to puzzle about and discover that; and it is not surprising if they treat with incomprehension and disdain that which makes no sense, and cannot be made sense of for them, by their parents teachers and others, who can offer only their own incomprehension, annoyance and outrage. 
                                                                           
                                                                                        Gunther Kress, 2003

I read this passage this morning in an article by Gunther Kress.  I've been feeling this leeching sensation all day, which I now understand is the lifeblood being sucked out of me by today's realization of the obsolescence of my beloved literacy of the page. I'm old. I have no idea what they teach these youngsters in certification programs anymore. And do I have the energy to help to reinvent the discipline and pedagogy of language arts?

So tonight, I read Josh 3 chapters of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  He loved it and wanted to hear more. I felt better, hopeful that I haven't become a reactionary curmudgeon type and that maybe Kress is overstating his case.