The new Shambhala Sun has some fantastic articles this month. One is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated essay by poet Gary Snyder called “Writers and the War Against Nature.” Highly recommended. (www.shambhalasun.com; they haven’t got the November issue up online yet, but when they do there will probably be an excerpt.)
Also in this month’s issue is a short article by David Loy entitled “The Attack on Attention.” It’s so entirely relevant to the art of teaching, as well as the cultivation of mindfulness (Buddhist and otherwise), that I herewith offer a short excerpt:
Consider, for example, how MP3 players are changing the ways we listen to music. A century ago, you were part of a live audience, and you would settle down and focus on the music being performed. Today, strolling along with my iPod, my decision to listen to any particular piece of music is never completely settled, because I can constantly change what is playing if I become dissatisfied with it.
[Dharmonia comment: this is why musical structure is one of the most difficult things for contemporary music students to grapple with – often, the only time they listen to a piece in its entirety is when they are performing it.]
This applies to many other aspects of our lives…Our old foraging habits were based on info scarcity, but suddenly we find ourselves trying to survive an info glut,and the scarcest resources have become attention and control over our own time. Social anthropologist Thomas Eriksen has formalized this relationship into a general law of the information revolution: “When an ever-increasing amount of information has to be squeezed into the relatively constant amount of time each of us has at our disposal, the span of attention necessarily decreases.”
One problem with such an avalanche of information (and therefore shorter attention span) is that it challenges our ability to construct narratives and logical sequences. Sherry Turkle has noticed that some of her MIT students now reason and arrange their ideas differently. “There is this sense that the world is out there to be Googled,” she says, “and there is this associative glut. But linking from one thing to another is not the same as having something to say. A structured thought is more than a link.”
End of quote.
Our ability to construct narratives and logical sequences: this articulates very precisely the biggest weakness I see in my students as a whole. Mr Loy has given me a lot to think about: how do we nurture this ability in sentient beings lost a sea of info-glut? The question is important, because this is precisely what I feel that I and other professors are called to do – in fact, are obligated to do. A culture with no narrative is doomed; and a culture lacking the ability to create logical sequences will continue to believe that Iraq was responsible for 9-11. We have to find a way to help students either maintain or find these abilities, and still live in the twenty-first century – we must, as one Zen teacher put it, show up for the impossible.
9 comments:
Interesting article Dharmonia. It reminds me of something someone once told me.. that the average attention span of kids is directly related to time between commercials on television... or 5-7 minutes at most.
I believe that that attention span is now significantly less as a result of the information overload you talk about!
I created a show on YouTube to teach word origins with this short attention span in mind.. my videos are typically under 3 minutes and try to incorporate some visuals to get the initial attention. As a result, the show is one of the most watched shows on YouTube!
And that is a show about etymology!
I also get thousands of comments per video... so I am at least getting some discussion going.. though it is in very small bite-sized chunks!
I think the "cat is out of the bag" and conversations occur in very small blurbs.. BUT... I do think it might be moving in the right direction.. as people are at least writing again... albeit in poorly constructed sentences with abbreviated words... but writing nonetheless... and I think that is a step in the right direction from a few years ago prior to the Internet.
Now, if we can just figure out a way to harness all these snippets.. and reconstruct them into one long narrative! Maybe narrative will become the product of many snippets from many different people all combined somehow into one, long, coherent piece... like individual cells in the human body.. with each cell contributing just their little bit... who knows?
Just some crazy, far out observation :-)
Marina
HotForWords.com
Now, if we can just figure out a way to harness all these snippets.. and reconstruct them into one long narrative! Maybe narrative will become the product of many snippets from many different people all combined somehow into one, long, coherent piece... like individual cells in the human body.. with each cell contributing just their little bit... who knows?
I don't know if that's going to be possible with the signal to noise ratio being so high in the comments so far. Unless a way is found to filter out all the noise a coherent message is very difficult.
I do love the way you get your message across with the etymology lessons, I just wish that some of the comments reflected more of the essence of what you're trying to teach instead of the emotional baggage that most of the people that comment are dragging around.
With some the attention span is considerably less than 5-7mins it's seems that 30 sec before they get distracted so it averages out to 2.5 mins.
Marina,
I'm disturbed by your idea of constructing one long narrative. We are already drinking from a firehose here, and I would think the problem is more one of choosing which snippets to attend to.
If I want a long narrative I tend to prefer one put together by a single craftsperson, rather than a mob generated mashup. But that's probably just my age showing. I'm also fond of spending a few days on Fogo Island - where everyone talks to everyone else with very little technological mediation - and sometimes it's just _quiet_.
How to make it coherent - that's the rub. All the cells in the human body don't work to well after they've all been through a blender.
But who knows where technology may go in the near future?
I love it that CBC radio is covering you now.
Chuck
While I adore Marina and her vlog-style teaching, I cannot agree that the writing in the comments to her videos is "people are at least writing again... albeit in poorly constructed sentences with abbreviated words...", at least in the posts on the website itself (I cannot comment on the YouTube channel as I don't post there). Many of the comments made are witty, precise, and well-constructed.
On topic, though, I agree that attention span seems to have dwindled. Personally, I feel it has more to do with not only the volume of information students are now required to digest, but the past watering-down of the curriculum, the "I'm okay, you're okay, so no one fails" attitude of administrators, and the de-emphasis on actually reading for insight and knowledge in exchange for "entertainment" education. Once we meandered down that path it turned out to be pretty much one-way.
Marina is correct, though, in her approach - now that we're in this fix, perhaps the only way to stem the tide is to exploit what works, and what works is entertainment. I hope, and pray, that it...well...gets their attention.
For that Iraq comment, there is no doubt that the country and its government posed a threat. Secondly, its really up to each person to listen carefully to the words of the President.
On the whole I would imagine even with the associative links, people do have a broader understanding of topics thanks to these technologies. There will still be a minority of folks who delve deep into certain topics which has always been the case. They're out there, just less visible.
I'm not sure there is an "increasing amount of information" fault here. And to put the blame on the so called "avalanche" of information is misguiding. A teenager is suposed to be agressed by the encyclopedia britanica? Come on one century ago you could also feel some avalanche just entering in the college library. From a potential reader point of view it is a long time (very long time) that more than you can read information is available.
I agree with annuddermale that the "no one fails" atitude has a lot to do with the lost in focus and effort in the classrooms.
And I agree with Dharmonia when foreseeing the consequences of a culture inable to construct a narative. It is even worst, not only the word becomes dificult to undertand, but how could you understand yourself when you can't focus more than a couple of minutes?
Finaly Lester, about Iraq there is no doubt that the country and its government posed NO threat.
WHAT? They speak in their own dialect. ie young. Your not suppost to get iT. Get it?? *u*
Processing information overload coupled with an aparent dwindling of contemporary retention levels could equate to apathy if there weren't some form/structure with it's own, built-in, source of fussion waiting and ready to come to our aid.
What's called for is a diametric shift away from 'knowledge' and information valued processing to learning via the Socratic method--or something along those standards. I say this because information which is now so cheap is not counter balanced by logic and cognative presentation is just a buggy whip. Today's kids seem to believe that being correct is only a matter of getting/finding/clicking the right information and even man as hunter gatherer was not that passive.
I find it a false presumption to assume that a 'lack of logical sequences' leads people to believe Iraq caused 9/11, when, really, it's short attentions being guided by unfinished logic that appear to be dualistically causing people to believe either the pro or con of any argument.
Marina's notion of a multi-celled body is attractive and does have it's place in bodying acquired knowledge but that compilation does, however, require a 'brain', an editor who brings a perspective or, at the very least, analyses--which, of course, cannot be substituted by a search engine.
An editor must slash as well, so to find out the real value of today's snippets you would evetually have to count the pieces on the floor
I short, it's not just attention spans as much as it is the undervaluation of processing basic thought, or any attempt at, if I could be so bold, wisdom.
Maybe when some balance to the pro & con of cognition can be restored maybe then we can get back to poetry.
I see some interesting and valid points made here, but the upside is that atlease we have more information available to us. This gives us the power to grow our minds in ways we never thought possible even 10 years ago.
What is required is a skill set to help navigate and filter through the information. Everyone will be unique, and everyone will develop their own information "cloud" that travels with them. Some will excell in this environment, while others fall back.
There is also one other point I want to make which has to do attention span. I see first hand, coaching little league for 7 and 8 year olds, how sleep and nutrition can make all the difference in a child's attention span. We blame TV, Gameboys and everything else but one could argue these are correlative factors not causal factors. Have you seen what these kids are eating today!
Post a Comment