First Draft
The Fault in Our Attention Spans
Harry Wardwell
According to a poll in the Smithsonian magazine, a staggering number of Americans aren’t reading books. In 2015 only, 72 percent of Americans had read a book in the past year, this statistic has fallen from 79 percent in 2011. (Blakemore) So, what’s to blame for this decline in readership? The most likely answer is the collective destruction of long term attention spans thanks to social media.
In the passage from “Reader, come home” Wolf wonders if the new age of quicker media will result in a positive change or a negative one. The negative appears to be the more likely path. With the prominence of social media, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the negative effects that can impact users, especially the younger participants. A person is able to quickly flutter through their Instagram or Facebook feeds and see what their friends are doing, fanatical headlines, and the information that algorithms believe they will enjoy. This kind of media doesn’t allow a person to grow, because it moves so fast that it doesn’t have to.
Willingham doesn’t present a problem, he presents a solution. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by blaming social media users. The root of this conundrum exists within human nature and the desire to get what one wants quickly and easily. Willingham believes that reading comprehension skills have faltered because current comprehension education sees that the correct way to analyze a piece of text is based on a general knowledge that one may or may not have. The excerpt suggests that the solution is to change certain lessons taught in the classroom. A student who is able to comprehend passages on reading tests well already has existing knowledge on the topic that is presented. In short, Willingham believes that in order to comprehend anything well, the reader must first have a relevant base of knowledge.
The largest divide in Willingham and Wolf’s viewpoints exist in the perceived beginning of the problem. Willingham believes that social media isn’t creating adults who are bad at reading comprehension, it’s bad reading education. On the other side of the spectrum, Wolf is unsure whether the problem is caused by social media or not. Well fast media has been perceived to create problems, there’s always the potential that this new way of thinking could open up new neural pathways, just like literacy and free thought has in the past. It would be impossible to surmise that either one of these writers is wrong because of the statements of the other.
At best, social media might be a good thing, but in personal experience it has been proven otherwise. What social media does best is suck confidence from developing minds and force teens to second guess themselves. Kids wishing they had an iPhone or Supreme t-shirts so that they can fit in, fake perfect relationships, and only the best angles on every heavily edited selfie. Why wouldn’t someone lose confidence in their image and their voice if they only see the perfect worlds others present? Lies come easily over the internet, and one can easily see this in the trend of over the top headlines that attract clicks. It seems that these articles quite often feature complete lies or half-truths. A mind that’s trained to see through the interference and fake news can survive on the internet, but currently most aren’t taught how to analyze and verify things that may or may not be true on the internet.
In conclusion, Willingham is correct in his belief that students need to be better taught reading comprehension through information, rather than skills that would apply when picking an article apart. This change is especially a necessary one for our modern world. To survive in the modern world, being skeptical and the ability to fact check are necessary skills.
Works cited
Blakemore, Erin. “27 Percent of U.S. Adults Didn’t Read a Single Book Last Year.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 23 Oct. 2015, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/27-percent-american-adults-didnt-read-single-book-last-year-180957029/.
Final Draft
The Fault in Our Attention Spans
Harry Wardwell
According to a poll in the Smithsonian magazine, a staggering number of Americans aren’t reading books. In 2015 only, 72 percent of Americans had read a book in the past year, this statistic has fallen from 79 percent in 2011. (Blakemore) So, what’s to blame for this decline in readership? The most likely answer is the collective destruction of long term attention spans thanks to social media.
In the passage from “Reader, come home” Wolf wonders if the new age of quicker media will result in a positive change or a negative one. The negative appears to be the more likely path. With the prominence of social media, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the negative effects that can impact users, especially the younger participants. A person is able to quickly flutter through their Instagram or Facebook feeds and see whatever content their personalized algorithm assumes that they will enjoy. This kind of media doesn’t allow a person to grow, because it moves so fast that it doesn’t have to.
Willingham doesn’t present a problem, he presents a solution. His solution is to better structure how language comprehension is taught, so that readers may have skills better suited to understanding complicated language. Willingham believes that reading comprehension skills have faltered because current comprehension education sees that the correct way to analyze a piece of text is based on a general knowledge that one may possess. The excerpt suggests that the solution is to change certain lessons taught in the classroom. A student who is able to comprehend passages on reading tests well usually already has existing knowledge on the topic that is presented. In short, Willingham believes that in order to comprehend anything well, the reader must first have a relevant base of knowledge.
The largest divide in Willingham and Wolf’s viewpoints exist in the perceived beginning of the problem. Willingham believes that social media isn’t creating adults who are bad at reading comprehension, it’s bad reading education. On the other side of the spectrum, Wolf is unsure whether the problem is caused by social media or not. Well fast media has been perceived to create problems, there’s always the potential that this new way of thinking could open up new neural pathways, just like literacy and free thought has in the past. It would be impossible to surmise that either one of these writers is wrong because of the statements of the other.
At best, social media might be a good thing, but in personal experience it has been proven otherwise time and time again. This type of media relies on the same tricks that support gossip magazines and talk shows. This trick is the falsification of information that forces a consumer to develop different assumptions about reality based on the often-non-factual evidence presented. Social media is full of lies similar to the ones seen time and time again, and often forces impressionable minds to have the wrong impressions from their peers. What social media does best is suck confidence from developing minds and force teens to second guess themselves. Kids wishing they had an iPhone or Supreme t-shirts so that they can fit in, fake perfect relationships, and only the best angles on every heavily edited selfie. Why wouldn’t someone lose confidence in their image and their voice if they only see the perfect worlds others present? Lies come easily over the internet, and one can easily see this in the trend of over the top headlines that attract clicks. It seems that these articles quite often feature complete lies or half-truths. A mind that’s trained to see through the interference and fake news can survive on the internet, but currently most aren’t taught how to analyze and verify things that may or may not be true on the internet.
In conclusion, Willingham is correct in his belief that students need to be better taught reading comprehension through information, rather than skills that would apply when picking an article apart. This change is especially a necessary one for our modern world. To survive in the modern world, being skeptical and the ability to fact check are necessary skills.
Works cited
Blakemore, Erin. “27 Percent of U.S. Adults Didn’t Read a Single Book Last Year.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 23 Oct. 2015, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/27-percent-american-adults-didnt-read-single-book-last-year-180957029/.
Reflection
This essay seems like a warm-up to me. I don’t think it’s bad by any stretch of the word, but I do believe that there are too many errors on here that could’ve been fixed. In the second sentence I screwed up a comma, but the content of the paper isn’t bad. Willingham isn’t introduced well, I don’t even recall what source material I used from him. Even in a short time frame this class affected my writing positively.
