This is a question that I would very often ask myself last year with my most challenging groups; however, I have recently become so concerned that we—staff and students—are fast losing the ability to listen—really listen—to others and the world around us. How many people do you see plugged into headphones on their daily commute?
Adults have always been concerned by children’s playthings: television, we used to be told, would turn our eyes square. Psychologist Sigman argues that time spent in a virtual world is displacing time that would once have been spent socialising. As a consequence, young people are not developing as they should and cannot make eye contact, they do not understand personal boundaries, they have a lack of respect for authority as well as ADD and other problems that come with sitting down for too long. Semantically, playing games used to mean going outside; now it means settling down in front of a screen.
I feel we must be wary, though, of assuming that using mobiles and laptops should be any more harmful than reading the latest bestselling book--Manga (look it up!). Increasingly, that’s the way we will read: as a download on a phone! Further, with spellchecks and predictive text that write for us, one might think that this will exacerbate literacy levels. However, listening to my students, they also do a good amount of writing when blogging and messaging each other--perhaps more than any generation before--we must, then, better harness and tap into these developments.
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