Sorry.

The title is ignorant. But, it sure sums up my feelings after a recent read.

Also, I’ll mention that my blog is not limited to one single purpose. Sometimes, it is just a diary; I did not consider my four R’s in this post…yet.

This chapter by the late Chet Bowers, The Digital Revolution and the Unrecognized Problem of Linguistic Colonization, is one of the worst reads I have had to do in post-secondary. If I ignore that absolute juvenile and biased shots he takes in the first half of the article and try to only address the academics, I find it insulting that Bowers implies that the ways of old are the only way forward. I think it is one of the first parts of the chapter that tanks it:

“Print, even when used by the most gifted writer, can never fully represent the emergent, relational, and interdependent nature of an experience”. Bowers did not ever experience what it was to grow up in an age of rapid digital technology expansion and integration. I’d have a hard time explaining it to him, as both he and I would agree that my words would not do justice to the experience. Simply put, he doesn’t, or wouldn’t get it.

Did he consider, I wonder, that perhaps print does the opposite for some? Did he measure this some how? Even if he did, it would not matter since no data (as he states) is completely objective?

And then to use print to convince me of all this? To argue against the digital system using printed academic language, the same language he argues is completely loaded with the metaphorical categorization of the generations that formed them? His generations, preceding mine?!

To print a quote from Einstein explaining that we cannot solve problems using their the same tools of their cause in the first place?

It’s hypocritical, circular. Frankly it reeks of bitterness.

I will concede our society is not sustainable. Bowers implies that our way out is through…but why is he so convinced it is the mingling of old tools with the new that will get us moving?

Link to Article: Ideological, Cultural, and Linguistic Roots of Educational Reforms to Address the Ecological Crisis