SUNDAY 1ST NOVEMBER, 2015 – UWI TODAY
17
I
The Pre-Schooler
A mother of two young girls, six and three, was alarmed
by the call from the pre-schooler’s teacher for all parents to
attend an emergency meeting.
“Your children are not writing,” said the teacher to the
bemused parents; they are not interested in writing.
Their interest is focused on the screens of various
devices – some of which the school uses as teaching aids.
The children are so
tecched-up
that keyboards are already
passé for them and their preference is for devices that let
them swipe their way into games and apps and so on.
The problem, warned the teacher, is that they are behind
the standard of measurement used for their age group. She
urged them to restrict access to devices and to encourage
the children into habits of both reading and writing.
Even if they are proficient at navigating their way
through cyberland, they are bypassing a fundamental aspect
of learning.
Is it prudent to insist that they start with the basics, or is
it more realistic to recognize that they were born into a world
of which they are among the first and second generation
of inhabitants and it would not be useful to take them to a
different path of learning?
II
The Teen
An evening in early October at the Learning Resource
Centre billed as A Literary Conversation between writers
Caryl Phillips and Robert Antoni with Dr. Raymond
Ramcharitar moderating turned as most conversations do,
to matters at the heart.
As Professor Phillips was advising that “you need to
read what you want to write,” a woman said that she had
teenaged children and although they read, they were more
taken with social media.
(See Page 18)
“What advice can you give me as a mother to get my
child really reading?”
Antoni empathized with her.
“Part of me feels all of your anguish,” he said. “You go
out with your kids and they’re on their phones.” He tried to
comfort her by telling her of an article in the New Yorker
counseling parents that from early they should practice
taking the phones away from their children and managing
their access.
III
The Young Adult
In his classes, Professor Phillips faces that with the firm
hand that should have come much earlier in life for most.
He allows social media breaks, he says, but the rest of the
two hours or so must be focused on what he is teaching. He
knows technology is changing everything because the same
things are happening in literature.
“It will change the way we read, and the way we write,”
he says.
COMMENTARY
The Age of the
Selfie
S I X C H A P T E R S
B Y V A N E I S A B A K S H
IV
The Adult
Another member of the audience speaks of the feeling
that “you can never disengage your digital self,” and his
alarm that novels, “with their interior monologues seems
like one of the culture’s last few available weapons to fight
against that,” he said. “Part of what you were touching on
was that problem, but of course, if the delivery system for
the antidote is already the thing that is a sort of anti-matter
to it; how does a writer negotiate that?”
Acknowledging the meatiness of the question,
Professor Phillips tried to get to the essence of literature.
“Part of the great moral purpose of literature is to
imagine somehow, the national, social, racial, ethnic
divisions that have been constructed around our existence
in this world are actually all bogus to some extent, because
we are all part of one family. If we are not part of one
family, we wouldn’t be able to read Anna Karenina and
feel anything. We wouldn’t be able to watch Ibsen plays…”
Marquez, Indian novelists…
“We can do it because literature reminds us that
Faulkner’s definition of the novel as issues of the human
heart, and the problems of the human heart in conflict
with themselves, and it is a universal issue, and that’s the
window we look through at other people in order to see
ourselves.”
“The platform to media that we’re talking about is so
damned narcissistic that it is working against the impulse
of literature to empathy. There is a tension there between
these systems of delivery and the essence of literature:
deep reading, deep empathy and an understanding of
somebody who isn’t you. That’s not what text, twitter,
Facebook Instagram are about.”
V
The Selfie
Students at a lecture by a psychiatrist are discussing the
role of selfies. It’s an artificial representation of the self,
says the lecturer, as they talk about the worlds projected
online and how contrived and managed they can be.
Technology has enabled a safe way to fashion and
refashion your image, your brand. So what if you couldn’t
care less if a dog was being ill-treated right in front of your
eyes, you could post up hundreds of cute puppy videos
and be seen as a dog-lover.
You could ‘like’ as many of the relevant posts
as it takes to become part of a community.
This desire to belong seems
to be a powerful force driving
these online obsessions.
But what really feeds the
socialmedia culture?What has
been its impact on attention
spans, human relations, social
awkwardness, bullying? So
many fuzzy areas still.
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VI
The Research
At the Human Communication Studies Conference held
in September on this Campus as well, the theme, “Identity,
Context and Interdisciplinarity” was chosen by Senior
Lecturer in Communication Studies, Dr. Godfrey Steele and
his team of planners to explore various issues surrounding
the discipline.
(See Page 9)
Looking through the list of presentations made over
its two days, it struck me that there was scarcely anything
that looked at the impact of social media and the various
platforms and devices that are transforming lives at every
level. It seemed oddly dissonant with the environment.
The changes are dramatic and as pervasive as the man
in the audience mentioned. You simply cannot escape your
digital self – because you engage it continuously: at the
bank, the malls, your car, your home. Its very ubiquitous
nature demands that we explore its impact, that we bring
some academic focus on a culture that has changed and
changed and changed again within the last 20 years – and,
like a helicopter’s blades going from lazy motion to blurry
speed, it is going to change even more rapidly.
I think that the next conference should be focused on
these issues because it just seems too monumental to be
ignored.
There is something at risk besides writing and reading,
something profound in the course of human existence
– a particular kind of connection – that is being lost in
cyberspace.
“…if all of your relationships are virtual, you cannot
look anyone in the eye,” said Robert Antoni. It might be the
reason everything now seems so farcical.
There is something at risk besides writing
and reading, something profound in the course
of human existence – a particular kind of
connection – that is being lost in cyberspace.
