All the news that fit to do anything but print

First of all, here’s the New Yorker article. This morning on my way to work I listened to the latest TWIT podcast and that was pretty much the entire subject. No doubt tomorrow morning when I have breakfast, there will be some analysis of the subject printed on the back of my cereal box.

At least we’re not alone in our concerns here.

Let’s stick with our assumption that what we’re talking about is that we can no longer hold the expectation that students will regularly read the newspaper. We’re not talking about slackers here; there have always been hangers-on who didn’t read the paper, who aren’t particularly committed to expanding their brains, who don’t listen to your suggestions no matter how good those suggestions are (although when forensics is a purely elective activity, as at Hen Hud, with no official class credit given, it is both hard to imagine why someone wouldn’t do what you ask of them, since they’re there by choice, and it is hard to imagine why someone would do what you ask of them, since you have no particular authority over them). We’re talking about the general class of students who are inherently smart, who recognize that they need to know what’s going on in the world for all sorts of reasons, debate success being merely one of those reasons. They would probably read the paper if you put it in front of them, at least once they got into the habit of it (and one does need to get into the habit; there’s ways of doing it that one needs to learn). But they are not in the habit of it, and you are not putting the paper in front of them, yet you still understand and believe in the unique benefits of the newspaper as a medium. Do we simply sit back and accept that the world is passing the newspaper by, and hope that new benefits will arise elsewhere, or perhaps that we can capture the old unique benefits some other way? I don’t think so. A reactionary stance can quickly become a luddite stance which can quickly become a pothole on the road to students’ education. (Hey, I put in my own metaphor for once.) Students live in the world that they live in. Not that long ago computers were only marginally part of that world. Cell phones qua telephones were only aborning. Wireless was that thing that they told Marconi was a phony. (Who but Ira could successfully rhyme Marconi and phony?) Now we can presume a plugged-in student body from the get-go. I don’t hope students will be online to communicate with me; I expect and demand it. My own leaning toward potholeness is my lack of engagement with a portable device; I carry a cellphone, I text O’C at tournaments to try to find him when he wanders off, but that’s about it, mostly because I’m too cheap to spend the $60 a month for the iPhone or its equivalent. At some point I will need to correct this failing on my part, which caused me to bow out of Twitter, because if something happens here important, I don’t want to miss it. The TWIT podcast portended that something might. Not just yet, though, thank goodness. I’m happy at the moment using my Virgin mobile for virtually no cost. Such is the benefit of having few if any people to talk to.

With the acceptance of the existence of the plugged in student body comes the acceptance of the mindset that comes with that plugging in. People are products of their environment, and adolescents are products of a very specific electronic environment, and must be addressed as such. Even my daughter, ten or so years old than my team, was raised in a different milieu, which means that many of even the youngest coaches today are not exactly part of the students’ universe. This needs to be recognized. But however great the age gap between coach and students, there’s nothing inherent in technology that makes younger people better at it or older people worse. It’s just that one group is used to one thing and another group is used to something else. For example, with most phones texting is not easy—in fact, it’s downright diabolical—but it’s hard to find a teenager who hasn’t mastered it because it’s so much a part of the adolescent discourse. Pretty much anyone can master something they really want to do if they put their mind to it. I know people who refuse to even think about learning how to text but who have no problem making a perfect soufflé. Is one so much harder than they other? Or is it just a matter of choice? In any case, as coaches we don’t get to choose if we wish, as I say, not to be rendered into potholes.

So our goal remains getting certain information across to our students that they would have previously gotten from newspapers. Doing so in the most agreeable way possible in tune with the zeitgeist is part of the deal; at any point if what we’re doing is harder or dumber than simply sending the kids down to the store to pick up a paper, we haven’t done the job.

Let the explorations begin.