Instant Gratification
Steady! Not that! I'm on about the yoof of today, of course. I am now officially "old" because I have clicked PUBLISH on a blog post that contains comparisons of my life and the next generation. Oh dear.
As I plough my way through my social media connections (Facebook, Twitter) I often get the chance to view comments and opinions from people outside my immediate network; friends of friends or fans of public pages. What amazes me the most is the lack of respect for the English language. So very often I see comments or tweets That All Have A Capital Letter At The Start Of Each Word and I can't work out why people type like that. It's not a title and it must difficult to type like that (well, it is for me). And where shall I start with text messaging? It has got steadily worse over the years and even my own daughter is guilty of sending messages like: Jst guna av ma dina then cum rwnd x Aaarrrggghhh *bangs head on desk*
I took a look at the revision papers for the English Language and Literature GCSE's earlier this year. Nowhere did it require the student to write an essay of any description. Many of the answers required just a few words and reading passages were broken down into short chunks. Even on the Literature paper, appropriate passages from the recommended text were provided - you could provide a comprehensive answer without ever reading the book. I suppose that the reason for this is that a large percentage of the final GCSE result relies on previously submitted coursework over two years but how do we teach the next generation to retain information to process at a later date?
Is it just the modern era that we live in now or does there seem to be a need for immediacy? We have programmes built into our computers that tell us how to spell. We wear away our fingerprints through tapping away on keyboards whilst accessing responses to questions that will take Google 0.034 seconds to answer. We have hundreds of television and radio channels to watch and listen to yet still complain that there is nothing on. You can have a banquet in the style of any type of food from any corner of the Earth delivered to your door in less than one hour. The weekly food shop can also be delivered at your convenience so no need to battle the crowds on a Saturday afternoon... or any afternoon, for that matter.
Shouldn't we just go back to basics once in a while? Wouldn't it be nice to slow down occasionally? Are we eventually going to run out of things to do if we keep progressing at this speed? I'm actually a little nervous about what the future holds for me. The progress we have made with technology in the last 100 years is scary. If I just mention things like the ball point pen, telecommunications, the microchip, flying to the other side of the world, television, cars that can accelerate up to 200 miles per hour, man walking on the moon and sending rockets and probes to even further planets that we didn't know existed. And then we move to the increase of world disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, flooding, freak weather) and I wonder if it is because of the things that have been created. What is in store for the next 100 years?
And then I wonder why I worry at all?
As I plough my way through my social media connections (Facebook, Twitter) I often get the chance to view comments and opinions from people outside my immediate network; friends of friends or fans of public pages. What amazes me the most is the lack of respect for the English language. So very often I see comments or tweets That All Have A Capital Letter At The Start Of Each Word and I can't work out why people type like that. It's not a title and it must difficult to type like that (well, it is for me). And where shall I start with text messaging? It has got steadily worse over the years and even my own daughter is guilty of sending messages like: Jst guna av ma dina then cum rwnd x Aaarrrggghhh *bangs head on desk*
I took a look at the revision papers for the English Language and Literature GCSE's earlier this year. Nowhere did it require the student to write an essay of any description. Many of the answers required just a few words and reading passages were broken down into short chunks. Even on the Literature paper, appropriate passages from the recommended text were provided - you could provide a comprehensive answer without ever reading the book. I suppose that the reason for this is that a large percentage of the final GCSE result relies on previously submitted coursework over two years but how do we teach the next generation to retain information to process at a later date?
Is it just the modern era that we live in now or does there seem to be a need for immediacy? We have programmes built into our computers that tell us how to spell. We wear away our fingerprints through tapping away on keyboards whilst accessing responses to questions that will take Google 0.034 seconds to answer. We have hundreds of television and radio channels to watch and listen to yet still complain that there is nothing on. You can have a banquet in the style of any type of food from any corner of the Earth delivered to your door in less than one hour. The weekly food shop can also be delivered at your convenience so no need to battle the crowds on a Saturday afternoon... or any afternoon, for that matter.
Shouldn't we just go back to basics once in a while? Wouldn't it be nice to slow down occasionally? Are we eventually going to run out of things to do if we keep progressing at this speed? I'm actually a little nervous about what the future holds for me. The progress we have made with technology in the last 100 years is scary. If I just mention things like the ball point pen, telecommunications, the microchip, flying to the other side of the world, television, cars that can accelerate up to 200 miles per hour, man walking on the moon and sending rockets and probes to even further planets that we didn't know existed. And then we move to the increase of world disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, flooding, freak weather) and I wonder if it is because of the things that have been created. What is in store for the next 100 years?
And then I wonder why I worry at all?