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NigelMustaphaFirstPaper 5 - 07 Oct 2014 - Main.NigelMustapha
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-- NigelMustapha - 05 Oct 2014 | | | There’s a fairly facile joke that goes something like this: Imagine you went back in time and you told someone, John Dewey or whoever, that in the future, people carry around small electronic devices in their pants pockets, which contain every book ever written, every piece of information ever learned, and which allow them to communicate with people all over the world. He’ll eagerly ask: “What do you people do with these amazing inventions?” And you’ll have to tell him: “Well, we mostly use them to watch cat videos.” | |
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< | We all know that the typical American smartphone and laptop owner doesn’t effectively use his resources to increase his intelligence—and if we forget, we can remind ourselves by sitting in the back of any freshman-year college lecture and watch an impassioned exploration of fantasy football rosters, Facebook pages, and fall fashion catalogues. But it’s also important to point out that except for some poor black kids, for a variety of reasons, most other people don’t use their resources all that effectively either. It’s hard to get an unmotivated, underprivileged 3rd grader to visit her local library, even if she is able to go every once in a while. Even though that library is freely offering her an impressive percentage of all the books ever written and of all the songs ever recorded. Using resources effectively is a skill and like every other skill, it must be effectively developed. If it isn’t, those untapped resources just don’t amount to all that much. | >
> | We all know that the typical American smartphone and laptop owner doesn’t effectively use his resources to increase his intelligence—and if we forget, we can remind ourselves by sitting in the back of any freshman-year college lecture and watch an impassioned exploration of fantasy football rosters, Facebook pages, and fall fashion catalogues. But it’s also important to point out that except for some poor black kids, for a variety of reasons, most other people don’t use their resources all that effectively either. It’s hard to get an unmotivated, underprivileged 3rd grader to visit her local library, even if she is able to go every once in a while. Even though that library is freely offering her an impressive percentage of all the books ever written and of all the songs ever recorded. To be sure, ease of access makes her situation categorically different, and improved ease of access may lead to different results in many cases. But it likely will not lead to the different results in all cases. This is because using resources effectively is a skill, and like every other skill, it must be effectively developed. If it isn’t, those untapped resources just won’t amount to all that much. | | | Imagine Unchanged Power Dynamics |
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