Noami Barton, a linguistics professor, writes
A few years back, I asked my undergraduates to read Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone." The class was discussing the effects of the Internet on social interaction, and Putnam's carefully documented analysis of the breakdown of Americans' connections to one another offered a good frame of reference.
The students balked.
Was I aware that the book was 541 pages long? Didn't I know Putnam had written a précis of his argument a couple of years earlier, which they easily found on the Web? Why did they have to slog through so many examples of the same point?
One memorable freshman sagely informed me that people shouldn't be reading entire volumes these days anyway. He had learned from a high school teacher that book authors (presumably fiction excepted) pad their core ideas to make money and that anything worth writing could be expressed in an article of 20 or 30 pages, tops.
I understand her concerns. I have graded many papers that restate secondary commentary from the web. It is often clear that the student did not read the primary text which is unfortunate. Often, criticisms are off point and reflect a poor reading of the text. They persist because few people know the original.
This semester I assigned the task of critically assessing the contributions of the "pioneers in development." For many of the pioneers, summaries and criticisms are available on-line. Primary texts are available on-line through the university library and are relatively more difficult to obtain.
I agree with Professor Barton's conclusion:
If we approach the written word primarily through search-and-seizure rather than sustained encounter-and-contemplation, we risk losing a critical element of what it means to be an educated, literate society.
Next week, I will find out if my students engaged in search and seizure at the expense of developing an understanding for the original source.
