It is so easy to forget how ignorant today’s students are.
Last week I was going over the Bill of Rights and trying to get the students to understand their importance. I was working through the First Amendment to the Constitution and reviewing the five basic rights given there. I ran into a problem when I casually asked them what was the “press.” I wanted to go on to a discussion of the modern application to internet. My question was simply to set up the next step. I wanted to hit them where they live so they would begin to see that the issues of liberty did effect their lives. I quickly realized I had a problem. All I was getting was blank stares.
They had no idea what the Bill of Rights meant by “the press.” Later in the day I got some comments about people who take pictures but no one seemed to know what us older folks take as simple information.
It is so easy to assume that people understand basic ideas and vocabulary. It doesn’t work that way with the generation being taught by post moderns. Words mean what you want them to mean. Anyone who has ever worked on a car knows what a ratchet wrench is. My eighth graders have been using the word for a year and a half. I still don’t know what they mean by it but I get the impression it isn’t good. Every time I pull out my ratchet wrench I just get peals of laughter. The word means what they want it to mean.
Press means nothing because they don’t want it to mean anything.
I realize that educators bear some of the blame but these same children have spent even longer in the presence of their family. Does anyone do anything but text and rap any more?
homo unius libri
In answer to the last sentence - NO. If you haven't already used these words, tell them that the printing press was the original version of mass communications, so "the press" came to mean those who printed books or newspapers. As times moved along, it came to mean ALL forms of communication, including their smart phones and such. Therefore, when someone wants to protect the press, they want to protect their smart phones! I'm sure you've probably tried this very thing, but maybe you used words that were too big. ;-)
ReplyDeleteTrue, "press" does have five letters. But "book" has four and they don't get that one either.
DeleteGrace and peace.