July 14, 2004
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Topic: Free education
Well…i’m into my 3rd week at summer camp, and, as I’ve realized post-college, the best education is just life experience. So…what have i learned, thought about while at camp?
Kids are obsessed with video games. I have one camper who you can’t even pry his new game boy out of his sleeping hands. They take it to meals, to activities, and play it while we’re trying to tell the campers what’s going on. These games are ostricizing certain kids from the others, and making them anti-social. I’m not calling for any radical measures, just noting that the behaviors of our most impressionable people, children, is greatly affected by video games.
gotta go…people need computer, more updates and thoughts soon
-dan
Comments (3)
You’re right. It’s amazing how much more productive I am when I’m not trying to conquer the world on computer games. Real life gets left behind.
Of course, I read a lot, but I think reading makes you smarter, so.
Johnny
An article in the latest Newsweek tells how there are now “two groups of Americans…. The first group takes a very active and engaged attitude toward information and society,” i.e., reads a lot. “The other group are increasingly passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Unfortunately, one group is growing, and it’s not the readers.” It sites one government report that says, “At the current rate of loss,… reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.”
Kids are not the only ones obssessed with electronic media. I’m left wondering thinking that perhaps this passivity is worse than that found in a totalitarian society, where people have no choice.
Yeah for comments, good to hear from people after so long!!! I love seeing that the mass media (Newsweek) is covering the types of things we’re talking about. This magazine i picked up, Adbusters, is pretty radical, but it’s the type of magazine that is needed not to spread propaganda or change people, but simply to expose people to other things.
It’s funny how the types of criticims i’ve heard from Fahrenheit 9/11 is that it’s yellow journalism (i don’t even remember what that means) or propaganda, or some other terms i forget from school, but people love to throw around. What people need is exposure to ideas, and if people don’t like certain ideas, than not to simply tear down one persons ideas, but show the opposite side.
I was watching the Daily Show, and they were talking about the possibility of postponing the election due to a terrorist attack. Did anybody else here that? Probably not, we’re too busy playing our video games.
Anyways…it’s pouring rain here at camp, which gives me a little break. Anyone who wants to have an early peak at my book, you can buy it now at
http://www.cafepress.com/dansjournal
It’s a special first copy made for the summer, so if you’re eager to see it now, go buy it. I haven’t marked the price up at all from what the company charges for printing. If you buy it, let me know what you think, since i want to make a few more changes before tackling the book tour this fall.
Thanks,
-Dan