words, words, words

After viewing a youtube vid called, "A View of K-12 Kids Today," I had an immediate reaction and connection to my day - earlier - with my A.P. lit students. The video discusses the importance of today's teachers to be versed in, and allow student access to, current technology. Some of the "stats" in the video are about how many hours students spend with their personal technology, such as their iPods, cell phones, and PCs. Compared to the amount of hours they spend with technology, the amount of time they spend doing an activity like reading a book is quite minimal. I recognize this, but I do not want to encourage it! Don't get me wrong, I love technology! And, as a recent inductee to blogging and google tools and the wonderful world of the internet, personal technology, and social software, I have no objection to introducing these wonderful tools to my students, or allowing these tools into my classroom or life as part of the way I teach and function in the world. However, after 13 years of teaching, I have yet to find a better way for students to develop their critical thinking skills, develop vocabulary and communication skills, and even learn better empathy, than to read regularly and to write regularly.
Today is a case in point: we are analyzing character and setting in poetry. I assigned my students to read three poems with similar themes: "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell, "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy, and "Ogichidag" by Jim Northrup. Especially while analyzing the 5-line poem by Jarrell, I could see by the looks on many of my students' faces that they were arrested by the idea of the many connotations words possess and how deeply that possibility can enrich meaning, interpretation and thought. The amazing poem is as follows:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Absolutely beautiful. And, in 5 lines so much emotion is expressed about the costs of war. This kind of nuance and subtlety can best be learned and expressed in simple words. I think we need to slow down our rush to embrace all things technological as the replacement for "old ways of learning". There is no replacement for the art of poetry and the world of words. None.