Friday, August 12, 2011

Technology Overload

I'm starting to panic over things I love disappearing. I have a one year old who will never know what it was like to do so many things I've known and cherished. Schools are no longer teaching cursive handwriting! That just pisses me off to no end because it's beyond stupidity. People are becoming totally dependent on technology and don't posses basic knowledge of important things like how to write a letter, how to look up research information in a library rather than just looking on the Internet. Sometimes I feel we're losing a bit of our humanity and that's not good. It's important to have a balance of high tech and low tech in every way. This may seem hypocritical since I'm blogging it but I'm only doing this to preserve some thoughts. My journals were stolen. I had kept them for decades for my kids if they wanted them and for me to look back on my life.
 
One of the things I really enjoy is doing genealogy and the old census rolls because the script writing is beautiful. My teenager has beautiful writing but he hates to write and prefers a keyboard to a pencil any day. Getting him to write anything down on paper is a battle of wills. Homework is a battlefield and this has been going on since kindergarten. Don't get me started on spelling. I am livid about the amount of illiterate people on FB & other sites who don't know how to express themselves in writing. It's appalling.
 
I love to write and I think writing with pen and paper helps me organize my thoughts better than typing on a computer. I remember before computers when typing on a typewriter at work was a chore, especially if your job didn't provide one w/correction on it. I miss typewriters and still have one. I want more. It disturbs me more than a little that my child is not interested in writing anymore. I had hoped he would keep a journal so he could enjoy it when he was older and save it for his kids. ADHD is a factor but I also have it and had to adapt and had no choice when I was a kid. Hell, they didn't even have a name for it then. People just loaded me up with sugar and accused me of being hyper or a smart ass.

Are we all raising a bunch of high tech brats who don't know how to relate to people? I hope not but that's how I'm feeling lately. Rather than playing guitar as I have suggested for years, my kid mastered Guitar Hero in about two days. Now he wants to play guitar for more of a challenge. The kid has been using a computer since he was about two years old. I encouraged it then teachers bitched when he "monopolized the class computer". Don't get me started on the school system and it's dumbed down mediocrity. Let's just say I'm not upset over any teachers losing their jobs. When I taught school I never worked with more lazy, apathetic people than school teachers and they ALL hated kids but me! You won't find a more toxic snake pit than a teacher's lounge in any American school. You don't have to have a degree to teach now and look at how many teachers are sleeping with their students. I'm profoundly disgusted. Check out how teacher's unions protect bad teachers.
 
Look at books. I love books, I love to read and there's nothing like sitting down and reading a book on a rainy day. The same thing goes for reading a book at the beach or by the pool. E-books are taking over and that makes me melancholy. I have some electronic books but I don't read them. I got them in case I was stuck somewhere without a book.

My child has NEVER SEEN OR OPERATED A ROTARY DIAL TELEPHONE!!! HE HAS NEVER SEEN OR OWNED A BLACK AND WHITE TV OR A TV WITHOUT A REMOTE CONTROL! When I was a kid I WAS the remote control! He has never known the frustration and simplicity of no cable and only 5 channels on TV. Cartoons only came on TV Saturday mornings and Sunday morning there was church, wrestling or Tarzan movies. Limited technology really changes your perception of the world for good and bad depending on the person. 







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