Can Critical Thinking and iPods Coexist?
Kids are being raised by flat screens. TV, videos, computers, movies, video games, and cell phones create a concentrated culture of flat screens carrying messages that require little thought or meditation. Almost everything kids watch today is at the shallowest, most emotional level of interaction and requires very little, if any, critical thinking. As kids consume a continuing diet of visual stimulation followed by emotional reaction, they can kiss thinking goodbye. Ray Bradbury predicted it. In Fahrenheit 451, the elimination of books had essentially demolished thinking. The burning of books had removed the concept of vision from the minds of people. Hope arose when Bradbury writes, "...Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think...and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!" We don't need to burn books to keep kids from reading. We don't even need to hide them. Just give the kid a TV-remote, iPod or video game player and the books go unread. Francis Schaeffer warned us in "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century" that "... men will end up owning only two values...personal peace and personal affluence." By personal peace he meant that men would hold to the concept of "let me do my own thing. Don't bug me." In Schaeffer's mind, personal affluence meant that men would have the economic ability to make entertainment and enjoyment very affordable. The movie Star Wars launched an exciting new generation of graphics, and in so doing, may have generated a whole new way of absorbing information. One amazing special effect after another kept us on the edge of our seats, not thinking, but reacting. Movies started advertising the special effects, often even more than plots or story lines. So what's the big deal? What's intrinsically wrong with great action? What can be harmful about amazing car chases or explosions? For starters, ideas are communicated by rather lengthy written discourse. The philosophies and ideas of an American Revolution did not occur by a series of ten-second sound bites on the evening news. People read books and pamphlets...took time to do some serious critical thinking... and the world was changed. Leave "Critical Thinking" and
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