very good piece. I riffed on it today and at the same time gave you and your site my first ever C.O.F. Award.

The only thing I’d stress beyond what you said is that a sub-text tan through the entire NYT article was ‘make things easier for the kids and maybe more of them will get it’; some folks these days just don’t understand that most things that are worthwile are things that need to be worked at.

1) She clearly enjoys difficult non-fiction. It’s certainly not a requirement for everyone to love classic fiction.

2) @Robyn – I’ve definitely thought of your point re: teenagers thinking the world was created for them, and yes, it’s something that passes. Teenagers don’t have a historical context for anything. Lord knows I didn’t. But as they get older they see how what they like fits into the continuum of what came before…

My point in writing this was not to tear kids like Nadia down. It was to point out that:
1) Medium doesn’t matter, and
2) We need to be involved in what our children our doing, not just dismiss it as something that’s not up to our standards. Because our standards will eventually give way to new standards, and if we don’t take an active role in how our children learn now, we’ll find that they’ve evolved without us, and we would’ve had no say in the standards of the future.

Really, if you break most things down objectively, story-wise your ‘classics’ aren’t that spiffy. Sure, you can go and dig out the analogies– which are great when they’re actually there– and symbolism… but unless you’re studying it academically that’s not what sticks with the reader overtly. Well, not me, anyway. Who’s to say X comic or popular novel wasn’t written with a higher message in mind, anyway?

I’m 100% behind people finding a story they love and reading/watching/getting involved in it, whatever it is. If I have kids I won’t stop them from reading anything (that’s more or less age-appropriate… no porn until you’re 18, LOL! No Danielle Steele until we have a long talk! Yadda yadda.). I will make sure they know proper grammar, math skills, history, and generally try to pick up the slack (if any *crosses fingers hopefully*) that their teachers leave.

Of course, I am biased as I read comic books, graphic novels, and manga. Not Nora Roberts.

However, I really don’t want to see netspeak spelling become ‘standard.’ R and 2 and 4 and a lot of the common things are just… well, lazy, and kind of make me cringe I hate to think this is what people are reading from our English Speakers.

I just gave a full-read (as opposed to skim) of the NY Times article, and yeah, that Nadia could find empathy for the holocaust victims and read their stories is encouraging. Watch me stereotype now… Teens (and especially anime fangirl teens [from experience? Maybe.]) relate to torture and angst (have you read the number of rape-torture fantasies out there, oy vey, that’s another series of articles entirely). However, to go back on the complimentary subject… it is good that she doesn’t feel she doesn’t have to relate solely through the internet.

On another subject, I agree with the boy who disagreed with the earlier statement that the shared culture comes more strongly from books. I feel like the sharing is at least as strong and more immediate online. However, what we have saved (on hard disk, on paper, or on some sort of recording) is what we have of those who came before us, and it’s good to remember them.

I’ll get off my old (sexy) British Guy rocker and go back in, and let the kids play on the yard… and probably play, too, soon as I’ve taken off my tweeds for the afternoon… but you won’t catch me using the for=4 or their=there=they’re or ur=you are, I’ll stick to being a grammar nazi on the inside.

As to the link-maze, if the internet didn’t distract me with shiny links then I’d have to resort to research and delayed gratification like in the old days… which seriously limited my intake. Damn you, meatspace!

One of my young(er) friends told me that he devoured any kind of elf fantasy he could get his hands on until he learned that they all had their roots in LOTR. Once he read that, the fantasy world was never the same for him, and he’s since become interested in other types of writing and is currently writing a novel.

My late husband never read more than the occasional comic book growing up and whatever school required him to read, but by the time he died he was an avid reader who frequently requested books as gifts.

We’ve all had those “where has this been all my life” moments and so will succeeding generations. As you pointed out, there are some kids who will never “get” literature. Maybe they learn in a tactile manner or they’re audio-attuned. But not to worry: as long as books exist, they will be discovered and loved.

I can see both sides of this argument. On the one hand, I’m also of the same generation as Teresa and also an avid reader. (It’s a rare thing for me to be reading one book at a time, especially now that I’ve joined a friend’s book club.) I’ve been called everything from “the best proofreader in the dorm” to “grammar nazi” for my mad English skillz. (Ahem, skills.) As a rabid fangirl, I have seen a lot of fanfiction and blog/forum posts that demonstrate exactly the sort of decline the article describes, and I rarely bother to comment or correct them — partly for fear of retaliatory flaming, and partly because if it’s bad enough I have an almost physical revulsion and have to get away from the offending text as quickly as possible. And don’t even get me started on the teens and tweens who actually have face-to-face conversations in IM-speak.

On the other hand, I have seen some outstanding stories online that are meticulously beta-read and edited for quality. I’m eagerly awaiting J.C. Hutchins’ Seventh Son books, even though I’ve already heard the whole story through his podiobook releases. I’m loving Shadow Unit, an online series collaboration from the likes of Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, and several other published authors. There are a number of blogs and forums where the posters are well-educated and demonstrate fantastic grammar and spelling. I’m a big fan of the internet as an information source and a social medium. (Full disclosure: I work in research library with a small staff.) If the internet is getting young people to read, it’s at least a step in the right direction.

And a traditional paper-and-ink format doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality. I have a cousin (who is almost a generation older) who self-published a physical book about a decade ago. It was riddled with so many errors that our great-aunt (a retired English teacher) came very close to getting out her red pen. After hearing that, I didn’t have the courage to read it at all.

I find it fascinating that Nadia (in the NYT article) was willing to read some fairly heavy non-fiction books, but prefers her fiction to be of the online fan variety. It makes me wonder whether her mother might have more success getting her to read media tie-in novels as a sort of gateway. In my experience, tie-ins are about as hit-or-miss as fanfic for narrative quality, but at least they have to pass through the editorial process.

It is my hope that those of us who have acquired a certain level of proficiency can lead by example in the online world. As more and more communication moves to the internet, the new generation will need to learn that the quality of their writing influences how seriously they will be taken.

He has yet to read THIS article.

Oh, internet. Distracting People With Shiny Things Since 1992.

I kind of feel like this is something that will work itself out, though. Like I said, this is the first generation of kids that have totally grown up with the internet…as with any big change, it’s scary, and people tend to go to extremes. But once it becomes more the norm, the “debate” will settle down, and we’ll be back to the old boring debates about quality of content as opposed to quality of medium. At least I hope so.

I’d pick King’s Dark Tower saga over Tolkien’s Ring saga any day… though I know King openly acknowledges Tolkien as an inspiration. The Ring saga was first, so it gets all the love even though I think it has a huge case of Too Much Information (Okay, everyone who needed to know precise historical battle information, raise their hand, now… thank you).

I’m not putting down literature that gets its start on-line. I’m a Sigler convert, and a bitch of Mur, and the list goes on and way on… and I have a lot of fanfic authors I enjoy as well as bloggers. I enjoy a lot of them in spite of typoes or obviously bad sentences or confusing/wrong bits, but I hate to see ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ go completely out the window. More than that I hate to see the idea of reading things that aren’t on a screen go out the window. Now I sound like Giles… but dammit, sometimes old British men can be right!

Kudos to you, Alpha-Girl for drawing lines for your students. It’s okay to know stuff and use it. Really, the netspeak is just a sort of laziness, and kids need to put off giving in to that for as long as they can manage (I remember the feeling of temptation, LOL). I tutored college math and science for awhile, and oy… high school NEEDS some good teachers.

@Trish: I’ve noticed that online writing habits are seeping into real life writing tasks. I’m getting more and more student essays that are written like blog posts. A lot of the kids aren’t using text-speak in their essays, but conventions like indenting paragraphs are disappearing. Also, my students submit their essays electronically as Word docs – a lot of them try skipping footnotes and works cited pages in favor of hyperlinking all over the place. So, “ESSAYS ARE NOT BLOG POSTS” went into my revised course syllabus.

@Rhea: I’m in agreement with you on content quality, because I think that’s largely subjective. A book may be far superior in literary conventions, structure, historical significance, etc., but can still suck hairy a$$ on a consumption level.

Also, what we consider “quality” in literature is often tied into age. For instance, Pride and Prejudice (which is one of my favorite books, BTW) is on high school reading lists across the country. But, when you get right down to it, it’s chick lit. Old, historical chick lit that teaches us about the manners and habits of British society at the time, but nonetheless, chick lit.

But, kids like Nadia make my head explode. She wants to go to college without having read books? She wants to be a writer without having read books? I hope she gets to college and her first English professor rips her a new one. It sounds like no one has ever given her constructive criticism or a bad English grade That makes me think she’s been homeschooled most of her life. If she’s had actual English teachers, those teachers should grow a pair and start enforcing the basics.

We should be able to count on English teachers to tell young writers how much they suck. It’s good practice for the mountain of rejection letters most writers will get over the course of their careers.

There is some really great stuff online, but there is a LOT MORE crap, and a lot of people who simply don’t care that it’s crap or that spelling/spellchecking and structure are being totally cast aside. I don’t like to be ‘grammar nazi’ or ‘spelling nazi,’ but someone needs to tell people like Nadia that there are standards in the world… because someday there might not be when kids like this grow up.

I’d point back to the earlier article about the “Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need Them” book, which I read and thought about. I don’t know if similar things happen in non-English speaking countries (because my non-English is not strong enough to get serious on editing), but at the very least, English is getting murdered on-line.

I dunno. I agree that you’re granted quality as far as editing like you said, but actual content quality? But then again, I really didn’t care for The Devil Wears Prada much, so that is seriously influencing my opinion.

Anyway, your article was much more interesting than the New York Times one. I had a couple of eye twitch moments reading that NYT article (I get frustrated way too easily). :p