As a writer and avid reader, I can't help but be concerned that the growing electronic media available for entertainment worries me when it comes to my kids. Obviously I don't want them inundated with video games and movies, but it's more than that. Simply put, I want my children to take quiet moments in their lives to sit down and read for pleasure. My kids are currently very young - almost 2 and almost 4 - but as I watch the way in which they are being exposed to technology as opposed to what I grew up with . . . it's astonishing! My father was one of the first waves of men who went to school and jumped right into software programming (back before computer science degrees were available). He was actually part of the group that wrote some of the code that enables users to hop on the web, so I grew up with computers - black DOS screens with awful, glowing green font and all. But even having been exposed much sooner than most of my friends, who didn't have personal home computers until they were older, I still didn't grow up with mp3 players or dvds as a child - those came in high school and college.
Children these days have programmed cell phones (specifically for kids so that they can only contact parents and 911, something my husband and I are honestly consider for our eldest who goes to school in the fall) as soon as they go to school, mp3 players, laptops, etc. I guess coming back to my purpose in starting this discussion, with all of these amazing media options, do you honestly feel that our children's generations will really enjoy reading for pleasure?
I'm pretty adamant about wanting my sons to enjoy reading and their private preschool and the school that follows certainly encourage this as well, but will society? I've seen older children's public school programs cut out things like phonics, spelling, etc. Are we just paving the way for a lessened love and understanding of literature down the road?
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