Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
In a recent Herald article, Caro Rainsford, a director of Google in New Zealand, argued that the lockdown’s closure of schools and universities, paved a new education future of digital learning.
She’s talking nonsense.
In education terms the Internet is doing no more than has been done for centuries, only with books.
But whether reading books or a screen, reading is only one, certainly important part of an education. Equally critical is talking, whether with seminar discussions or one-on-one with teachers.
Caro also argued that the internet enabled a wider audience. Doubtless that’s true in Africa, India and the like but the fact is books have never been cheaper to produce. Thanks to technology the major cost of yesteryear, namely type-setting, no longer applies.
That said, I’m biased. Books have been a life-long personal passion virtually as an object of veneration. This is not uncommon, many of my friends and family sharing that sentiment.
Unfortunately it has a price, namely a constant niggling frustration at not being able to read and re-read them all at once.
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