The nature of text is that it is public and fixed. Any two different people can look at a book, and they will bring different perspectives to the text and form different interpretations of it: but the letters on the page are exactly the same for both readers.
But text, and thereby education itself, is being undermined by simplest maneuver: withhold books from students.
By keeping books away from students - or students away from books - , those who wish to damage education can turn text into a subjective, relativized, and fluid experience instead of a publicly accessible artifact. Tom DeWeese reports:
In New York City, administrators at the Life Sciences Secondary School have ordered all textbooks rounded up and removed. Books, they say, are antiquated. Instead, technology is to be the new god of learning.
Physical books are being replaced by data files, which can be changed continuously. A student might read a paragraph in an online history resource; when the student wishes to read that passage again a week or two later, it’s changed, and the text now reads differently.
One of the core skills which educators seek to instill is the ability of students to support theses by means of evidence. Evidence is the citation of text. But how does one cite a constantly changing fluid text?
The books were piled up in the hallway of the school. Next stop – the trash bin. Most were in good condition, including hundreds of math, algebra, geometry and various English literature text books. Also strewn around the floor were copies of Romeo and Juliet and A Street Car named Desire.
Not only has text ceased to be fixed, so that one may refer to it, but it also has become private: your copy of Hamlet or War and Peace might be different than mine.
Mechanically printed physical texts offer a standard to which common reference can be made. We can trade our differing interpretations and views by reference to, and with reference to, the fixed public text. This creates meaningful debate and dialogue.
But if my copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls has been edited to better “suit” me, based on the cookies in my browser, and your copy has been likewise altered, then any basis for intelligible dialogue has been removed.
