Two
articles ago, I wrote on the effects of the interaction between Covid and
modern consumer technology on the socialization of young people today. In this article, I want to focus on the
effects of this interaction on the education of young people today. In particular, I want to focus on the effects
of learning through all the two-dimensional imagery from computers. One might say that books only give off the
two-dimensional imagery of letters, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and
whole pages. But letters and words are
symbols that stimulate a lot of conceptual thought, which knows no boundaries
in terms of physical dimensions. On the
other hand, watching screens definitely though subtly molds thinking in a
particular bound way. Watching a lot of
images on a two-dimensional screen definitely interferes with the development
of deep thinking. On the other hand, book reading does lend itself to deeper
thinking. Book reading is a combination
of defined discrete entities in thoughts moving across the page in flowing
blendable continual imagery. All
radiating out in many different directions.
Screen
learning, which is what many students are doing during the age of Covid,
configures the mind to be receptive to entities and images that in many cases
started out physically three-dimensional (the professor or teacher and his class
presentation) and get converted by the computer into visually two-dimensional
entities and images. There is something unreal,
almost ghostly about these entities and images.
They lack mass, matter, substance and texture. There is nothing physical to touch or hold
onto. These entities and images are
abstracted vacuumized phenomena with which it is much more difficult to bond
than if they were three-dimensional phenomena or even conceptual phenomena from
books.
When
all is said and done, our ability to mentally group concepts together
corresponds to our potential to physically group things together. Stereoscopic (three-dimensional vision) is
like a kind of prehensile vision – vision that touches and grasps. When we eliminate three-dimensional (stereoscopic)
vision from learning, we eliminate one of the most important senses for knowing
the world. And we put our students into
an experiential vacuum. A vacuum where
it is difficult to bond with the knowledge that students are supposed to
learn. Covid and consumer technology
make it very difficult to bond with knowledge and with the teachers that
present it. And less bonding means less
absorption.
Stereoscopic
vision, which is prehensile vision is the way we use sight not only to bond
with other people and fully grasp objects and other phenomena, but it is also
the way we have to ground ourselves in our living environments. But if students continue to spend so much of
their time in front of computers, not only will they lose the opportunity to spend
a lot of time with sources for prehensile vision in the external world, but
they will also lose the opportunity to fully develop the capacity to utilize
their prehensile vision. And they will remain
stuck in the experiential vacuum that is two-dimensional vision. And being stuck in this two-dimensional
vacuum means being stuck in numbness. A numbness that will make it more
difficult for them to group in a three-dimensional way the concepts and the
information that they have to learn in school.
Screen reality learning can’t hurt short-term learning where all knowledge
has to do is temporarily stick to the mind as it were. But screen reality learning will affect
long-term learning, where knowledge has to be grasped and held. A situation when imprints made on the mind
can be fully preserved.
Screen
learning is not a form of vibrant learning.
It just does not involve the kind of intense interaction with the
subject which leads to a lasting impression from the encounter. And yet this is
becoming the foundation for learning in the age of Covid. And young people, at an important time in
their lives are not developing their eyes and their brains in such a way that
they can properly absorb, and utilize stereoscopic visual experience. Without strong prehensile vision, young
people don’t develop the capacity to hold onto and to apply and commit thoughts
to situations in the external world.
Hence, the high turnover in employment in companies, the growing amount
of divorce, the growing amount of physical mobility, as people lose the
capacity to commit to a geographic place.
Finally, there is the growing loss of capacity to commit to
oneself. The numbness generated by
screen learning is overpowering and makes it subtly more difficult to hold onto
oneself as a coherent whole. Floating in a vacuum and not being able to bond or
ground can lead to focused self-destructive actions to fight off the entropic
disintegration generated by the vacuum.
One form of self-destruction to fight off a more subtle but larger
destruction of the self.
So
stereoscopic or prehensile vision is often overlooked, but does have an
important role in human development. And
too much immersion in online learning as a result of Covid will therefore lead
to pathological consequences for young people in the distant future.
© 2021 Laurence Mesirow
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