[Trying to turn this into a question] Do you see a lack of imagination among kids
today? As a teacher I have a front-row seat. At our place of learning (all ages) we
typically have them do 10 sentences or so a day (based off of vocab words)-and I
have a devil of a time getting them to add interesting details or inject some personal
viewpoints into their writing.
If for example I ask them to make a sentence on “cynic” or “cynicism” (which would
be a middle/high school level word-apologies in advance to Diogenes ) I usually get
“My friend Joe is a cynical person”
Instead of something like
“Tobias, the grumpy cynical toad, would sit on his toadstool all day and make
disparaging comments to the passing faeries.”
Even if the student is well-read, I don’t see the effort and inspiration being put
into it. I had a girl who was an intense nut for fantasy literature of all sorts-even
her sentences would be plain more often than not.
I then remembered a comment in an article in this week’s ESPN-TM, which
discussed whether NFL coaches punt too much (we had a thread on that here
recently-couldn’t find it in a search tho for some reason). It said the ultimate
reason they don’t go for it on 4th down is (get ready this is good) because of
peer pressure. They are afraid of being ostracized from the community of NFL
coaches for going against the prevailing wisdom and basically “showing up” the
other coach. There were other reasons (media criticism), but back to my point…
Perhaps then it is peer pressure: perhaps they are afraid we’ll make a big deal
(which we would) if they came up with a series of killer sentences, simultaneously
making themselves stand out uncomfortably from their peers and making said
peers’ own sentences look poor in comparison?
Or maybe (original point) they really don’t have that kind of imaginative power?
Have you noticed a decrease (Warning: Old Fogeyitis Alert) in the level of
kid’s imaginations over the years (in terms of play styles, artwork, and so on)?
If so do we blame it all on Nintendo?