Thompson reading response

In the article “The New Literacy” by Clive Thompson a very controversial issue is put forward, whether or not technology is corrupting younger generation’s writing. Thompson suggests that with all the multiple types of electronic communication we use today, technology is “pushing our literacy in bold new directions”. At the beginning of this reading Thompson states the opinion of one professor who believes “an age of illiteracy is at hand”. Throughout the article, Thompson continues to side with Andrea Lunsford who is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. There she organized an immense project called the “Stanford Study of Writing”. That she used to inspect the problem of whether or not technology is indeed hurting kids writing today.
One implication of Thompson’s treatment during “The New Literacy” is that because such a tremendous amount of socializing takes place everyday online or simply through text, the young people of today are actually writing far more than past generations ever did. In fact, “a stunning 38 percent of [the student writing that was collected] took place out of the classroom” according to Lunsford’s project. Although Thompson does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that in no way is technology demeaning the writing of children.
My own personal view is that technology is helping to improve writing for the present day generation. Though I concede that some kids do use technology foully and it has ended up making their writing “bleak, bald, shorthand”; I still maintain my outlook that technology is helping to perk up the writing of my generation. For example, students today almost always are writing to an audience (most of the time subconsciously) which wasn’t as easy in past generations because they didn’t have texting, email, blogs or facebook like we have access to today. Although some may object that texting and emailing is in no way helping the writing of children, I reply that with all the extra writing we take part in outside of school we have on our own learned many important techniques of writing. For example, we know how to have a voice in our writing and how to change our tone in our writing to fit different audiences.
This issue is important because many teachers are expected to teach material from ancient books that have absolutely no relation to their student’s everyday lives and experiences. Having access now to all the information on the internet, pupils are paying less attention in class because they are bored and do not comprehend why they are obliged to learn this mandatory material. From this problem a lot of people believe these failing grades are to be directly related to technology and texting. When in fact the problem is not technology or texting but the coursework students are assigned. People need to realize that instead of discouraging the use of texting and technology (in fear it will cause us to become poor spellers or in general writers) our civilization needs to encourage the use of technology because it truly is helping.