Reading by the Pool
Our children today live in a world where we have made wonderful advances. Our children are brought up to believe with science and technology we can achieve almost anything.
When Caxton invented the first known printing press he was obviously looking far ahead. He printed over a hundred books in his lifetime. It is difficult not to put words into his mouth – but he would probably have been very excited at the idea of `ebooks’.
`Ebooks’ can be downloaded from the internet. You can read a number of pages from the book – and make up your mind whether you want to buy the book or not. This saves going to the library, selecting three or four books, and not enjoying any of them after the first few pages. Even the major bookshops like W.H. Smith carry examples of `ebooks’ on their website.
Caxton focused on what were considered, in those days, to be `important’ books. Through `ebooks’ we can sample many different types of books - not only fiction and non fiction but also biographies, romance, travel and the environment.
We know that many of our bright eleven plus children are socially aware. Many of them will be concerned about the environment and aware of issues like the mountains that have been torn apart, seas, rivers and oceans polluted. Our eleven plus children will also be concerned about forests have been destroyed.
Naturally our children will also be aware of benefits of the advances in technology. I wonder what Caxton would have felt if he had been able to lie in the shade, over looking his swimming pool, reading a section of a book that had been downloaded from the internet by a wireless connection?
Our children can do just that. They can even lie beside the self same pool working through an `online eleven plus paper’! Surely this must be progress.
If it is not progress then perhaps we are expecting too much from our children. For a select few children the days of being able to lie beside the pool feeling relaxed and `on holiday’ are long gone. Poor kids!
When Caxton invented the first known printing press he was obviously looking far ahead. He printed over a hundred books in his lifetime. It is difficult not to put words into his mouth – but he would probably have been very excited at the idea of `ebooks’.
`Ebooks’ can be downloaded from the internet. You can read a number of pages from the book – and make up your mind whether you want to buy the book or not. This saves going to the library, selecting three or four books, and not enjoying any of them after the first few pages. Even the major bookshops like W.H. Smith carry examples of `ebooks’ on their website.
Caxton focused on what were considered, in those days, to be `important’ books. Through `ebooks’ we can sample many different types of books - not only fiction and non fiction but also biographies, romance, travel and the environment.
We know that many of our bright eleven plus children are socially aware. Many of them will be concerned about the environment and aware of issues like the mountains that have been torn apart, seas, rivers and oceans polluted. Our eleven plus children will also be concerned about forests have been destroyed.
Naturally our children will also be aware of benefits of the advances in technology. I wonder what Caxton would have felt if he had been able to lie in the shade, over looking his swimming pool, reading a section of a book that had been downloaded from the internet by a wireless connection?
Our children can do just that. They can even lie beside the self same pool working through an `online eleven plus paper’! Surely this must be progress.
If it is not progress then perhaps we are expecting too much from our children. For a select few children the days of being able to lie beside the pool feeling relaxed and `on holiday’ are long gone. Poor kids!
posted by Shaun at
7:24 AM
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