Young 'lack attention for Dickens' (according to Yahoo! News)

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5 February

There is a huge range of comments on an article under this heading at:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/young-lack-attention-dickens-044309473.html

Claire Tomalin, the most recent biographer of Dickens, has attacked the educational system and its effect on young people's literacy (and Dr Christopher Pittard of the University of Portsmouth, where Dickens was born (Portsmouth, that is, not the university), also commented on the significance of these works*):

What Dickens wrote about is still amazingly relevant. The only caveat I would make is that today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.


As I say, there is a wealth of opinion about whether Dickens is - or should be - read, and, if he is not, why that could be...

To which I shall but add:

(1) Think of my attention span what you will, but, in an earlier generation (or two), I grew up in a house where there was a t.v. from when I was very small - my father's business was selling, renting and repairing them (which, for those renting, was covered by the rental charge) and radios.

(2) The quality of programmes when I was a teenager and now bears no comparison - how anyone could be compelled to watch, let alone pay attention to, some of the output that our multi-channelled world has given us is beyond me.

(3) I used to do my homework whilst watching t.v. (but, as my mother reminds me, that third ingredient of holding a conversation and still concentrating was beyond me), although I am sure that homework - as have 'A' levels - has become harder since.

(4) I have even read many a long novel, and, in one week at university, Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones in full.

(5) Reading such a book, unless you have to do it to that timescale, is nothing to do with the so-called 'attention span' - your attention is not uniterruptedly on Bleak House for its however many hundred pages, which will depend on the edition, but you will read it as and when you can (or can make time for it). That simply is not an issue that relates to attention span, except to the obvious extent that, if one can only - given the best opportunity to do so (see point (6), below) - read a short section at a time, then covering the whole text will take longer, in terms of the accumulating intervals between such a section and resuming, and prove more disheartening to the reader: I'll never finish this!.

(6) Some, particularly the cheaper, versions of 'The Classics', such as Dickens, are such poor photographic reproductions of earlier editions that anyone would rightly struggle to read them: it should not take William Morris or Eric Gill to tell Ms Tomalin how important the choice of typeface and the design of a book are both to the enjoyment of reading, and, thus, to the likelihood that one will persist with the activity (especially if the book is long).


End-notes

* Dr Pittard's view is that 'while his novels have a very definite shape to them, there's a hidden structure which isn't comprehensible at first, they are more like the DVD boxset of their time', thereby, sadly, perpetuating the belief that this, not 'boxed set', is the correct term.

As to the university, this appears (but I might be wrong) to be the most noteworthy thing** in the news about it (since it ceased being known as the University of Padua):

29 Sep 2011 – A STUDENT naked calendar is facing the chop following complaints that unedited photos of girls were leaked onto a pornographic site.

You don't want an unedited photograph at any cost - if it hasn't been 'touched up', it really shouldn't be visible!


** SIlly me, I missed this, but I'll let you, dear reader, look yourself at:

New Chancellor for former University of Padua


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