Page 155 - Šolsko polje, XXX, 2019, št. 5-6: Civic, citizenship and rhetorical education in a rapidly changing world, eds. Janja Žmavc and Plamen Mirazchiyski
P. 155
i. ž. žagar ■ slovenian experience with rhetoric in primary schools
This is also what a large COST project “E-READ: Reading in the
Age of Digitisation” showed. The goal of this action was to research wheth-
er there is a difference between reading from paper and reading from (any
kind of) screen. A total of 52 countries participated, I was a part of this ac-
tion, and so were colleagues from Greece. The project was completed last
year, and the results were devastating: the research showed that when read-
ing from digital devices, the reading is much shallower, there is no immer-
sion, retention time is much shorter, and so is concentration (for reading).
One piece of research even showed that when comparing two groups
of pupils, working on the same task, where one of them is working with
paper and pencil and the other with tablets and screens, the “digital”
group is much more confident that they will complete the tasks faster and
more successfully than the paper group. What the results showed after the
completion of the task was that they were actually much slower than the
“paper group” and they were much less successful in completing the task
than the “paper group”.
There was no meta-study on why this is yet, but it is pretty safe to sur-
mise that pupils’ sporadic, fleeting, and superficial interaction when using
social media in the digital world (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat ...) were
kind of automatically, because of the media used, transferred to more de-
manding tasks being represented digitally on the screens.
Now, if we return to our problem with argumentation in the im-
plementation of the rhetoric syllabus objectives: if Toulmin’s basic
scheme presented a problem (because the leading questions were not clear
enough), what did the students do instead? They turned to debate, un-
structured debate to be exact, where they had to set a claim/standpoint
and find as many arguments in its support, wherever they were prepared
to look for them.
This is also the point where teachers gave up and adapted to the de-
mands of the syllabus to the new reality. Namely, the syllabus demands
that pupils get three grades in the course of the year: two for preparing
and delivering a speech and one for rhetorical analysis of the speech or
text. In writing. Teachers gave up on the last task, and replaced it with de-
bate, grading the debate competition. No analysis, no writing.
This uneasiness with reading and especially with writing is probably
also the reason why the operative objective (though an elective one (ibid.,
p. 6)): “Pupils learn the difference between good and bad argument” did
not work well either.
The goal could have probably passed as acceptable: “Pupils under-
stand that a good argument has to be true, acceptable, relevant and suffi-
cient for the intended purpose.”
153
This is also what a large COST project “E-READ: Reading in the
Age of Digitisation” showed. The goal of this action was to research wheth-
er there is a difference between reading from paper and reading from (any
kind of) screen. A total of 52 countries participated, I was a part of this ac-
tion, and so were colleagues from Greece. The project was completed last
year, and the results were devastating: the research showed that when read-
ing from digital devices, the reading is much shallower, there is no immer-
sion, retention time is much shorter, and so is concentration (for reading).
One piece of research even showed that when comparing two groups
of pupils, working on the same task, where one of them is working with
paper and pencil and the other with tablets and screens, the “digital”
group is much more confident that they will complete the tasks faster and
more successfully than the paper group. What the results showed after the
completion of the task was that they were actually much slower than the
“paper group” and they were much less successful in completing the task
than the “paper group”.
There was no meta-study on why this is yet, but it is pretty safe to sur-
mise that pupils’ sporadic, fleeting, and superficial interaction when using
social media in the digital world (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat ...) were
kind of automatically, because of the media used, transferred to more de-
manding tasks being represented digitally on the screens.
Now, if we return to our problem with argumentation in the im-
plementation of the rhetoric syllabus objectives: if Toulmin’s basic
scheme presented a problem (because the leading questions were not clear
enough), what did the students do instead? They turned to debate, un-
structured debate to be exact, where they had to set a claim/standpoint
and find as many arguments in its support, wherever they were prepared
to look for them.
This is also the point where teachers gave up and adapted to the de-
mands of the syllabus to the new reality. Namely, the syllabus demands
that pupils get three grades in the course of the year: two for preparing
and delivering a speech and one for rhetorical analysis of the speech or
text. In writing. Teachers gave up on the last task, and replaced it with de-
bate, grading the debate competition. No analysis, no writing.
This uneasiness with reading and especially with writing is probably
also the reason why the operative objective (though an elective one (ibid.,
p. 6)): “Pupils learn the difference between good and bad argument” did
not work well either.
The goal could have probably passed as acceptable: “Pupils under-
stand that a good argument has to be true, acceptable, relevant and suffi-
cient for the intended purpose.”
153
