Day: August 13, 2016

Really, Audiobooks do not make you a bad person

I recently ranted about post from an editor at Digital Book World thoroughly dumping on audiobooks.  Seriously? From someone who works in the  digital  publishing industry? Unless, of course, it was a plant to put down another format of book that competes with the ebook industry that publishes in text only – -the one that refuses to come up with a standard way of delivering books that have something besides boring black text, and isn’t doing very well when compared to the booming audiobook business….. (OK – that maybe needs to be a rant for another day.)

I just saw a reference to another post about the value of audiobooks (thanks to Blogging through the Fourth Dimension. She even calls audiobooks “gifts to all learners!”)  It’s even from a scientific perspective! “As far as your brain is concerned, listening to audiobooks isn’t cheating” by Melissa Dahl outlines exactly why reading books doesn’t prove you are  better person, as our society would make us all believe,

If, he argues, you take the question from the perspective of cognitive psychology — that is, the mental processes involved — there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it.

The “he” referenced above is Daniel Willingham, a Psychology professor who studies and writes about education. His post is awesome – he wrote it because he’s tired of being asked if audiobooks are cheating. He says, “The point is getting to and enjoying the destination. The point is not how you traveled.”Agreed.

He also says that once a person has learned to decode words, reading print is no more work than listening, i.e., it doesn’t make you a better, smarter person.  . The comments at the end of his blog illustrate this view that somehow reading in print makes you a better person than listening to books. It seems there is really very little scientific study about which way of gathering knowledge is “better.”

For a less academic view about audiobooks, see this Reddit thread. (found through Dahl’s article.) I love the snark and, again, the pointed elitism we have about print being a “better” medium than audio.

Mind you, I am not arguing that audio is better than print. It’s like many debates: let’s stop the debating and let people consume knowledge/enjoy a story in whatever manner they prefer. Stop judging and making people feel like cheaters if they, in fact, prefer to listen to a book rather than read it.

History is too a worthwhile major!

Love this op-ed from James Grossman at the LA Times about why history is a worthy major, “History isn’t a useless major.” This post was written in May, but even in just a few months, his emphasis on the critical thinking skills one learns in history are even more crucial. Analyzing the current presidential election through a historical lens makes it even more terrifying than it is on its own…..

I was a history major. I love history. I admit it did actually lead me to my first job out of college – an interpreter (or guide) at a historic site. I spent the summer teaching the story of a fort in 1827 to visitors. I wore period dresses, I went barefoot, I cooked in a fireplace. It was fantastic. I still work for the same organization, but I rely much less on my historical skills, but on my much-more-recently acquired computer skills.

I never took a single computer class in college. I didn’t learn to code until I was 35. But – that doesn’t mean I can’t do this. Any coding I would’ve learned in college would’ve been so outdated by the time I was 35. My current job relies very little on what I actually learned in college, but relies much more on how I was able to learn since then.

I don’t put much stock in the “marketable” college majors. Of course, I don’t have anything to back this up — just that 30 years out, it really didn’t matter what my major was. It mattered how I was able to learn, adapt and keep up-to-date.  We tell our kids that they should major in something they find interesting, something where they are learning more and expanding their horizons and minds. Something where they can gain some expertise and confidence. We think that’ll carry them much further than having a specific degree.