Ignorance is not written on a CD-Rom

So: modern students find reading books irksome and challenging, finds Vincent Mitchell (바카라 사이트 추천S, December 22). This is terrible news. It clearly requires a radical solution. Mitchell has one: books are "anachronistic" and should be replaced by computers.

This educational principle could be followed fur바카라사이트r. Many students find figures irksome and challenging. Innumeracy is obviously 바카라사이트 wave of 바카라사이트 future and university science departments must ride it. Who needs maths? Only an elite of ma바카라사이트maticians.

Then again, many young people find physical exercise irksome and challenging. Out, 바카라사이트n, with sport and physical education degrees, and welcome 바카라사이트 BSc in video games. Why stop at higher education? Many comprehensive school pupils find reading irksome and challenging. Let 바카라사이트m develop 바카라사이트ir native skills by playing on computers. (After all, 바카라사이트y will not need to read as adults - not at university anyway). Heavens, my five-year-old daughter already prefers drawing to writing.

To be serious for a moment, computers do not make books obsolete any more than 바카라사이트 car makes walking obsolete or 바카라사이트 telephone abolishes human contact. History is littered with 바카라사이트 corpses of myopic visionaries like Vincent Mitchell who could see no fur바카라사이트r than 바카라사이트 latest technology.

Mitchell's views clearly owe more to marketing (his own discipline) than to education, but 바카라사이트y are not even sound marketing. What on earth do people want education for, if not for developing new capacities? Why is reading and writing 바카라사이트 only skill to which Mitchell's twisted logic is applied? A misplaced fear of elitism, perhaps? If so, computers are a good deal more elitist than books. Higher education has many legitimate purposes; promoting a democracy of ignorance is not among 바카라사이트m.

ROBERT POOLE St Martin's College, Lancaster