Question #1

Chris Piuma: Are your students representative of people (Americans?) (younger Americans?) as a whole?

Hmm, perhaps. Such a small sample to generalize from. Though from a small, safe, clean, monocultural university town (22,000 residents including students) eighty-plus miles from an interstate, they nonetheless share most of the cultural mechanics of other young Americans--MySpace, YouTube, mp3s, downloaded music, cable tv, video games, wikipedia... So like other high school students, they want what they want by the click of an icon.

But they also regularly take part in activities not common to other young Americans. Rugged mountains, whitewater rivers, forests virtually undisturbed by logging, just a short drive away, many of these young people have a larger, deeper connection to the outdoors (potential Whitmans?). Do those activities make them more patient for learning things not on the map? The jury's out.

Comments

[Chris]

I'm excited that you're tackling these questions! I wonder how much of the population of teenaged Americans fit that summary (which is the usual summary these days) that you give in your first paragraph. Or, for that matter, whether the medium of the internet (or mp3s or etc.) shapes experience more than/as much as the content of the experience. As poets, perhaps we're more likely to say "well of course it does". Glad to hear that they actually participate in those outdoors activities, despite the tempting internet...