Is for Ox, a: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word

The electronic media have made many young people prisoners, barred from reading and writing, asserts Sanders, coauthor of ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind with Ivan Illich. To begin this quirky essay, he explores the foundation of what he calls ``orality.'' Speaking demands human interaction, but most children now rely on ``electronic wizardry'' which renders them unable to interrupt and join in. (But what about the Internet?) Thus he roundly condemns television, as cliched and without nuance, contributing to a ``post-illiterate'' generation, and he criticizes absent parents and a paternalistic education model that ignores vernacular language. Only books, not the computer, can provide ``inner space'' for the self; literacy, he suggests cogently, can provide the ``internalized constraints'' sadly lacking in gang members, whom he takes as emblematic of society. Though the author's indictment is overwrought-``word processors have turned everyone into ghostwriters''-he has worthy advice: train children's ears before their eyes, and let them develop their imagination outside technology. (Oct.)