My Thoughts on E-Books

As I have mentioned several times, I am an English Literature graduate, so have spent many years of my life reading and enjoying books. I own a lot of books – some are battered beyond belief from constant reading, others are annotated to death from school, others I have yet to read. I must have paid hundreds of pounds on books for university alone. But until recently I have had very little to do with E-books. There was one point where I read The Tempest online before a lecture (and my eyes seriously hurt afterwards!). I also found it useful to load up novels online, search for a specific quote, find out which chapter it was in and find it in my copy of the book to reference it properly (seems time-consuming, but much less so than flipping through all the pages). As a student I never really viewed electronic texts as anything other than a practical way to get the information I needed.

I discovered E-books when I got an Android phone, and downloaded the app Aldiko. If you're unfamiliar with it, Aldiko is an app that lets you download books – sometimes at a cost, but many books in the public domain are absolutely free. This gives you access to a whole world of novels at the touch of a button. You can have the complete works of Charles Dickens stored on your phone in a matter of minutes. And even the books you pay for cost less than a book in the shops. The rise in E-books has caused a pretty big divide amongst readers. Some welcome the new technology, others feel it will kill the book industry. Personally, even with the endless supply of novels for free, I would almost always choose to buy a physical book rather than download a virtual one. I have, however, found some uses for E-books.

First of all, my job sometimes requires me to invigilate exams, and anyone who has done this knows just how boring it can get (or depressing, if you actually catch a cheater). So you generally want something to pass the time. It's nice to be able to read a novel instead of sitting and doing nothing, but you need to pay attention to the students – at some point someone will need an extra sheet of paper, or need to be escorted to the toilet. This is where reading on a small screen comes in handy – it's much harder to lose your place in a book when there's barely any text on the screen at one time. You can read in short bursts without reading the same passage over and over again. They are also useful if you lack sufficient light to read normally, such as on a long car ride at night – why should a lack of light prevent us from enjoying a good book?

I've been pretty open-minded towards E-books lately, but to be honest, I don't see myself paying for downloads or buying a Kindle. If I'm going to pay for a book, I would rather buy a physical one than one in digital form. You could argue that I'm a hypocrite, since I've paid to download games from the Playstation Network, but there it's usually to avoid the risk of purchasing a damaged second-hand PSOne disc. A ripped page in a book is a mild inconvenience, while a scratched disc can render the entire game unplayable. There is also a charm to a slightly battered book. I think I still feel the same way about E-books that I used to. I see them as a practical tool for reading when reading a physical book isn't an option. There are however, many people who enjoy E-books, so they definitely have a place in the world.

I think some people are worried that E-books will destroy the simple pleasure of reading. I can see the worry here – in a society that is pretty reliant on technology, it's good to know that we still have a form of entertainment that doesn't have to be plugged in or charged up. If we were to lose this, a power cut would cost us dearly. But I don't think people need to be as scared as E-books as they are. I seriously don't think that people should be looked down upon for choosing to buy a Kindle rather than build up a collection of physical books. Dracula will always be the same text, whether your are reading it electronically or on paper. This new technology has its uses, and if people prefer using an electronic device then there is nothing wrong with this. I don't think physical books are in any danger – practicality isn't always the preferred option, and a list of texts on a screen will never feel as special as a bookcase filled with novels. In the end, if we are all reading great books, who cares how we choose to read them?

The Education System - Good Grades and Job Prospects

It's been a while since I last posted on here, or indeed since I have written anything. I guess I haven't felt very inspired lately. But I have a few more topics in mind so I'll try to get a few more blog posts out over the next few months. This one is a little different, but is something I feel quite strongly about; my problems with education. First of all, a disclaimer - I don't hate schools. My later school years were some of the best in my life, I had the time of my life at university and I now work in a college and still plan to go back to uni and do a Masters at some point. I do think, however, that schools are not always equipping their students with the right skills to enter the working world. I am aware that every school is different, and that my own education experiences will differ greatly from other peoples, but I think what I am going to talk about is a fairly common problem. This post will cover the idea that you need to get good grades in school to get a good job, the problems I have with this motivator, and what impact it can have on students.

I remember this one time when one of my teachers was having a go at the class, and something she said stuck in my mind. She mentioned something about our future and how we needed to work hard or we would end up working in Tesco. She then said "Any idiot can stack shelves for the rest of their lives." Thinking back, the threat of retail work is extremely insulting. I think the message we were supposed to get from the rant was that we need to work hard to live up to our potential. I agree that we should always try to better ourselves, but classing all supermarket employees as losers who threw their lives away is not the way to go about it. This isn't the only thing wrong with this scenario. Even discounting the offensive nature of the Tescos threat, let's look at reality. You tell your students that they need to work hard in school or they will end up working in a supermarket; you fail to mention that potential employers don't look for good grades, they look for transferable skills. If a child has spent their entire life working hard in school to get good grades, and has never done anything beyond that, they are pretty much unemployable. In this case, they will have a hard time getting any job.

I have been extremely lucky to have parents who understand all this, and encouraged me from a young age to take part in a number of activities outside school, and that doing my best was enough. But let's look at how things could have gone if this hadn't been the case. When I had my interview for Sixth Form I was told that I needed to have extra curricular activities and be a well-rounded person to go anywhere in life. Why had it taken the education system twelve years to tell me that? This is the sort of information that I should have been given much earlier. Now let's look at what happened when I finished University: I spent seven months working in Waitrose – a supermarket. But I had no problem with it. I had no more student loan, and I knew what the job market was like. So I asked my boss if there were any extra shifts going and was lucky enough to be taken on full-time. This meant that I was able to move straight into the working world, and for the first time in my life live entirely off my own earnings. And I loved it. I enjoy my current job a whole lot more, but I still think that without the skills I acquired in Waitrose, I wouldn't be where I am now. But if I had believed that retail work was the profession of failures, doing this straight out of university might feel like hitting an all-time low. At school, you are pretty much taught that you go through school, you go through uni and then you get a job. I feel that the education system leaves out the finer details, which I think results in a lot of straight A students winding up unemployed.

I think the league tables are a big part of the problem. The higher the grades at a school, the higher that school will be on the league tables, and the school will have a better reputation as a result. This means that some schools will make a big deal out of grade averages not for the good of the students, but to improve the reputation of the school. But what impact does this have on the students? There are people out there who have gone as far as to take their own lives over exams, believing that failing an exam or being a bad student means that much. There are people who tear themselves apart trying to get grades that they can't possibly achieve. We have some teachers who worry more about what Ofsted inspectors think than about how good they actually are at teaching.

I think school is an important part of life, and that we learn a lot of valuable skills from our time there. I think these need to be emphasised more. If a cheeky student asks their teacher 'when will I ever use this in real life', the teacher needs to be able to answer. Getting an A in maths won't necessarily get you a good job, but it shows that you are good at approaching problems in a logical manner. Being good at English allows you to analyse problems and see beneath the surface meaning. Understanding geography, history and religion broadens our minds to how our world works, our past, and how different we all are as people. Science is a given; scientific discovery has done wonders for the world, and will continue to do so. All these are valuable things to know - getting good grades is irrelevant in my eyes. I think a good teacher makes their students passionate about the subject, and makes them want to learn more and do well. There is so much in this world that we should try to learn more about, but we need to be doing it for the right reasons. Education is about enriching lives and equipping us with important skills, not about memorising facts that can be coughed up later in a test. There are some wonderful teachers out there who have inspired their students, and the education system needs more of these people. To make school really worthwhile, they need to stop worrying about looking good and start focussing on being good.

I think I've experienced a mixed bag in terms of my education - some years have been really good, while others I would rather forget. So what is the solution? Should children be taught that it doesn't matter how well you do in school - the job market sucks right now so you'll be lucky to get anything? I don't think so. I do think that the focus needs to be more on children's futures and less on the school's reputation, and that schools need to provide more education that will prepare their students for the working world. So what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the points I've made? How did this issue affect your education experience? Feel free to leave a comment, or better yet, write a response.