Tuesday, December 20, 2011

* Digital Tailoring







        The Age of Individuation:


Professor DATA  vs. Dr. Spock




Word count: 303

Are we creating lonely kids who will become lonely adults?

The Age of Individuation is upon us.

The advent of Brain Based Learning techniques means every kid in public school will have an Individual Learning Plan based on what parts of his/her brain fire-up in reaction to x, y, and z  “educational” stimuli.  

The decoding of the human genome means every patient soon may have an Individual Health Plan based on what parts of  his/her code are missing or distorted. Doctors will become genetic tailors, cutting and sewing DNA garments to fit each client.

Health and education will become matters of conspicuous consumption: Armani, Gucci, and  Saks Fifth Avenue creations down to K-Mart  and Wal-Mart  discount choices.

You already know who the winners will be.

The danger of all this analysis lies in what psychiatry used to call “morbid introspection.” 

If we replace the joyful naivete and  blithe spontaneity of childhood with recipes for learning and for health which parents, doctors, and educators  use to “cook” their child into the perfect culinary creation, we may be in danger of making kids so self conscious, so analytical, that we destroy the very notion of childhood itself.

Kiss ‘childhood” goodbye and replace it with depression.

Part of the problem is that parents have been bullied into surrendering  their intuitive parenting skills and knowledge to the  digital gods of DATA. 

 They have replaced Dr. Spock with Professor DATA.

Are we on the verge of  creating a world of highly educated, extremely healthy, depressed children who enter adulthood with a deep loneliness which no digital god -- and no hand-held touch screen -- can fill?

 And if you add conspicuous consumption to the problem, won't we be in real trouble?

We need pause and seek higher ground ------ before the digital tsunami overwhelms us.


Paul D. Keane
M.A., M. Div., M.Ed.


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