A Matter Of Concentration

The other day I found myself talking to a class about what some see as a deterioration in the ability of students, indeed, folks in general, to concentrate for reasonable periods of time. The problem is, of course, that given the kind of generalising inherent in such observations and the sad fact that jeremiads against the iniquities of the younger generations are a feature of any age you care to think of, it's well nigh impossible to be sure that this isn't just a case of an enjoyable moan for its own sake.

With that major caveat in mind I'll offer the tentative observation that I think there might be a disturbing truth in the deteriorationist hypothesis. In part I base this on my own partial, limited but real experience and in part what I see as reasonable conjectures based on the kinds of demands on audiences and readers which were once quite normal in work intended to be popular which seem to have largely vanished - the demands, I mean. A significant majority of those I teach, in some ways the elite of their society, regard quite slight novels as being long and demanding. Goodness knows how they'd react if faced with a full-length Dickens.

And in addition to this I've come to notice how often similar observations concerning the problem crop up in the course of my reading, without having to seek them out. Just now I happened to be reading a critical essay on the work of Maya Angelou and came across a footnote noting the difficulty of teaching her autobiographical novels in American universities as they are seen as too demanding for students to cope with if set as independent reading. Good grief, part of me expostulated. Interestingly, the same footnote quoted a professor on the steady reduction in the amount of such reading he has set students over the years, the reduction stemming from a steady erosion in their capacity to cope. I honestly cannot remember ever reading this kind of moaning in what is otherwise a serious bit of lit crit before.

I'm really not sure if the idea that somehow the capacity of the educated elite of our species to fully and fruitfully concentrate adds up to something we should be worrying about. But in my darker moments I find myself weighing the darker implications.