Rooting for Books in the Battle With Computers

It was a typical fifth-grade homework assignment--something about calculating the area and perimeter of soccer and football fields.

I sent my daughter to our makeshift home library--a few bookshelves beside the computer--to rifle through my collection of dictionaries and almanacs, atlases, science texts and history books. But there was nothing with the kind of stats she needed.

So her teenage sister cranked up the computer. She popped in a disk, pointed and clicked, and out rolled two sheets of paper with all the math homework demanded . . . the length and width of a football field, the varying sizes of soccer arenas.

And I stood on the sidelines feeling vaguely alarmed, surrounded by my arsenal of reference books, feeling outgunned, out of the loop, outmoded.

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Maybe it’s just parental nostalgia, a longing for the good old days of my youth, when a simple assignment like that could have led to a night curled up with a good book . . . a good encyclopedia.

My search wouldn’t have been so swift, no doubt. On the way to Soccer I might have detoured into Slavery or Socialism. En route to Football I might have been waylaid by Folk Art or Flowers.

Every bit of esoterica I know today, I learned on inadvertent forays through our family reference library--a simple set of encyclopedias.

It’s a discovery process I fear my children are missing--the serendipity of stumbling onto a subject you never knew you were interested in, until its glory was laid out before you in the pages of the World Book Encyclopedia.

And as we scramble to speed our children along the information superhighway, I wonder if we’re not depriving them of something richer, deeper, more long lasting by encouraging them to rely on the point-and-click simplicity the computer provides.

It’s not just my own unease with computers, though I admit I sometimes feel like the only person on Earth who’s never ordered a CD or airline ticket online, never ventured into a chat room or logged on to www.anything.

Even high-tech experts are concerned.

“I worry that for all its potential, [research via computer] encourages kids to rely on sources of information that are just glosses . . . superficial, unchallenging,” says English teacher Alan Warhaftig, who runs the computer lab at Los Angeles Unified’s Fairfax High.

“In the old way that you and I were accustomed to doing things, you would have to think about the interrelationship of different pieces of knowledge to find what you wanted. You couldn’t just pop a name into a search engine and get a direct hit.

Computer research “requires cleverness, not thoughtfulness,” he says.

Yet its ease and immediacy are seductive to children, aiming to hustle through the day’s homework assignment, not ponder the great mysteries of life.

“Computer research has its place, and children can be taught to use [the Internet] in a productive way,” says USC professor Danielle Mirham, director of the university’s Center for Excellence in Teaching.

“It allows you to jump from one subject to another very easily. And the additional usage of multimedia can be rewarding in a way a book is not. Let’s say you’re doing research on Martin Luther King. The computer can deliver a video clip of his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech . . . you see him, hear him. That can fire up a child’s imagination way beyond the written text.”

But there are losses, too.

“The one thing you do not get with a computer is the time to reflect, to develop a critical assessment of what you read. You are simply bombarded with information.

“When you hold a book in your hand, turn from page to page, it is concentrated, focused time without distractions. . . . That is why you have dissatisfied parents who say, ‘My child is spending so much time on the Web, he’s not focusing on what he is doing.’ It is true; it does not encourage the kind of sustained concentration you get with a book.”

And the insidious hazards of over-reliance on computers are beginning to show up on college campuses.

“I teach upper-division classes [in French literature], and I have noticed over the past 10 years a stronger and stronger resistance to reading the printed texts.

“What the Web and television emphasize is the visual. And if you constantly use the visual senses in this kind of passive way, you’re not allowing for the same type of exercising your brain as you would if you were to read from the printed word.

“There is a place for both. But it is difficult [for books] to compete with computers.”

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Encyclopedia-set sales have fallen on hard times these days. Orders trickle in from schools and libraries, but World Book has been forced to hawk its online version just to keep pace.

Still, a top-of-the-line hardcover set of encyclopedias costs less than a low-budget model computer. And they won’t need an upgrade every two years . . . just a $45 annual Year Book update.

So while I am not turning the computer off, I do plan to turn my children on to the wonder of research the old-fashioned way.

And under the tree this Christmas, the biggest present they’ll find will not be a bike or a CD player, but 22 volumes that encompass the world, from A to Z.

Merry Christmas, kids. . . . Wanna look something up?

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.