Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 January 2014

Children from two to ten years old should “feel the texture of a  book and the printed word in reading and writing and the physical holding of of it”.

This was the reply of Irish Education Minister Ruairí Quinn in the Dáil (Parliament, Lower House) this week to Clare Daly (Teachta Dála – Member of Parliament)) who had asked about the move away from written books towards iPads and e-books.

Antigone1984:

Let’s hear it for Mr Quinn!

Antigone1984 is increasingly opposed to so called progress that involves the unending purchase of expensive electronic  gadgets to perform a function – reading – that was perfectly feasible at one hundredth of the price before the electronic marketing industry set out to persuade consumers that they would be social zilch unless they outlaid their hard-won earnings on cyber plastic.

Go have a shufti at the illuminated manuscript of the Latin Gospels in the Book of Kells – handwritten around 800 BC – in the numinous Old Library at Dublin’s Trinity College (built 1712-1732).

Then say that you’d prefer pixels!

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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