RSS feed me

I have got a Google reader account--thanks to Jane, with a bunch of 13 Things-related blogs, as well as Andrew Revkin (environmental blogger from the New York Times), Radio Scotland, and Kathy Guttosch (hs friend).

Here's the issue, friends. Am I worried that information will occur, and I won't be there to learn it? Or am I tired of, say, checking Kathy's blog every week or so (I don't, and anyhow she posts new entries on Facebook) to see if she's added anything? Or do I want one more way to keep up with Gavin's wonderfully-titled "Desperately Random" blog?

Well, if the answer to any of the above questions was yes, Google Reader would be the answer to my prayers.

Now, to the point of whether I would use it in a class. I'm not sure I would. The class would need to be one where keeping up with events hour-to-hour was important. Probably this is not true in a class like, say, Ancient and Medieval Political Theory. As for American politics classes, the potential is there, but here we must disabuse anyone out there who believes that political science is a class in current events. Political science teaches a language and approach for understanding political phenomena, which are better understood after they've been digested for awhile. As my writing colleague Paul Quirk once said when I complained that if you subscribe to the New York Times by post it comes a day late, "That might be better than getting it the same day. It would keep you from over-focusing on current events." (Paul said this in, like, 1992, so I don't mean to imply he's anti-RSS.) An RSS feed that gave us a blizzard of up-to-date blog posts might well distract us with ephemera, rather than help us learn the concepts that will serve us for a lifetime. Case in point: The news right now is full of the ethical troubles of Representatives Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters. Two months from now, no one will care.

And there's time to reflect. How do we reflect on anything, come to a deeper understanding of it--which is what I hope my students will do--if we're constantly bombarded with information?