There’s a side of me that feels the reason I spent so much time blogging this past week – to start the new year – discussing the issues, challenges, opportunities, and so on, of print books versus eBooks, is because the way the issue resolves itself in mass culture will eventually drift down into the way it makes itself manifest in our classrooms.

Unfortunately, however, we’ve sort of seen this play out before when personal computers really took hold in society… and made their way into classrooms as, drumroll please, glorified typewriters.

Now, I have no idea how a migration to eReading digital texts from our current state of living in a printed text world within school might get mucked up, but I do believe that unless we set out to purposefully and mindfully professionally develop the skills of the people at the front of the rooms – so they can guide the skills of the kids sitting in the chairs – we could be facing a history repeating itself type of scenario.

Just passing out a ton of eReaders and telling the teachers, “All the content is pre-loaded… bubble tests will be in May, good luck!” seems like 1) a recipe for calamity and 2) the leading manner in which I think eBooks eventually will get rolled out en masse.

Of course the early adapters, the schools that are already using eReading devices and the such, will probably fare much better because those types of schools (i.e. early adapters) are filled with people who typically want to buy in to this change. The admins, the staff, the kids (well, the kids – I think they are ready NOW across the nation; it’s the adults who are not), somebody has taken the initiative to lead the push. This implies that they have both a comfort with the technology as well as a capacity to navigate the technology.

But what about the teachers, admins, and schools that do not? These are the ones who are going to have the purchase “made for them” and be expected to learn and adapt and migrate whether they like it or not.
Can you see the mess already?

eReading is a coming. Printed books are moving from omnipresent to a “you gotta share the space” mode and adaptation is the order of the next decade.
We’re gonna need a whole lotta teachers for the teachers to pull this all off.

There’s an entire industry out there promising to “teach you how to write”. And you know what? None of them can deliver.

Now sure, they can help. How much? Whose to say? But can they “teach you how to write”? Nah.

Of course, I learned this through firsthand experience. I have spent lots of time, effort and energy exploring all sorts of stuff. (And money, too — let’s not forget that.)

From writing retreats to college classes to books on the craft of writing to writer’s groups and on and on, I’ve spent years and years and years as a student of writing.

And the only person that has taught me “how to write” is… drumroll please… me.

Don’t believe the hype. (Or the advertisements in the back of Writer Magazine for MFA’s and the such.) Only you can fashion yourself into a writer.

This is because writing, in a way, is a lot like cave diving (a.k.a. spelunking). Until you get down in there and start exploring, you have no idea what you are going to discover about both the cave and about yourself.

People can describe it to you. People can sell you the gear. People can offer guidance, insight, inspiration, tools and maps but until you’ve strapped it up and spelunked you are not a spelunker. And once you become a splelunker, it’s natural to want to help others spelunk… but in your heart you know that until they actually do spelunk they will not be a spelunker.

And as we all know, you can’t make anyone spelunk.

(Gosh, what a fun word!)

Of course, by taking the classes, reading the books, surfing the websites, attending the conferences and wearing the special glittery underwear essential to the craft (hey, whatever works, right?) I’ve picked up critical bits and pieces all along the way.

And it’s the accumulation of all those bits and pieces that make for the writer’s education. But they don’t come from any one source and they certainly don’t exist in any “buy this one fantastic product now” type of package.

So yes, buy the books, take the classes, subscribe to the RSS feeds and sport the hot pink, lace writing thong… but also know that you will never be able to buy the act of being a spelunker.