Milton Magazine - Milton Academy

“Can we question the culture of distraction?”Maggie Jackson ’78, author and journalist, talks with faculty aboutreinvigorating the ability to pay attentionMaggie Jackson ’78 has writtenabout our “distractionplagued,split-focus” culture.Not only does this culture defineadults’ lives, it affects everyaspect of child development,including their experience oflearning, in and out of the classroom.Milton faculty begin eachschool year by exploring a timelyissue integral to teaching andlearning. On September 4, theytalked with Maggie about herbook, Distracted: The Erosion ofAttention and the Coming DarkAge. Distracted was publishedin June and has been featuredon National Public Radio, in theNew York Times, BusinessWeek,Vanity Fair, the London SundayTimes, and in publicationsaround the world. It was chosenas a best summer book of 2008by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.Maggie’s argument, bolsteredboth by recent research as wellas philosophical and historicalanalysis, is that the split-focus,plugged-in, multiprocessinglife—where we must “layer themoment” or we don’t feel successfulor productive—can belinked to a decline in the abilityto focus. The very communicationtechnologies that informus and connect us all in virtualspace also distract us, and fragmentour efforts. More than 60percent of students multitaskwhile doing their homework,not with one but with multiplecommunication tools. The average“knowledge worker” todayswitches continually amongtasks, every three minutes onaverage—and it takes 25 minutesto cycle back to what youwere doing when you shiftedgears. “Scattered and diffusedpeople are not creative people,”Maggie asserts. “We risk becominga society of black-and-whitethinkers, unable to deal withnuance, stuck on the surface ofinformation.”Our connected culture may beundermining our ability to paysustained attention to anything:work, play, building relationships,raising children. Maggienotes that the erosion of our abilityto focus and to think deeplywill have a larger impact thanwe may imagine, for adults andfor the children who have neverknown another cultural modality.Building the skills related to payingattention are crucial developmentalsteps leading to personal,academic and ultimately professionalfulfillment.Attention is not a singleactivity but a complicatednetwork of interdependentactivities. According to Maggie,“Researchers are finding thatattention is crucial to a host ofother, sometimes surprising,life skills: the ability to sortthrough conflicting evidence, toconnect more deeply with otherpeople, and even to develop aconscience.“We do not have to settle forconfusion and disconnection,”Maggie convinced the faculty.She advocated for strategiesto “change the climate of distraction,”and techniques to“purposefully strengthen the personalskill of attention.”A number of corporations thatdepend upon the production ofnew ideas have already takensteps to change the climate. Theyhave created “white space”—botha place and uninterrupted timefor thinking, brainstorming, testingand learning. Several schoolshave seen the need to adopt thisplan. Families can structure thepockets of white space time andplace into family life, as well.During an interactive workshop,Maggie and the faculty testedideas for strengthening student’sattention skills in classroombasedactivities. These included“speaking the language ofattention—putting the idea onthe table”; waiting for students tothink before answering; honoringthe skill and habit of listening;and figuring out what thewhite space is for different kindsof learners.“Fundamentally,” Maggie says,“help build a meta-cognitiveawareness of your mind. We canquestion our culture of distraction.Giving attention is honoringwhat is worthy of a givenmoment.”After Milton, Maggie graduatedfrom Yale and the London Schoolof Economics. She is an awardwinningauthor and columnist whowrites the “Balancing Acts” columnin the Boston Sunday Globe. Shenow lives in New York, with herhusband and her two daughters.CDEMaggie Jackson ’78Photo: Karen Smul68 Milton Magazine