Communication

Communication involves sending a message with the expectation that the intended recipient receives it and clearly understands its original content and intent. But "the problem with communication...is the illusion that it has been accomplished" (George Bernard Shaw). Apparently, students today seem to have a deficiency in the art of communication. According to Tony Wagner, the deficiency resides in fuzzy thinking and lack of a real voice. So what are we to do? Where are we to start? How do we get students to stop doing a million things at once to focus in on and express with clarity a single idea? How do we get them to connect with the subject in a way that they truly experience it, commit to it, and develop their own voice with which to express it? After all, with all the technology and the gadgets we have today, we still experience the challenge of clearly communicating our ideas: "the newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it." (Edward R. Murrow).