Quantity or Quality?

The New York Times recently featured an interesting article about the state of museum-goers today. Watching tourists taking in the sights at the Louvre, Michael Kimmelman comments on how few people actually took the time to really examine a work of art. Instead, most people glanced at the wall labels and moved on, trading in quality for quantity. He continues,

"At one time a highly educated Westerner read perhaps 100 books, all of them closely. Today we read hundreds of books, or maybe none, but rarely any with the same intensity."

I believe that this speaks precisely to the premise behind PenPal Notes- less is really more. Originating with the idea of building upon the traditional lunch note, it quickly became apparent that giving children a single fact at a time helped with information retention. This concept has become our guiding philosophy, and children are able to really take their time and digest the information at hand. While books are of course important for any child's education, PenPal Notes provides something different- just 1 fact a day. This means that this 1 fact can be read, contextualized and discussed thoroughly, a practice that is all too often lost amid our busy, modern lives!