Food for Thought: Disparate Reflections on Technology and Education
- Our
society has no need for children…
- Technology
has taken children out of the workforce.
And while we can all agree that taking nine year olds out of factories
is a good thing, this has robbed children of a sense of contribution to the
community.
- Production
of human capital has always been the purpose of American public education. We don’t care about the kids, we don’t
even care about the adults they will be (where adult = citizen, partner, lover,
parent, neighbor, friend, generally self-actualized person)—we care only about
the WORKERS they will be! (This is
disgusting.)
- No
wonder they hate school and adults and The Man and The System. No wonder they tune out any way they
can, with sex and drugs and video games.
No wonder they feel isolated and misunderstood. They have no control over their lives
and aren’t even seen as people.
- Vygotsky
and the Internet
- “People
learn by having conversations and testing each other”
- The
internet provides new opportunities for engagement with Vygotskian experts
(people who know how to do something you don’t)
- What
impact does this have on the concept of authority?
- Crowd
sourcing
- Calling
on a community rather than an expert for answers
- Fall
of the Ivory Tower?
- The
evolution of information
- For
today’s kids, the online experience of information is very personal.à
How do we duplicate this online experience in the classroom? How do we make information relevant,
personal, and the focus of agency?
- We
should use tech not “because we have to” but because it is a very real way to
make learning experiences authentic and autonomous
- Info
as a raw material: Its value comes
from what you can DO/MAKE with it
- This
is in line with Vygotsky: An expert is just someone who can do something you
can’t. And learning happens
through direct, interactive engagement (aka conversation) with these experts
- “In
every classroom”
- November’s
recommendations are for “every classroom.” This misses the point.
One-size-doesn’t work. It
won’t work any better with fancy technology and new definitions of learning.
- What
works for one teacher in a classroom in the Bronx won’t necessarily work for
another teacher in a classroom in Orange County. We need to let teachers teach the kids in front of them.
- Shifting
the locus of control
- Novmeber
recommends changing the concept of a learner to someone who contributes to
society through their work (learning)
- This
requires a shift of control from the teacher to the network of students
- In
any time, in any place, a good teacher is one who isn’t afraid of her students.
When I look at this post in Google Chrome, I swear all the text is literally in Greek characters. I have to use Firefox to read it in the basic Latin Alphabet.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wanted to jump in on the part of your outline where you covered November's story about children and labor.
I thought that was a really weird part of the video, to be blunt. Technology did not end child labor.
- Child Labor continues all over the world.
- Our modern consumer economy still encourages child labor
- Child labor may be outlawed in America, but only because we've
exported it (along with our manufacturing base) overseas.
- The movement to end child labor was a complex social movement.
- the growth of factories and coal mines actually saw an increase
in the use of child labor, as parents who were finding less use
for children on farms sold their children into indentured
servitude to survive.
Anyway, I thought it was odd, that even in a qualified and moderate way, November was nostalgic for child labor. I'm with him on the idea that children need to feel like contributing members of society, but the problem is that in America, we measure contributions in terms of dollars. We need to send the message to students that they're valuable without monetizing them.
(sorry for the deletions, I'm not leaving up that many spelling errors)
Steve,
DeleteNovember's nostalgia for child labor IS creepy. It shows up again in this week's wiki reading. Let me be clear: I am NOT nostalgic for a child workforce. I do, however, think it's unfortunate that in western industrialized societies, the socioeconomic structure that gave rise to adolescence as a "universal" life stage, has created a society in which children and adolescents are not valued. It's especially sad to me that the school system, a system that should revolve around children and adolescents, doesn't value them. It commodifies them, treats them as future adults instead of as present children.
Thanks for the bullets about the fall of child labor! Thank goodness for social studies teachers!
I share your disgusted feeling, Emily, about schooling being all about preparing children for "The Workforce"...and Steve, you echo this when you say, "in America, we measure contributions in terms of dollars. We need to send the message to students that they're valuable without monetizing them." And now we have these workforce education standards, which, in my school, we are supposed to be aligning our teaching with....and I just can't buy in to it. It deeply saddens me. Who was it...maybe Virginia....who mentioned in one of her blog entries that in her education studies, she is finding that the trail keeps leading back to money. So...fast forward to when you're in the classroom...my question for you and others is, how do you manage all of these conflicted feelings? How do you keep on keeping on in a system that is very broken? I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I plan to get out of the system as fast as financially possible. I know that I'll probably have to take a job in a public school, since pickings are slim and beggars can't be choosers. But I want to work in independent schools. As the product of a private education I think independent schools are the last bastion of pedagogical sanity. Teachers are directly involved in the development of curricula. Classes are small and personal. You can get to know your students, teach in (more) accordance with your own philosophy, and exercise some autonomy.
DeleteI do wonder about the ethics of lambasting the broken system and then fleeing. But I don't think I'm cut out to reform from within. I don't think reform is the answer: I think we need to tear it down and start over. That will never, can never, happen. So I choose, if possible, to teach in schools that have been created with their students in mind, in which teachers are respected and trusted to do their jobs as educators.