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AIDS, the Internet, and Change Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 Hi Folks, Yesterday, my family and I travelled from Princeton, NJ to Washington DC, to witness the Names Project AIDs Memorial Quilt. It was described as "a way of opening closed minds, and softening hard hearts." I wish to share with you my feelings and observations about what this experience has to say about both our society and implications for our learning institutions. I'm asking for at least 20 minutes of your time to read this...and understand your use of the delete key if you don't have the time or patience to give. Like one of those markers at the trailhead, it's 10 minutes to The Point, and another 10 back down. I'd not thought too much about AIDs before, although giving blood this past week for the first time in a decade was certainly a wake-up call. Last time, all they wanted to know was if I had a cold (indeed my sore throat that day disqualified me). This time, a five step security process insured that I was identified by social security number, checked against a database of "not to be allowed" donors, prescreened my blood, surveyed me for drug and sexual practices, and finally allowed a pint of my blood to be taken, from which everyone involved took extensive pains to be protected (it having not yet been definitively tested). When my daughter mentioned to her science teacher that we'd be visiting the Memorial Quilt in Washington DC over the weekend, he became very concerned. "You don't have anyone in your family with AIDS, do you?" When she said no, he relaxed and said "That is good". The behavioral stigma associated with this disease makes it "their" disease, not like cancer. Cancer ("our" disease) is a different kind of tragedy (unless smokers or drinkers are involved) which unjustly ends so many lives. It was the increase in cancer that has caused the blood shortage I responded to with my donation. I saw several quilts for Ryan White, perhaps the first person to soften some hard hearts. "Those who believe AIDS is a plague from God have never seen God," read a button I observed on a passerby. The last time anyone checked, the mortality rate for human beings is still 100%. So much for self righteous gloating from those not at risk of getting AIDS or lung cancer. I doubt that many of those who don't succumb to AIDS will have as a legacy the outpouring of caring evident in the Memorial quilt. The first shock is the Memorial Quilt's sheer magnitude, a decade in the making, 40,000 panels comprised of 45 tons of fabric. I've seen this space, between the Capitol and the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial filled before. Once it was the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech; more recently it was Stand For Children. This time, the living honored those passed, and acres of patches forming the Quilt brought home quite powerfully both the individual lives cut short, as well as the caring of those whose lives they touched. Common themes: love is what matters, and acceptance as the door to understanding. The next shock is the ages of these people, far too many far too young (my daughter found one quilt entirely of children from seven years down to fifteen days). These names lived far too little life, which is made up for by the poignancy of the contents and caring that went into their patches. The final shock, as in the other two times I've seen the Mall filled with a sea of people, is that just three blocks away, it is as though nothing ever happened. The capacity of our system to absorb the energy of hundreds of thousands of people (whether the issue be justice, children, or health) without flinching is astounding. Bernajean Porter has noted that there is a limited elasticity for change in most systems. Go beyond the limit (perhaps 25%) and the entire system mobilizes to protect itself. The historical response in human society to difference is appalling. Just a few blocks from the Memorial Quilt, the Holocaust Museum translates that episode of genocide from numbers to faces. Each example was thought by its perpetrators to be justified because of the habits, beliefs or gender of the victims, be it the Inquisition, settling of the West, or witch-burnings. Our answer has been various degrees of ingenuity, cruelty and aggressiveness in disappearing "those people". Not easy, not simplistic...neither is being human. Seen from above, at an abstract level, formulations become easier, but less meaningful. Most people came to the Memorial Quilt with the name of at least one person to honor. One of mine is Ralph Gomez. In his life, Ralph dedicated his energies to helping young people who were seen by the mainstream society as expendable, "at risk" being the polite term. He founded the Inner City Ensemble, which gave more than a few youngsters the confidence and skills to develop and pursue dreams of artistry in dance, drama and visual arts. Peoples' ambivalence about "inner city" issues (notably absent from public discourse in this election season, having been replaced by "crime" as a priority) ranks with mixed emotions about AIDS victims. However, the personal connection, changing numbers to people, is what this weekend was all about. Seeing Ralph's patches helped me connect with all of the others I could see, and the thousands more that surrounded them. To some people, his life could be dismissed as a nameless statistic, while to others Ralph Gomez exemplified giving so that others could lead richer lives. Some people would view "people like him" as something society as a system should reject, as the immune system deals with an outside threat; others see his student in a similar way (if they don't want to be poor, why don't they just move away and *make* something of themselves?). The Point You may wonder what this has to do with technology for learning. The immune system looks different depending which side of it you're on. Like many of my professional peers, I dedicate increasing portions of my life to extending opportunities for lifelong learning through the use of increasingly powerful technologies. Luckily, I'm able to do this in an environment that accepts the need for accompanying changes in the educational process, and supports my unbridled creative implulses to discover what students and teachers can achieve using these technologies. At least so far. We've not yet tipped the scales to press the elastic limit beyond a number (growing but still a minority) of educators who are pioneering this effort. To us, we look like trailblazers. Multiply us sufficiently, and to the system, we begin to look like cancer. Unchecked growth no longer following a code determined genetically (or, in this case, culturally). Renegades, rebels and troublemakers, we are sometimes distrusted. Traditional medicine's response to cancer is one of three things: cut it out, burn it out, or poison it. Traditional education systems seem more benign, using techniques of marginalizing, balkanizing or coopting innovation and innovators alike. Both however, share the intent of a determined response to a perceived threat to the system. However, the most troubling insight emerging from reflection and discussion among many people who have been hard at work extending the "telecommunications revolution" to our technologically tentative peers is that we trailblazers may be increasingly part of the problem. Just as the smug confidence of those not at risk for AIDS creates a barrier of judgements about "those people" who "made choices" that led to their situation, the impatience and disdain shown to those educators who "just don't get it", who "don't even know how to turn on their machine", who don't see why they might need to reinvent their classrooms, sets up a barrier that prevents the very reforms we'd like to see happen from ever being embraced by the mainstream of educators who will be required to make it a reality. We who are off in our creative corners, racing to expand the limits of knowledge, are at risk of leaving our partners behind in the dust. Unfortunately, this loss of contact will make us and our work irrelevant much sooner than it will change the reality of the majority. Only by respecting each member of the system, both the electronically enlightened and the traditional teachers, will we together be able to support one another in providing every child with the best possible foundation for lifelong learning. In AIDS, the capacity of the individual's immune system to defend the body from outside attack inexorably results in destruction of the system. In cancer, the uncontrolled growth of cells which fail to follow the body's code for maintaining the system ultimately causes the destruction of the system. In both, what begins as a cellular matter, ends with undesired systemic results: the death of the individual. Examining our education institutions as a system through the metaphor of health leads to some interesting concepts. Catalina Laserna at BBN has pointed out that "the unit of educational change is not the individual". This is a hard fact for many of us pioneers to swallow. Lasting change will require agreements between many levels of people throughout the system, which in turn requires actions formulated from a basis of respect and trust, before there can be true understanding. These conditions are all too rarely present at once. As we consider things from a systemic perspective, the vital role performed by trailblazers and pioneers can be integrated within the whole, supported by the community, as long as a common purpose is adhered to by all. Why do we pioneers feel so put upon? Is it due to media hype and disinformation about the Internet? Is it due to the fact that we often pursue our work in addition to full time "regular" workloads? Or is it because we may be realizing, at various levels of intuition, that "you can't get there from here". It's not a matter of working harder, or devoting even more hours to more thoroughly understanding technology and teaching techniques, or doing more workshops, or writing better books. Our successes may actually be working against us. Ask the settlers how *they* feel. Or better yet, ask those who've not even decided if resettling makes sense. More likely than not, under the ambivalence about computers, you'll hear more than a little anger about being unfavorably compared to educators who are soaring when they feel the real work remains to be done, here on the ground. And anger about being made to feel stupid about asking mundane questions about rudimentary tasks that "experts" may imply shouldn't even be done on a computer. Computer using educators get good press, are more likely to get to present at prestigious conferences, may even get extra pay for developing and conducting "teacher workshops" for the benefit of the "unwired masses", and this can generate more than a bit of jealously. Are we spending enough time really listening to our peers, respecting them for being where they are, and working to help them from wherever they are? Once we begin working from such a foundation, building partnerships with all the people responsible for providing the vast resources needed for the development of our youth, on a basis of mutual respect, we can see a path opening to an attainable future, where learning is liberated from locality. To do otherwise is to risk establishing a new "priesthood" of teacher-technologists, in an era desperately in need of a "Reformation" in which each person is empowered and encouraged to make their own peace with both the promise and perils of technology. Just as with the AIDS crisis, must begin seeing people as people rather than preferences, practices and pedagogies. We must reach out beyond our own comfortable boundaries, and weave a tapestry that honors our differences to reach our common goal of helping youth fully develop their gifts. Until then, we are likely to be treated as a disease, rather than the cure. |
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