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Mistaken Educators Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 HI folks, Ferdi |
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Linda Roberts, of the US Department of Education, posed this interesting thought: "One of the things I've spent a lot of time thinking about is how we take the schools that have already been successful and encourage them to be partners with other schools that haven't got there yet." In focusing on connectivity, cost and controversy, we may be missing an essential reason for wiring classrooms: the opportunity to share successful practices between educators, students and other lifelong learners. The swing of the pendulum from hyperbole extolling the Internet to hysteria warning us of its dangers was entirely predictable. Now that the issue is getting closer to our personal pocketbooks (either through taxes or phone bills), passions rise accordingly. As an author, I've recently had more than my fill of journalists seeking validation of their story's slant, rather than the more difficult exploration of the complex and often contradictory currents that direct our pursuit of improving the educational prospects of all our children. Pundits on either side can be quite persuasive, yet how many of these folks have spent a week inside a classroom within the past decade? Why a week? Because the promise of educational technology doesn't happen in front of a computer. Real life doesn't happen in 40 minute periods, any more than it happens on 22 minute sitcoms (subtracting for commercials). It happens when educators integrate the opportunities for knowing the world into the discussions that have always formed a part of good teaching, and when these discussions are about topics that matter to students in their "real lives" (at best sufficiently to generate discussion at home) in such a way that sustained attention is focused on the learning and developing of understanding of our world which education is intended to create. I'm fortunate to work in a classroom where each day brings fresh evidence of the promise and perils facing students. Our district is at the top end of the scale with respect to connectivity (the narrow focus of many online discussions), but is all over the scale with respect to the backgrounds of the students we serve (and their families as well). Side by side children of Nobel prize winners are students from Central America whose first day in our sixth grade was also their first day in any school. While I'm an agnostic with respect to "Technology as a Religion", I'm a born again pagan when it comes to the power of multifaceted communications to elevate the frequency and quality of students' use of their imagination and reasoning. However, before we (students or teachers) can arrive at these elysian fields, we need a reason to care about any particular topic at hand. We live in a world of interdependent webs...tug on a thread anywhere and soon you'll have involved all disciplines and ways of knowing. Take this discussion (and its cousin, Mistaken Educators) for example. At the source of both is the desire to provide students with literacy, and the argument can be seen as being over methods (traditional 3R's vs something new). The definition of literacy is evolving far faster than our existing educational structures can keep pace (see the American Library Association's current reworking of information literacy for students at http://www.ala.org/aasl/stndsdrft5.html ) . Consideration of this topic on this discussion list so far has touched on economics, history, science, mathematics, language, ethics, political science...The requirements for everyone to become a lifelong learner has moved from the realm of "renaissance person's choice" to "practival survival skill" before our eyes. Can we afford this? With or without eductional technology, we will pay the price (one way or another). Without justice, there can be no peace. Isn't it poignant how easily people can decide that the very same mechanisms for communication and lifelong learning they are using at this very moment to read to these words is "too much trouble" to extend to youth who will one day be called upon to take their place. While I'm saddened to agree that "we" as a profession (read educators in the US) as a whole are not currently prepared to take full advantage of the opportunities being offered to us (read connecting classrooms to the Internet), I'm more convinced than ever that the loss of this opportunity will institutionalize existing inequities to an unimagined degree. Schools are the place, and school years are the time which our society devotes to acquiring the skills and experiences its members will have to draw upon as they play out their roles on the stage of their era. Not so long ago, the idea of free, compulsory, universal education was not a given. Neither was universal suffrage. The problems we face go far beyond the needs of corporations/governments to find pre-trained able workers (recent history has proven both free-market and socialist models inept at addressing core societal problems). Just because we are unlikely to simultaneously solve *all* of these problems (and thus arrive at a utopian dream society) is no reason to withhold from learners the most powerful tool yet devised for allowing individuals to take responsibility for their own learning. Educators, as role models for these prospective lifelong learners, must have access to these tools, in order to foster such opportunities for their students. This is the hard work that will remain, long after the pendulum of media infatuation has swung by. Yours in the climb... Ferdi |
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© 2006 Online Internet Institute. |