Will Richardson’s post about Web 2.0 as “Cultural and Intellectual Catastrophe” referenced Andrew Keen’s critique of “radical democratizers” who threaten the “intellectual life of our society.” Will wonders “…what systemic impact we can have by pushing at the education door.”
Keen sounds off about web technologies, but he’s really talking about preserving the status quo, and his critique of “radical democratizers” would also apply to Myles Horton, who didn’t have anything to say about the internet. But unlike the web 2.0 edtech evangelists, Horton didn’t believe that substantive reform was possible working within the the existing education system because systemic change has never been part of the mission for public education.
The book, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, by Myles Horton and Paolo Freire, is a transcript of a conversation between Horton and Freire. Horton told about his involvement in Highlander Center, and the development of Citizenship Schools, which were a loosely organized and hugely successful voter’s rights/literacy education program for African Americans living in the South Carolina Sea Islands.
You can read a summary of Horton’s work, and an analysis of his democratic philosophy in An Exploration of Myles Horton’s Democratic Praxis: Highlander Folk School, by Barbara Thayer-Bacon.
Myles Horton emphasized the importance of helping people to discuss and identify the things in their lives that needed improvement. He refused to pose as an expert, telling people how to solve their problems. In The Long Haul, his autobiography, he said:
The best teachers of poor and working people are the people themselves. They are the experts on their own experiences and problems. The students who came to Highlander brought their own ways of thinking and doing. We tried to stimulate their thinking and expose them to consultants, books and ideas, but it was more important for them to learn how to learn from each other….We served as a catalytic agent to hasten the learning process [....] What we sought was to set people’s thinking apparatus in motion, while at the same time trying to teach and practice brotherhood and democracy (p. 152).
He saw top-down reform as essentially meaningless to the people it targets:
I think the poor and the people who can’t read and write have a sense that without structural changes nothing is worth really getting excited about. They know much more clearly than intellectuals do that reforms don’t reform. They don’t change anything. they’ve been the guinea pigs for too many programs. Now if you could come to them with a radical idea – like we were able to tie into in the Citizenship School program – where they see something significant, they’d become citizens of the world. Then they’ll identify with that, but not with short-range limited objectives that they know from experience don’t get them anywhere. They won’t invest much time or energy in it. (We Make the Road by Walking, p. 93)
A debate between Keen and Kevin Kelly airs the issues pretty thoroughly. Briefly, Keen feels that the read/write web is destroying our culture, and that it needs to be regulated. Kelly acknowledges some of the problems, but has faith that they’ll be ironed out in time.
The web is all of 5,000 days old. It may take another few thousand days to figure out viable systems of law, business practices, and cultural norms that will reward audiences, creators, and the middle industries. Or it may take a generation. But that is still a relatively short time in the lifecycle of an economy.
What’s the evidence that these new models will come? My expectations are largely the product of my own experience.
Keen asks how we turn a nation of “couch potatoes into a nation of creative literate prosumers able to digest complex news and appreciate sophisticated culture?” He says to Kelly:
Your strategy is libertarian. For you, it seems, all change comes from within. Your proof? Kevin Kelly. When everyone becomes KK, you suggest, the world will be a better place. The problem is that not everyone can be KK. Not everyone can be a successful author like you and earn money giving speeches and selling your intelligence directly to the consumer. You are a remarkably self-motivated, independent person who trekked around the world, fathered Wired magazine, mothered the new rules for the new economy, uncled the Web 2.0 revolution. You are an exception rather than the rule. Where do unexceptional people, the un-KK’s of the world, get the aesthetic sensibility to make movies, the intellectual training to write books, or the reporting skills to accurately cover politics?Who is going to teach us to become good digital citizens?
Progressive tech-minded teachers would answer, “That’s our job!” But Keen’s criticism sounds like a fair assessment of a flawed rationale behind much edtech, and even religious, evangelism, which is to say, “It works for me, therefore it should be good for everyone else.” In practice, though, this isn’t simple. Teachers still don’t have good theoretical models to work from, and putting the technology to work in traditional classrooms has been problematic on many levels. Even if we get the technical difficulties ironed out, we still run into philosophical obstacles that arise from a lack of consensus on what schools are for and how students should be taught.
But Keen continues:
…Good digital citizens need to be nurtured by the state, by schoolteachers and university professors, by authoritative journalists, by parents, by peers, by fellow citizens, by both new and old media companies. The good digital citizen is as trained in listening as in speaking. The test of good digital citizenship is silence rather than noise.
Silence? Clearly, Keens vision of democratic pluralism is different than mine. I suppose only “experts” can use a blog to trumpet their books condemning participatory media? Keen wants to preserve existing hierarchies and the authority of experts. By his own admission, he’s concerned with cultural values, and he worries that “we’ll end up creating ourselves into oblivion.”
Kelly answers that the internet is allowing us to “remake ourselves,” and he asks:
…Into what? Great question! It’s the mega-question of the next several centuries. What are we? What can we be? What should we be? Every new technology we create, such as the web, forces another iteration of this refrain: Who then shall we be? To answer it we will dive deep into our natures, our traditions, and, most of all, into new technologies.
What is needed isn’t more expert authority. God knows that we’ve suffered enough problems created by experts. Myles Horton’s vision of democracy was deliberately undefined, calling democracy a “growing idea,” that requires readjusting your goals as you move toward it. Experts hate to be seen as inconsistent.
The value of participatory media for nurturing democracy isn’t so much in the quality or quantity of information that’s available, but in the opportunity it provides to examine our beliefs and to negotiate what it means to be a media literate “global citizen.” The role of schools in this process doesn’t have nearly as much to do with technology or skills as it does with understanding how to relate to other people, recognizing that individual problems result from larger cultural, historical and economic contexts. If web 2.0 tools can broaden our perspective to account for these influences, then they may be of value. But we also have to remember that school reform is a political process, and it’s going to involve a lot of people who aren’t necessarily education experts.
6 Comments
Really great post Doug. This is such an interesting back and forth, and one that I think is really telling in many ways. I wonder though, if we aren’t missing an important step. You write this:
“It works for me, therefore it should be good for everyone else.” In practice, though, this isn’t simple. Teachers still don’t have good theoretical models to work from, and putting the technology to work in traditional classrooms has been problematic on many levels.
What works with these technologies “for me” is learning…not teaching. I think from a learning standpoint, there are entry points here for just about anyone who has access. But that is much, much different from teaching with these technologies. My sense in the last few months has been that efforts to evangelize the tools in classroom environments without first making the case from an individual learning standpoint is pretty fruitless. The teachers who really get it are those who have personally engaged. You can’t put these technologies to work in any classrooms without first making them some part of your own practice because only then can you understand the pedagogical shift that they carry with them.
Does that make sense?
Best,
Will
Will, I’ve made the same point myself – about making the case to others from an individual learning standpoint – and I think that when we’re talking to people who really “get it,” no case needs to be made, and we really only need to show them how it’s done.
What I’d like to emphasize here is that I think we might want to look beyond individual learning and acknowledge a social value for working with participatory media in schools. The critically important learning that results from exchanging ideas is in clarifying the values embedded in them. It’s important now to understand not only what the experts say, but why any particular “expert” might be saying a particular thing. Growth, or learning, from reading and writing on the web also involves becoming clear about our own values.
You’re right that there are entry points for just about anyone, which is why there is such power in the read/write web. I don’t believe that significant school change can precede larger cultural changes, though, so what I’m suggesting is that we might want to think about how technology can influence structural issues such as privilege, employment, hunger, health, and the environment.
Kelly’s question, “Who, then, shall we be?” is the question we all need to be asking. Neil Postman said that
You said in your post “…Yeah, we can impact individual teachers and subsequently lots of kids and that’s all good. But at the end of the day, the bigger conversation is about paying kids to get good grades and doing whatever it takes to get those state test scores up…”
And I’m saying that you’re right, we do need to get involved in the bigger conversation, and it should not be about a narrowly conceived competetive agenda, but should address the need to develop a shared narrative, and “provide an inspired reason for schooling.”
I’m not opposed to evangelism. I just see it as wasted motion. The reason that I liked your post was that you were wondering about the “bigger conversation.” And so am I. Thanks.
Thanks for the reply…
This clarifies much that I probably should have seen in the original:
“What I’d like to emphasize here is that I think we might want to look beyond individual learning and acknowledge a social value for working with participatory media in schools. The critically important learning that results from exchanging ideas is in clarifying the values embedded in them. It’s important now to understand not only what the experts say, but why any particular “expert” might be saying a particular thing. Growth, or learning, from reading and writing on the web also involves becoming clear about our own values.”
Partially, this is why I put together that NECC idea for the unconference (http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/edubloggercon-session/), not so much to create the narrative but maybe to create the foundation for the narrative (though I fear it will be too chaotic, too broad). Certainly, there are many who are making a great case against the social value of participatory tools, and again, my sense is most of those really have no clue what they are talking about (ie Ted Stevens.) We need a reasoned, compelling response that articulates in clear ways the value and the values.
Thanks for pushing the conversation on this…I hope you explore it further.
Will
I reblogged this post…hope OK. Let me know if not…
Good stuff…keep it up! People are reading!
Ryan
http://ryanlanham.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/borderland-democracy-20/
Doug, I read Andrew Keen’s article. I then read Kevin Kelly’s article. What it seems to me is allowing individuals to take responsbility and to construct knowledge, and to construct meaning from the knowledge that they gain. Which is the fundamental issue with education as I see it. A very differen species of learner is created when we give them the tools to build the ship, as opposed to giving them the ship already built. This is what Web 2.0 allows us to do. When I can view on You Tube or Google Video a short 14 minute film such as “A Girl Like Me”, and use that film as an example of a person who has constructed meaning from her knowledge base, that is very powerful.
Do we need more parameters on the ‘Net? Yes. However, I would not want for the parameters to be created by a top-down structure. A friend of mine some time ago said this about schools: Those at the grass roots are the instruments of change.” I still believe that to be true.
Miss Profe, I agree with you entirely. Andrew Keen might also agree, but the difference is that he doesn’t like the changes he sees coming.
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