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Supplementary section.
Neil Postman (besides being a very interesting and insightful
writer) is a forceful advocate for community-building and social reform, but he does not
see the computer as being auspicious in these regards.
Postman is an educator and concentrates his thought on schools
and the purpose of schooling.
In Technology as Dazzling Distraction, Postman
proclaims:
"One of the principal functions
of school is to teach children how to behave in groups. The reason for this is that you
cannot have a democratic, indeed, civilized, community life unless people have learned how
to participate in a disciplined way as part of a group. School has never been about
individualized learning. It has always been about how to learn and how to behave as part
of a community. And one of the ways this is done is through communication of social
values."
He says that we have too much information, and that more and
more of it is comlpetely unnecessary to meet the goals of society:
"Everything from telegraphy and
photography in the nineteenth century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified
the din of information. From millions of sources all over the globe, through every
possible channel and medium, information pours in. Behind it, in every imaginable form of
storage, is an even greater volume of information to be retrieved. Information has become
a form of garbage. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular,
disconnected from usefulness. We are swamped by it, have no control over it, and don't
know what to do with it."
And, finally:
"The role of the school is to
help students learn how to ignore and discard information so they can achieve a sense of
coherence in their lives. It is to help students cultivate a sense of social
responsibility; think critically, Historically, and humanely; understand how technology
shapes their consciousness; and learn that their own needs sometimes are subordinate to
the group's. I could go on for three pages in this vein without reference to how machinery
can give students access to information.
Instead, let me summarize in two ways what I mean.
First, I'll cite my friend Alan Kay, sometimes called "the father of the personal
computer," who likes to remind us that any problems the schools cannot solve without
machines, they cannot solve with them. Second, if a nuclear holocaust should occur, if
children are starving, if crime terrorizes our cities, marriages are breaking up, mental
disorders are increasing, and children are being abused, none of this happens because of
lack of information. It happens because we lack something else. It is the "something
else" that is now the business of schools."
In Virtual Students, Digital Classrooms, Postman
pillories the ideas of former US Assistant Secretary of Education, Dr. Diane Ravitch who
claims:
"…in this new world of
pedagogical plenty, children and adults will be able to dial up a program on their home
television to learn whatever they want to know, at their own convenience. If Little Eva
cannot sleep, she can learn algebra instead. At her home-learning station, she will tune
in to a series of interesting problems that are presented in an interactive medium, much
like video games...."
Postman wryly counters:
"In this vision there is, it
seems to me, a confident and typical sense of unreality. Little Eva can't sleep, so she
decides to learn a little algebra? Where does Little Eva come from? Mars? If not, it is
more likely she will tune in to a good movie. Young John decides that he wants to learn
the history of modern Japan? How did young John come to this point? How is it that he
never visited a library up to now? Or is it that he, too, couldn't sleep and decided that
a little modern Japanese history was just what he needed? What Ravitch is talking
about here is not a new technology but a new species of child, one who, in any case, no
one has seen up to now."
Postman also has serious problems with ideas of new,
"virtual selves" in the work of Sherry Turkle, although he never mentions her by
name. He also senses that the "technological solution" model of solving
real-world problems is inherently escapist. When virtual reality is touted as a form of
classroom instuction for a wide variety of subjects, Postman asks why students would need
a pretend online world to investigate:
"…we have an example of a
technological solution to a psychological problem that would seem to be exceedingly
serious. We are presented with a student who is "bored with the real world."
What does it mean to say someone is bored with the real world, especially one so young?
Can a journey into virtual reality cure such a problem? And if it can, will our troubled
youngster want to return to the real world? Confronted with a student who is bored with
the real world, I don't think we can solve the problem so easily by making available a
virtual reality physics lab."
Postman also mistrusts arguments of the "leveling of
hierarchy" variety:
"Conjuring up a hypothetical
Little Mary who is presumably from a poorer home than Little Eva, Ravitch imagines that
Mary will have the same opportunities as Eva "to learn any subject, and to learn it
from the same master teachers as children in the richest neighbourhood." For all of
its liberalizing spirit, this scenario makes some important omissions. One is that though
new technologies may be a solution to the learning of "subjects," they work
against the learning of what are called "social values," including an
understanding of democratic processes."
Mainly, Postman fears an atomized learning environment that
will create fragmented individuals with no real sense of civility or community, while
serving to reinforce class divisions:
"The god of Technology may also
have a trick or two up its sleeve about something else. It is often asserted that new
technologies will equalize learning opportunities for the rich and poor. It is devoutly to
be wished for, but I doubt it will happen. In the first place, it is generally understood
by those who have studied the history of technology that technological change always
produces winners and losers. There are many reasons for this, among them economic
differences. Even in the case of the automobile, which is a commodity most people can buy
(although not all), there are wide differences between the rich and poor in the quality of
what is available to them. It would be quite astonishing if computer technology equalized
all learning opportunities, irrespective of economic differences. One may be delighted
that Little Eva's parents could afford the technology and software to make it possible for
her to learn algebra at midnight. But Little Mary's parents may not be able to, may not
Little Mary (at least during the day), there may something else Little Mary is
lacking."
"I am talking here about children as they really
come to us, not children who are invented to show us how computers may enrich their lives.
Of course, I suppose it is possible that there are children who, waking at night, want to
study algebra or who are so interested in their world that they yearn to know about Japan.
If there be such children, and one hopes there are, they do not require expensive
computers to satisfy their hunger for learning. They are on their way, with or without
computers. Unless, of course, they do not care about others or have no friends, or little
respect for democracy or are filled with suspicion about those who are not like
them."
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