Joseph Beckman has the beginnings of a powerful case for the small school that incorporates technology. Unfortunately, he clutters the case with some conventional assumptions about the resistance to technology by academics, and some questionable recommendations about the role technology should play in such schools. And this issue of small schools with teacher resources augmented by technology is critical for the issue of the digital divide: many schools on the wrong side of the divide are and have to be small by necessity of geography and demography.
The Academy, he says, "is notoriously technophobic." The usual indictment. Now, many of the teachers I know have radios and telephones, a few have television sets and air conditioners, and almost to a man and woman they have computers in their homes. The problem, then--or at least an important piece of it--lies not with technophobia but with technophilia, with those who so enchanted with their cell phones and computers that they would turn the small school into an endless connection between students and these devices. If the computer is to become the Great Instructor there is no point to the small school. The large school can have many more carrels with many more computers. Indeed, such defenders of the new technologies as Sir John Daniels also write books and advocate for "mega-universities": universities like the British Open University that have 100,000 or more students. The great virtue of the small school is the relationships it can create between teachers and students, and students and students. In the small school the teacher knows the student by name and need, and can help each student. Students can study together, support each other, have more of an opportunity to engage in music and art and athletics, since the small school encourages participation rather than varsity excellence for a few and passive spectatorship for the many. In the small school it is easier to reach out to the community for support and opportunities for work and service experiences that are educational. The disadvantages of the small school, say the critics, is that it cannot afford the range of curricula of the large school; it cannot afford the range of qualified faculty... All the available research reveals that these advantages are true but largely of little impact on students, and more than compensated for by the advantages of intimacy and concern of the small school. Joseph Beckmann's emphasis on technology and what it can bring in to the small school is the central and clinching point, I think. We can say to those who believe that the technophiles would undo all of the advantages of the small school by their technocentrism by making it clear that those advantages of the small would continue to be featured: teachers and students would talk and think and collaborate together as warm and intimate human community for a good part of the school day, and supplement those learnings with those specialties and programs and possibilities that the computer can bring in from the nation and around the world. Joseph Beckmann says the only way to benefit from technology is to use a great deal of it--and that's the fear of the small school advocates. A legitimate fear, some of us who are not technophobes believe. The only way to benefit from the small school is to insure that there is a great deal of the talk and the connection and the participation that justify the small school in the first place. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Beckmann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 6:07 PM To: 'The Digital Divide Network discussion group'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [DDN] personal vis social and the academic You've hit a topic that is still too largely ignored. Technology promises to realize the social liberal vision of transparent government, policy, program, business and development. Yet The Academy is notoriously technophobic. Diane Ravitch, in the US, has recently taken up the argument against small, high tech high schools, arguing, for example, that only large, comprehensive secondary schools have the curricular variety needed to prepare young people for the 21st Century. Compared to a place with a dozen teachers and 300 to 400 kids, her argument sounds rational, and her allies are massing a substantial counter-reform against the new secondary school tech movement. Yet there are over 15,000 online college courses and several more thousand secondary courses. There is an almost infinite range of course material available at subsidies so deep that they might as well be free in most US and European school settings, and Taran's $480 or so is not prohibitive anywhere, just a little steep many places. What is lacking is neither the courseware nor the innovative models. What truly is lacking is enough evidence of student productivity effected by this technology. Schools usually hide their students' portfolios, rather than promote them. Students may create their own web pages, but have neither the capacity nor, frankly, the need to promote those pages adequately to deliver the message of their creative portfolio, interdisciplinary, and multimedia products. I know of famous innovative schools - in California, Ohio and elsewhere - where they have hundreds of disks of student portfolio material and neither promote it nor analyze it for fear of loss of control. As in one school I visited where the otherwise sensitive and creative tech coordinator claimed that "wifi would have these teenagers burn up the bandwidth," to which I asked, "who or what else is worth that subsidized bandwidth supposed to be for?" In other words, the only way to defend technology - the ONLY way - is to use it. A lot. And to get kids on it, using it, producing with it the best possible intellectual inquiry, and documentation of that inquiry, in the history of education. That is, after all, the point. Joe Beckmann -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Abeles Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 6:01 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] personal vis social and the academic Hi Steve I want to take my remarks in another direction. The basic background is the growing number of conservative academics and students, particularly in the United States who are arguing that The Academy has a liberal bias making it difficult for dissenting voices to be heard from the faculty side and an even more difficult for a voice to be fairly heard from the side of the student. This plays critically in the issues surrounding the digital divide where it is an article of faith that the introduction of appropriate technology, in this case computers, as the way for social change to occur. Both the hope and the vehicles of possibilities (technoloty and process) are products of a liberal vision (not the Enlightenment liberal or libertarian, but social liberal). What makes this of concern is that this dogma is also being formalized and propagated in The Academy in a somewhat cloistered environment (mostly to protect an emerging faith amongst young turks who have to play the publish/perish game or who are trying to create sacred liturgy). And it is not subject to the critical analysis so needed if substantive change is to be promulgated. The problem, of course, is that the funds from foundations and public agencies are also members of this faith based community and dogma apostates are certain to become fiscally isolated whether they embrace the liberal social models or the more traditional neo-classical ideals. This, of course, paralyzes critical thinking at a time when such is badly needed. It doesn't sit well within The Academy because they too are fiscally dependent; but more importantly, they are tied to peer acceptance as both faculty and students, a powerful pair which checks most critical thought, especially if it is seen to immediately affect efforts to bring help to the disenfranchised. thoughts? tom abeles _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
