steve's last paragraphs are significant. "The Ecology of Education" is a rather prescient term. As Humpty Dumpty says in "Alice in Wonderland", (in paraphrase), "A world means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less...." We presume that the words in our exchanges are understood, or sometimes we ignore what others have to say because we don't or don't want to understand. The cultural overlay is what creates diplomatic nightmares, wars and other discontinuities.
Semantics often seems like an academic issue and not of relevance to those working to close the digital divide. And thus it is often deliberately eschewed. Similarly there is a proclivity to reject those whose vocabulary might be considered "academic" or seemingly obscure. Yet, as we know, words have killed in Kafka-esque situations; and even among peers, much less, persons of different cultural backgrounds, exchanges can seem obscure. It has been demonstrated that there is need to understand what Steve describes as "ecology" of education; yet this has caused serious problems because it seems almost a distraction or even an obstruction to the efforts to close the digital divide. tom abeles ------------------------------ A key question, then: If the schools teach students how to bring Kevin's words to their screens but they can't read them with understanding, has there been a tradeoff involved that is harmful to society? One possibility is that we have to rethink the ecology of education: what piece of education is assigned to the home, the neighborhood, the church, the school, and the other agencies of a society. It may be that other agencies, or even self-instruction, can teach the young to operate the radio, television set, the cell phone, and the computer, while we need schools to teach the far more difficult technologies of deep reading and writing. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org 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.
