Bob McDaniel wrote:
>
> I wonder whether we are experiencing an increased awareness
> of an environment undergoing tectonic shifts.
[snip]
> Even the "power relation" between teacher and student may be undergoing
> a metamorphosis. Teachers may not be certain whether they should teach,
[snip]
> School violence may, too, be reflective of this underlying
> sense of loss of control.
I guess you can say I want to have my cake and eat it too. Or
else maybe that I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Surely there has been a lot of loss of control in America since
the 1950s. And a lot of it has not been things many of us welcome.
Things are complicated, and I was thinking about my own schooling
(40 years ago) and that of the kids today who still try to
get good (i.e., high) grades, etc.
[snip]
> In order
> to support our comfortable belief that all is under control, we agree to play by
>
> very narrowly rules that govern all of our business behavior
[snip]
> But the Web is thoroughly infiltrating business and the Web
> is a profoundly unmanaged environment.
I may have gone to school 40 years ago, but I go to work
today, and I don't see the Web having any democratizing effect on what
we might call "the place called work". Dress codes have changed
(although tomorrow where I work will be a no-jeans day
because important visitors are coming...), but I
still take orders from my boss, and I am
well aware I can be dismissed from my job tomorrow
just like before the Web -- or maybe faster, since
the Web has probably contributed to speeding up
everything.
Here's a speculation: The Internet may change the social relations of
instruction a lot more than the social relations of work. Schools
have little built-in motivation to really try to help
students learn, but business needs employees who
know how to do their job. The "half-life" of
knowledge may continue to decrease, and Web-based
instruction become increasingly effective.
I see no reason why capitalism cannot absorb
a big shift of human resource allocation from
unpaid student to paid worker-"learner" -- this may just
be another step in capitalism's overall logic of
transforming everything into "exchange value". One
big incentive for the individual to go to
work rather than go to school, especially if the
pay differential does not heavily favor tha latter,
would be that nobody likes having
a big student-loan burden to pay off.
So perhaps "dumbing down" of education will prove
to be less a problem than dehumanization of education,
although I think that, again, bringing in Kohlberg's
concept of "the hidden curriculum", probably a large
part of the reason even "educated" people tolerate being employees
so easily is that even "the humanities" have long been taught
by the "grading" system, which teaches "viscerally" competition and
the orientation to do what one has been told to do, even if the "semiotic
tokens" manipulated in the process are entities like
the character string called "The Communist Manifesto",
or "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" or "The Bible"
or whatever.
Probably as I write this, more than one student is
cramming Habermas (or better, synoptic secondary materials
about him ideas) to try to get a paper in to get a good
enough grade in Philosophy 101 (or 262 -- either undergrad
or graduate course...)....
+\brad mccormick
[snip]
> "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that one of the fundamental
> > problems of our educational system is that we
> > do not teach young persons about the basic structures
> > of interpersonal communication, starting with
> > the power relation between teacher and student *hic et nunc*
> > (i.e., in the very living moment of instruction).
> >
> > Lawrence Kohlberg called this: "The hidden curriculum",
> > and it teachers lessons far more important than whether
> > God created Adam and Eve, or we all evolved from
> > adventitious chemical reactions via slime mold and
> > monkeys. For, having accepted the communicative
> > structure of teacher-student as too obvious to
> > be noticed, the young persons graduate to taking
> > the communicative relation between boss and employee
> > as too obvious to be noticed.
[snip]
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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