The Medium Conveys the Message
I found this video by Dr. Michael Wesch at KSU. I was deeply moved by the contents of this video. It seems our educational system is at a crossroads where pre-web education and Web 2.0 students are converging/clashing. Should we abandon all previous education delivery systems and rebuild it? Does today’s education have significance and meaning in today’s world? Asking good questions is the basis of an article I read: Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance, also by Dr. Wesch. In the article and the video he strongly suggests that our current model of education is outdated and we need to adapt and adopt any means that will engage our students in the learning, not education, process. Education tends to be a conveyance of facts from one person (the teacher) to another (the student). These facts may be useful and meaningful, but not if students can’t put them into a context that promotes original thinking that will shape the future. George Santayana said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. I think history is re pleat with examples of repetition. It would be great for students to learn facts about the American Revolution, but wouldn’t it be better if they learned why it happened and what the mood of the people was at the time. And what was the greater result of those actions taken by the revolutionaries? Yes, we need to make sure students are able to develop critical thinking skills. This is where they will find relevance and significance in what they are being taught.
Now Dr. Wesch has his retractors, one of them being Gary Stager who has said in his Blog:
How did bashing our own profession become such a popular sport? What possible value could demeaning educators have in a professional development setting? Are we so desperate for moving pictures or are they a substitute for actual ideas?
Is showing these types of videos the conference speaker equivalent of the teacher running the filmstrip to eat up class time?
One valuable lesson you should learn at university is that the world is full of people smarter than you and wondrous things to learn. This video and the mindless kudos afforded it make just the opposite point. Hey kids, you have cellphones! You’ve played Halo and excerpted someone else’s blog which in summarized someone else’s blog which excerpted an article on a magazine web site. THEREFORE you are master of the universe and every educational institution should abandon scholarship and discipline and any text longer than a screen.
I think these are good points to consider. We should not make the mistake of throwing out that which has value to replace it with something new that the students are demanding. After all, they are students, and don’t yet know the best ways to learn. They can tell us what they like and how they like it. It is up to the educators to put it all together and develop educational methods that will promote learning more than education, hopefully, combining the two. The method of delivery should not be confused with the content and inspiration that should be at the heart and soul of education.
I am reminded of the Hegelian Dialectic: First you have a thesis, in this case, conventional education. Then you have an antithesis, which would be teaching via cellphone etc. Finally, theoretically and hopefully, you have a synthesis, which will combine the two into something that serves better.
And, by the way, did you look at the video first, or read the text first?
This has to be a scary yet exciting time for educators as they struggle to engage the Web 2.0 generation into a learning enviornment that teaches and inspires.
