Subject: Shades of Neil Postman!!
From: Muhammad Betz (mbetz@sosu.edu)
Date: Mon 03 Apr 2000 - 23:32:29 MEST
From: "Muhammad Betz" <mbetz@sosu.edu> Subject: Shades of Neil Postman!! Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 09:32:29 +1200
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Howdy y'all:
Ania responds to my early posting with the following:
"Technology therefore serves pedagogy rather than liberates it...How did
your students think that, with the help of technology, they could make their
future students creative, subversive, make critically informed decisions?"
Ania Lian
Actually, I was referring to the notion that technology liberates learning
by opening up the curriculum not pedagogy, as Ania has stated. (I had said:
"This curriculum is based upon the motivations of a learner who demotes
technology-based information to a subordinate role: that of serving the
creative synthesis of motivation and knowledge into works of art.") Pedagogy
is of course altogether different from learning, and pedagogical methods are
often constrained by politics. Most educators function in an at least
partially political environment, and Ania's model ignores this fact.
Ania's paper refers to the necessity of learning being a subversive
activity. I assume she is adapting Neil Postman's "Teaching as a Subversive
Activity." I think she has misconstrued Postman's point, though. Allow me
to again refer to philosophy. I suppose that what Ania's "subversion" is
aiming towards is something akin to Descartes' "methodical doubt." The
subversive approach targets only one type of learning or one domain, related
to the catharsis of the individual learner, in a philosophical sense. There
are certainly many other kinds of learning. What of the medical student?
Is her learning also to be subversive? The result might be more cloning and
euthanasia! No, I disagree here. I see education, in the mainstream in
particular, as a generally mundane enterprise. That conceptualization does
not preclude personality or intellectual development.
If we are talking about individual development, which must be the point of
subversive teaching, I prefer to start with Erik Erikson's model for
psycho-social development. In the very well known (famous) Eriksonian
model, "identify formation" or its lack (moratorium) is a stage experienced
during adolescence. People move on to different development crises after
identity formation.
Should teachers help students to alleviate false truths. Perhaps, if
teachers can identify false truths without taking the role of God in the
process. The point is that if teachers presume that learning must be
subversive, then it follows that teachers, not technology, are the brokers
of biased values.
Last but not least: this notion that contemporary educators are either of
the "modern" or "post-modern" school is erroneous.
Muhammad Betz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in Educational Instruction & Leadership
Southeastern Oklahoma State University
(580)745-2262
fax:(580)920-7508
mbetz@sosu.edu
www.sosu.edu/ebs/eil/betz
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