What sort of people and institutions gain special economic and political power from this new technology? ~ Neil Postman

This question is very pertinent in an age where businesses are even more interested and bent on having a say with regards to what goes into education. Has education been sold to corporate or political interests?

While ICT has long been lauded for its democratizing effect, meaning, making education more readily available to the masses, what needs to be ask is the kind of education that the masses have been given access to. Has ICT moved the decision for the contents of a curriculum from teachers who are in the field or to instructional designers sitting somewhere in an office but away from where the teaching takes place? How much flexibility is there for the teachers to adapt their teaching when the curriculum is even more today defined and assessed by a “virtual” someone? Is the institution of the teacher under attack? Is it then a coincident that in this ICT era, teachers are seen to be even more easily replaceable especially in American schools  today? Is that the start of the trend to come globally?

Even at the tertiary level, university professors have expressed concern at how ICT has meant that “learning” has largely gone online. Has this trend strengthened the hands of the bureaucrats who see the economic bottom line as the most important yardstick for the buffet of courses on offer? ICT has made online learning relatively cheap and universities are rushing to offer such courses. Will ICT result in more automation to keep costs down in the “learning” process? Will university lecturers and professors be regarded as mere consultants an instructional design process despite promotion of “blended learning”?

This emphasis on revenues earned will (and has) attract the interest of private conglomerates to offer “education” as a product to be sold.  They in turn will only sell packages that will fit into the economic needs of the country. So who keeps an eye on what is sold to the masses as “education” especially when the political masters have chosen to defer to business interests?

Will the advent of ICT use in education also emphasize the dominance of science and technology as the final arbiter of knowledge? What is the implication of this on what is to be taught in our schools and universities? Will it only further de-legitimise non-scientific institutions in the long run?

However, there could be some positives. Traditional political institutions will have difficulty also circumscribing what is being taught. Censorship becomes all the more difficult. While political authorities can snuff out temporarily the global connections that ICT affords, they will not be able to do so permanently as seen in the Arab Spring uprisings, especially as seen in the example of Egypt.

ICT allows anyone with access to it to turn to “alternative” sources of learning. The wired world allows anyone to choose from a plethora of offerings from anywhere in the world. The officially-approved offerings in brick-and-mortar schools where socialization of political values can take place, can be bypassed. Learning can become truly personal through these personal learning networks as opposed to being a reflection of the demands of political leaders.

Neil Postman’s six questions that we should pose to ourselves whenever we want to introduce new technology is to encourage a dialogue with technology. This is to prevent us from going into an unthinking headlong rush to adapt anything that is technologically “advanced”. In my first post in this series, I alluded to the way the Amish people view technology as highlighted by Howard Rheingold. While we do not advocate a lifestyle like the Amish people, we can learn invaluable lessons from them about keeping technology in a more balanced and correct perspective.

End of series on Neil Postman’s “Six Questions”

For today’s post, I thought that I would just pose a few questions for us, especially those in Singapore, and perhaps, for those planning to follow the Singapore model.

How do you get students to become collaborative workers when all they do in school is compete with one another to be in the top schools, classes, university places, and for scholarships?

How do you get students to become life-long learners when in school, learning is done to pass high stakes examinations?

How do you get students to be independent learners when students, teachers, principals and parents expect that they be fed with lots of notes in order for them to do well in the high stakes examinations? In addition how do you do that when you have an army of private tutors trying to do the same thing?

How do you produce daring, creative and entrepreneurial (in memory of Steve Jobs?) adults when all they do in school is engage in rote-learning and mechanical operations? How do you get them to problem-solve when the only problems they face in school are the problems in their school worksheets?

How do you teach them to be critical adult thinkers when the education system does not encourage critical inquiry?

How do you teach them to be curious and be involve in serious scientific inquiry when all that is supposed to be science in our schools is largely rote-learning and mechanical operations?

How do you get students to move out of a silo mentality when in schools, learning is done in an environment where subjects are clearly demarcated and jealously guarded from crossing boundaries?

These are just some thoughts of mine about schooling in Singapore. Perhaps some of you out there would like to share your thoughts here?

Following up on my previous blog post about John Seely Brown’s lecture on ““A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change”, I wonder what are the changes needed for schools to reflect how real everyday learning takes place.

Based on JSB’s observations, real learning takes place when there is passion. Passion as I have mentioned previously is the fuel that drives the learning process and, if I may add, the learning aptitude. The existing framework of schools today do not encourage the passionate pursuit of a subject or a skill. Most learning done in school is done in pursuit of examinations or test scores. Not exactly, the kind of goal that will excite most students. So how do we create passionate interests and pursuits if schools today still stick to standard, highly compartmentalized “subjects” that must be covered within a given frame of time and with the ultimate aim of getting their students to pass tests?

How do we also change the in-built time element of traditional schools. The time element concerns a few aspects of traditional schools. The curriculum is almost always dictated by a time element specifying when the curriculum starts and when it ends. This is in turn usually dictated by pressures to meet the demand of summative assessments to meet administrative needs.

The second aspect of time is the breaking of the learning period into fixed, bits usually called periods. Does real learning take place in fixed bits of time or does learning take place according to the learners’ needs? This fixed bits of time are in turn cocooned within the official school (read, learning) hours.

The other aspect of time is that most schools run on the Piagetian approach where learning is closely linked to developmental age (usually conveniently implemented according to the child’s age). Through this implementation, students are placed in the same levels regardless of whether they are of the same ability or otherwise. In general, a seven year old must stick with a seven year old. Do people learn only from people of their age group?

Lastly, do the physical structure of schools also lend to an a real learning environment? Do the walls that compartmentalized the adults in the schools and the students from each other encouraged the formation of groups of passionate people with common learning interests? This reminds me of Marshall McLuhan’s (in?)famous dictum, “The medium is the message.”

These are just some questions that come to my mind due to JSB’s lecture. Do you think those questions are relevant for schools or are JSB’s ideas only for the more (perhaps) fluid adult world and their organizations? If you think JSB’s ideas are relevant to schools, are there other questions that we should ask ourselves?