EDUCATION AND THE END OF EDUCATION

ISSUE 19: Should Technology Lead the Quest for Better Schools?

YES: By James H. Snider, from "Education Wars: The Battle Over Information Age Technology," The Futurist (May-June 1996)
NO: By Neil Postman, from "Virtual Students, Digital Classroom," The Nation (October 9, 1995)

ISSUE SUMMARY

YES: James H. Snider, a Northwestern University fellow, analyzes the politics of educational change and details the industrial-age barriers that he feels information-age technologies must overcome in order to implement a vastly improved educational system.

NO: Neil Postman, a professor of media ecology and author of numerous books on education and technology, voices serious concern about the dangers of mindless adherence to technological panaceas.

The schools have not always used or responded to new media constructively, so it is crucial that media experts help teachers, administrators, and curriculum designers carve out appropriate strategies for dealing with new technologies. Some experts-while seeing many exciting possibilities in computer-based instruction, particularly in the realm of individualization and self-pacing--caution that we need far more sophisticated understanding of the processes of learning, human motivation, and factors involved in concentration. Others fear the controlling force of computer programs because it could lead to the diminution of the spontaneity and instinctive responses of the learner. The ultimate effect of the new technology could be a complete transformation of learning and the conception of organized education-but similar predictions were made with the advent of television and even radio.

In 1984 MIT professor Seymour Papert predicted, "There won't be schools in the future; I think that the computer will blow up the school." But Larry Cuban, in "Revolutions That Fizzled," The Washington Post (October 27,1996), warns that the persistent urge to reengineer the schools has continually failed to transform teaching practices. Seymour Papert, writing in the same issue, counters that the computer makes possible John Dewey's depiction of learnmg through experimentation and exposure to the real world of social experience. Computer enthusiasts Jim Cummins of New York University and Dennis Sayers of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, in their 1996 book Brave New Schools, urge heavy investment in an Internet-wired nationwide school system.

On the negative side, Richard P. Lookatch, in "The ill-considered Dash to Technology," The School Administrator (April 1996), warns that "hardware hucksters have found K-12 schools to be open landfills for outdated central processing units, while software pushers find technology-zealous media specialists ideal targets for software, much of which ultimately ends up in a storage cabinet because it is either too frustrating, too complicated, or too poorly correlated to the curriculum." His position is that educational media offer no unique benefits and may well lead to inequity, lower standards, and wasted financial resources.

In "The Emperor's New Computer: A Critical Look at Our Appetite for Computer Technology," Journal of Teacher Education (May-June 1996), David Pepi and Geoffrey Schuerman pose several crucial questions, including the following:

• Is technology an effective catalyst for educational reform?
• Are past, current, and anticipated uses of technology consistent with contemporary theories of learning?
• Is using computers synonymous with good teaching?
• Does technology promote critical thinking?
• Does technology build cooperation?
• How much information can we tolerate?

In considering responses to such questions, the authors draw on Neil Postman's 1993 book Technopoly, in which "technopoly" is defined as a culture in which all aspects of human life must find meaning in terms of the current technology and in which there is no tolerance of alternative worldviews. It is Postman's opinion that we are moving toward that culture.

In the opinions that follow, James H. Snider presents an optimistic view of the eventual triumph of information-age technology in the process of education but recognizes that there are political and professional barriers to be overcome. Neil Postman provides some dampening commentary on the "hyperactive fantasies" of the technology "cheerleaders," warning that computer use in education is perhaps a Faustian bargain.

YES

By James H. Snider

From James H. Snider, "Education Wars: The Battle Over Information-Age Technology," The Futurist (May-June 1996). Copyright 1996 by The World Future Society, Bethesda, Maryland.

EDUCATION WARS: THE BATTLE OVER INFORMATION-AGE TECHNOLOGY

Most people now recognize that new information technology is radically changing the economics of education. Many also believe that, if only the schools could get the best technology and train teachers how to use it, the wonders of the Information Age will come to K-12 education.

But this belief, held by such prominent individuals as the president of the United States and the U.S. secretary of education, is faulty.

In the shift from Industrial Age to Information Age education, most educators will lose money, status, and power. They cannot be expected to accept this change without a fight. Insofar as public education responds to political and not economic forces, educators have a good chance of preserving, or at least slowing the erosion of, their position.

Until the full dimensions of this problem are understood, the promise of technology in education will never be fulfilled.

The new economics of education include the following trends:

From labor intensive to capital intensive. Industrial Age education uses little technology It is low tech and labor intensive. According to the Educational Research Service, more than 95% of a typical public school's budget goes to teachers; less than 5% goes to instructional capital such as books, software, and computers. Since improved technology tends to drive up productivity, the high proportion of education dollars spent on labor is often used to explain why education has the worst productivity record of any major economic sector in the United States.

Information Age education, in contrast, is capital intensive. Education resources, including individualized instruction, are delivered via the information superhighway, high-definition television, multimedia PCs, and so on.

From local to national. Industrial Age education is transportation intensive -the learner must physically travel to the key educational resources. As a result of the high cost of travel, education is geographically bound. Students attend the neighborhood school, not one that is thousands of miles away.

In contrast, Information Age education is communications intensive: The learner can access educational resources produced and distributed anywhere in the world. The traditional textbook with national reach is now joined by the "virtual course," the "virtual classroom," and the "virtual school."

From small-scale to large-scale production. Public schools (K-12 level) employ some 6 million individuals, about half of whom are teachers. Tens of thousands of teachers teach similar subjects such as Introductory Spanish, U.S. History and Biology I. At least one highly skilled professional teacher per classroom is considered necessary for adequate instruction.

Information Age education requires far fewer teachers to achieve the same or better results. A few thousand of the best teachers in the United States could replace many of the other 3 million. For example, today's 40,000 Algebra I teachers could be largely displaced by a handful of star teachers working nationally.

From small-scale to large-scale evaluation. Industrial Age education requires classroom-by-classroom evaluation. Since each classroom has relatively few students and is a largely private and inaccessible space, comparative course evaluation is an extraordinarily expensive and impractical undertaking.

Information Age education courses may be taken by thousands or even millions of students over many years. This creates a large market for course evaluations; there could be national evaluations for courses, just as there are for cars, mutual funds, and colleges.

From monopoly to competition. Industrial Age education is a natural monopoly. Students find it impractical to travel long distances to different schools to take different courses, so students often have a choice of only one course and teacher for a given grade and subject matter.

By eliminating geographic barriers, Information Age education makes it possible for students to choose among many courses and classmates, thus creating natural competition.

In summary; the new education economics suggest a shift in power away from regional educators to national educators and to students. National educators gain power because the key education resources are increasingly being produced and distributed on a national basis. Students gain power because they now have choice; they are less dependent on what their regional (e.g., neighborhood) educator provides. Regional educators lose power because their monopoly over education resources is broken.

The vital question for the future, then, is the extent to which the politics and economics of education are coming into conflict. To the extent that regional educators are successful in using political influence to preserve their power, children and parents will have amateurish, expensive, and unnecessarily restricted education services to choose from.

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Postman, N. (1995). The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. Alfred A. Knopf, $22.00 (hardback), 209 pp. (ISBN 0-679-43006-7)

Reviewed by Ellen Rose

I have before me a copy of Neil Postman's The End of Education. My original intent was to review this, Postman's most recent publication, in isolation, referring only superficially, if at all, to his many other books. However, I now realize that such an approach would be a disservice to Postman; for if I have learned one thing from my reading of Postman over the years, it is that he values above all continuity and context over the discontinuity and fragmentation which he sees as endemic of our modern technological culture or "Technocracy." Indeed, I believe it would also be a disservice to the reader if I were to limit my comments to this book--not because the book fails to adequately represent Postman's philosophy but precisely because it does. The End of Education offers a new perspective on ideas and viewpoints set forth in his other books--not just in those which focus on education, such as Teaching as a Subversive Activity (co-authored with Charles Weingartner in 1969) and Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979); but also in publications on media (Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985), technology (Technopoly, 1992), language (Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk, 1976), and social history (The Disappearance of Childhood, 1982). In fact, during his thirty years as "an affectionate critic of American prejudices, tastes, and neuroses" (Postman, 1995, p. 62), Postman has written approximately 20 books which, though apparently addressing diverse topics, in fact centre on a core of recurring themes dealing with the intersection of technology, language, and education.

It would therefore be a mistake to classify Postman's End of Education as one of his "books about education" as opposed to one of his "books about media and technology." The reader who is intent on such categories will surely be less inclined to perceive the larger picture and to understand the deeply serious social and moral intent of Postman's work. Educator, media theorist, and communications expert he may be; but these specialties are all subsumed in the larger pursuit of "media ecology," the study of information environments as a whole in order "to understand how technologies and techniques of communication control the form, quantity, speed, distribution, and direction of information; and how, in turn, such information configurations or biases affect people's perceptions, values, and attitudes" (Postman, 1979, p. 186). The media ecologist argues, for example, that the emergence of the printing press did not simply result in the same fifteenth century society with the addition of a new machine, but rather in a new society entirely, characterized by new values and understandings, new habits and habits of mind. All of Postman's books are, in one way or another, a study of media ecology, of the way in which we are shaped by our own creations.

As a media ecologist, Postman sees the telegraph and photograph as the catalysts of a profound change which would, a century after their invention, create a dangerous imbalance in the information environment. The introduction of telegraphy into typographic culture disrupted its ecology by creating the idea of "context-free information" (Postman, 1992, p. 67) which had no necessary utility or context; and soon after, with the invention of photography, the reason, logic, and continuity characteristic of expository language began to be sublimated to the immediacy and instancy of the visual image:

As the twentieth century began, the amount of information available through words and pictures grew exponentially. With telegraphy and photography leading the way, a new definition of information came into being. Here was information that rejected the necessity of interconnectedness, proceeded without context, argued for instancy against historical continuity, and offered fascination in place of complexity and coherence. (Postman, 1992, p. 69)

Television has exacerbated this ecological imbalance, "raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection" (Postman, 1985, p. 78). Directing not only what we know, but how we know it (Postman calls TV the "First Curriculum"), television packages all information in entertaining, contextless fragments which we receive mindlessly. If we need proof that this is so, Postman offers advertisements, once comprised of words intended to appeal to the understanding of a rational public, which now consist largely of images intended to manipulate their passions; political campaigns, in which a candidate's success now has more to do with his hairstyle than his political beliefs; and news shows, which are designed to entertain more than inform, and which give prominence to highly visual and haptic events. Achieving its zenith in television, the preeminence of visual imagery "has created an ecological problem, and a dangerous one":

We have a generation being raised in an information environment that, on one hand, stresses visual imagery, discontinuity, immediacy, and alogicality. It is antihistorical, antiscientific, anticonceptual, antirational. On the other hand, the context within which this occurs is a kind of religious or philosophic bias toward the supreme authority of technicalization. What this means is that as we lose confidence and competence in our ability to think and judge, we willingly transfer these functions to machines. Whereas our machinery was once thought of as an `extension of man,' man now becomes an `extension of machinery.' (Postman, 1979, p. 100)

Granted, Postman's contention as a media ecologist that "Technological change is not additive; it is ecological" (Postman, 1995, p. 192) is not new. He is the first to acknowledge that a similar conclusion has been drawn over the years by many others, including the likes of Plato, Louis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Harold Adams Innis, and, of course, Marshall McLuhan. But I might as well clear the air on this score once and for all: while Postman owes much to the ideas of McLuhan, he is equally indebted to those of Edward Sapir, Sigmund Freud, Aldous Huxley, Northrop Frye, Norbert Wiener, Noam Chomsky, John Dewey, Alfred Korzybski, I.A. Richards, and a host of others; and he is certainly much more than a mere McLuhan "wannabe." Where McLuhan is an observer of culture, maintaining an objective stance, Postman is a media ecologist driven by a profound moral imperative to play a role in maintaining--or perhaps more accurately, regaining--social balance. As a media ecologist, Postman rejects McLuhan's deliberately neutral commentary on the emergence of a new global village, and decries instead what he sees to be the demise of American culture, offering where he can solutions and suggestions for halting the erosion of a literate tradition. And, despite his enormous respect for McLuhan's ideas, he also tacitly condemns McLuhan's use of sensational fragments, or "probes," as a method of "getting a hearing" with the public (Postman, 1969, p. 7). Here, perhaps, is the key to the essential difference between the two men: while both understand that "the medium is the message," that form is content, they differ greatly in what they do with that knowledge. McLuhan used his understanding of how media function to tailor his message to media's requirements. Postman on the other hand deliberately resists pressures to reduce his ideas to contextless fragments, offering instead fully articulated, lucid arguments requiring readers to follow a number of carefully presented premises to a logical conclusion. And while Postman is well aware that his methodology and his sometimes curmudgeonly arch-conservatism prevent him from attracting quite so many followers as the "Oracle of the Electronic Age," it is part of his moral imperative as a media ecologist to champion the values of tradition, whether in exposition or education.

For adherence to the traditional values of a typographic culture is the crux of Postman's philosophy. Beginning in particular with Teaching as a Conserving Activity and continuing into The End of Education, Postman articulates a serious argument that, given the erosion of our culture by technology, the role of the school should not be to maintain pace with change but rather to provide an oasis of tradition and quietude from which to observe the technological frenzy that is modern society: "Without at least a reminiscence of continuity and tradition, without a place to stand from which to observe change, without a counterargument to the overwhelming thesis of change, we can easily be swept away--in fact, are being swept away" (Postman, 1979, p. 21). Postman rejects the frantic efforts of educators who insist that the school must keep pace with social change, and argues that most of the efforts made on that behalf are mere "educational engineering" based on a shallow educational philosophy: that students should be made "job ready." The deliberately ambiguous title of his most recent book surely contains within it an ironic reference to those, like Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society, 1970) and Lewis Perelman (School's Out, 1992), who argue against compulsory education on the grounds that the school and traditional book learning have no relevance in today's high-tech, information rich culture. Postman contends that school as we know it is enormously valuable precisely because of its lack of relevance:

As it is mostly conducted even in the present age, school is one of our few remaining information systems firmly organized around preelectronic patterns of communication. School is old times and old biases. For that reason, it is more valuable to us than most people realize, but, in any case, provides a clear contrast to the newer system of perception and thought that television represents. By putting television and school side by side, we can see where we are going and what we are leaving, which is exactly what we need to know. (Postman, 1979, p. 47-48)

For Postman, adherence to tradition, then, is not a Luddite stance. He is well aware that "We gain nothing but chaos by banning or breaking our machines" (Postman, 1979, p. 101). But as a media ecologist, he argues that tradition is of fundamental importance because it provides the means to an objective, balanced perspective which is our only defense against unmitigated technological advancement. Only through critical insight (what Postman called "crap detecting" in Teaching as a Subversive Activity), can we hope to understand how new technologies are shaping our lives and thereby control their effects--disastrous effects which could, without careful stewardship, lead to the demise of American culture. If school is to provide students with critical insight into their culture--if it is to counter the "dull and even stupid awareness" (Postman, 1992, p. 20), the sleepwalking attitude, which currently prevails--then it must do so by providing a neutral forum in which "you [are] positioned some distance away from the influences of your own times" rather than being "held captive in the midst of things" (Postman, 1979, p. 185). True "technology education," as Postman would have it taught, is not instruction on basic programming and the like, but rather on how computers, television, and other technologies are changing the way we think and act:

As I see it, the subject is mainly about how television and movie cameras, Xerox machines, and computers reorder our psychic habits, our social relations, our political ideas, and our moral sensibilities. It is about how the meanings of information and education change as new technologies intrude upon a culture, how the meanings of truth, law, and intelligence differ among oral cultures, writing cultures, printing cultures, electronic cultures. Technology education is not a technical subject. It is a branch of the humanities. (Postman, 1995, p. 191)

Similarly, Postman contends that instruction in language (specifically, semantics, the study of the relationship of language to reality) must play a crucial role in helping students develop the critical insight which is our best defense against the unmitigated development of new technologies. The study of semantics offers a form of meta-education, in which students learn not just about a subject but about the assumptions and metaphors of which its language is comprised: "[Semantics] helps students to reflect on the sense and truth of what they are writing and of what they are asked to read. It teaches them to discover the underlying assumptions of what they are told. It emphasizes the manifold ways in which language can distort reality" (Postman, 1992, p. 195). Rather than being drilled on the use of metaphor in a poem, students should be given the opportunity to learn the real power of language to create reality: "how metaphors control what we say, and to what extent what we say controls what we see" (Postman, 1995, p. 186).

In our modern day "Technopoly," then--this barren technological desert, lacking any underlying moral wellspring--a school based on traditional values not only provides an oasis from which to view new technologies, but it also provides sustenance that the arid Technocracy cannot provide. As Postman sees it, school can only "help conserve that which is both necessary to a humane survival and threatened by a furious and exhausting culture" (Postman, 1979, p. 25) if it offers a vision of something different than that culture. That vision is contained in what he calls a "narrative" or "god."

In Technopoly, Postman defines a narrative as "a story of human history that gives meaning to the past, explains the present, and provides guidance for the future. It is a story whose principles help a culture to organize its institutions, to develop ideals, and to find authority for its actions" (Postman, 1992, p. 172). Technopoly deals largely with the way in which technology has deprived us of our narratives, our coherent view of the world and its meaning, and therefore of our moral underpinnings. In The End of Education, Postman continues the theme, emphasizing the need for narratives in education lest the school lose its meaning and function:

Here, I will say only that the idea of public education depends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness. What makes public schools public is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods. The reason for this is that public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. . . . The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things, and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling. (Postman, 1995, p. 17-18)

The End of Education begins with a description of several narratives that have failed. For example, the narrative of Economic Utility, the idea that "the purpose of schooling is to prepare children for competent entry into the economic life of a community" (Postman, 1995, p. 27), has failed in light of growing evidence that, despite their education, graduating students are more likely to land a McJob than a well-paying, challenging position. And Postman contends that the narrative of Technology, based on a sort of hyper-reaction to the inevitability of new technologies, is a "false god" which inhibits the learning of social skills and which, used as an engineering solution to the teaching of subjects, ultimately fosters the kind of sleepwalking attitude to technology which Postman so deplores.

In accordance with the mandate of the media ecologist to find solutions, Postman goes on to offer "five narratives that, singly and in concert, contain sufficient resonance and power to be taken seriously as reasons for schooling. They offer, I believe, moral guidance, a sense of continuity, explanations of the past, clarity to the present, hope for the future" (Postman, 1995, p. 61-62). Used as the scaffolding upon which to build a curriculum, narratives such as the ascent of humanity, the American experiment, and the use of language to create the world will, he suggests, give school a meaning that it currently lacks and help counter rampant information glut and discontinuity. These narratives all continue themes from Postman's previous books and stress the notions of continuity, rationality, and human dignity which are central tenets of Postman's philosophy.

Only by looking at Postman's latest book in the context of his other writings is it possible to gain a full understanding of its implications. Postman is not just trying to save the schools by finding a inclusive narrative upon which to base all learning; he is trying to save public education because he believes it is the only means by which American culture can be preserved from the rampages of uncontrolled technological development. Ultimately, it is not the end of education that he is concerned about, but the demise of culture and "civilité."

Nevertheless, it would be a gross inaccuracy to accuse Postman of cynicism and doom-saying; for Postman writes The End of Education and all of his books as a romantic, one who maintains "a belief in the improvability of the human condition through education" (Postman, 1969, p. xiii), a faith "that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world" (Postman, 1995, p. x). Examining The End of Education within the context of the Postman canon makes it clear that this latest publication is a new lesson in a curriculum that Postman has been delivering for many years to those who will listen, a course of study which promotes concepts of knowledge and ways of knowing which include detachment, objectivity, analysis, and criticism; which challenges us to cast a critical gaze upon our technologies and their underlying meanings, and to examine how language and metaphor shape our lives; which invites us to appreciate and cultivate the values of logical thought and historical understanding; and, finally, which implores us to "enter the conversation with enthusiasm and resolve" (Postman, 1995, p. 91). Only an optimist could continue delivering such a course of study for thirty years.

References

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: Viking Penguin Inc.

Postman, N. (1995). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Postman, N. (1979). Teaching as a conserving activity. New York: Delacorte Press.

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.

Postman, N. and Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

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RELATED LINKS

·         Building an Understanding of Constructivism

·         Purpose of Edmonton Public Schools

·         Aims of Schooling of South Australia

·         John Dewey-Aims in Education

·         The Purpose of Schooling

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Why Education?

To hear Bill Gates tell it, the answer to America's education problem is to make sure every kid has access to a personal computer. To Neil Postman, the computer is just another false god. What kids really need, says Postman, is something to believe in -- a transcendent narrative that gives meaning to education.

Both men address one of the most important issues of our time. Unfortunately, Gates gets bigger press coverage and unfortunately his awed media questioners don't have a clue how to challenge the world's richest man on his own turf.

Neil Postman does. Postman, the New York University culture critic and author, is on an intellectual tear in an attempt to strip away the warped reasons we use these days to tell kids why they need to get an education.

Education, argues Postman, must be presented with a purpose. Traditionally, that purpose has been encapsulated in a narrative, or story. That story tells of origins and envisions a future. It instructs ideals, prescribes rules of conduct, provides a source of authority and gives a sense of continuity and purpose.

To make education work we need a compelling story. "One that has sufficient credibility, complexity and symbolic power so that it's possible to organize one's life and one's learning around it," said Postman. "Without such a transcendent narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose. Without purpose schools become houses of detention, not attention."

In an earlier era, Postman said, America offered its children such narratives, which, in effect, were answers to the question: what are schools for? One of the greatest was the narrative of democracy. Thomas Jefferson helped write that story. In Jefferson's mind, public schools weren't designed so much to serve the public as to create the public. Schools would ensure that citizens know when and how to protect their own liberty.

Another narrative was the great melting pot. In this story the lost and lonely are offered a common bond to America's history and future. It was here they got the promise of freedom.

"It pains me to say that great American narratives are not as powerful as they once were," said Postman. "As significant narratives have faded from view they have been replaced by stories that are thin, crass and certainly without transcendent meaning. As a consequence, the idea of public schooling is placed in jeopardy."

Four narratives -- or 'gods' with a small 'g,' as Postman calls them -- are driving American public education today. They are:

  The god of economic utility. This one tells young people they are what they do for a living and therefore the main purpose for learning is to prepare for entry into economic life. "The idea is to teach the young how to make a living, not how to make a life," said Postman.

• The god of consumership. Here the young are told that the surest way to earn favor is to buy things. It tells them they are not what they do but what they own. "Its principal commandment is the slogan seen on some T-shirts: 'Whoever Dies With the Most Toys Wins,'" said Postman. "This is, of course, a dominant narrative of television which exposes the young to 600,000 television commercials in the first 20 years of their lives."

  The god of technology. This story insists the main purpose of learning is to help the young accomodate themselves to vast technological change. "This narrative is based on the false and somewhat hysterical premise that never before has there been so much technological change as now," said Postman. For those who believe our century is unsurpassed in technological innovation, Postman listed "just a few inventions of the 19th Century: telegraphy, photography, the rotary press, the telephone, the typewriter, the phonograph, the Trans-Atlantic cable, the electric light, radio, movies, the locomotive, rockets, the steamboat, the X-ray, the revolver and the stethoscope, not to mention canned food, the penny press, the modern magazine, the advertising agency, the modern bureaucracy and even the safety pin. "Next to this the information superhighway, email and virtual reality do not to me seem to be so stunning and disorienting and it puzzles me why so many intelligent educators have latched into a 'gee whiz' mode about technology," said Postman.

  The god of tribalism, separatism or multiculturalism. Some curriculums, he said, are used to promote exclusivity, a point of view that expresses the love of a tribe above all else. Learning that implies separateness from and hostility toward others.

Of the four contemporary narratives, Postman said their existence suggests a spiritual emptiness in our culture. "A sense of confusion about what schools are for and about what they can be for," he said. "This emptiness and confusion are the major problem facing public education in America."

Though it will be difficult, Postman said there is now opportunity to create new narratives for public schools. This, he said, will not come from the schools themselves (they are "state agencies") but from the society at large. "Schools are mirrors of social beliefs," he said, "giving back what citizens put in front of them."

Postman suggested three new public school narratives that should be considered:

  The Story of Spaceship Earth. A narrative of global consciousness where human beings are stewards of the Earth, caretakers of a vulnerable space capsule. "It's a relatively new narrative, not fully developed, but filled with excitement for young people," Postman said. "It evokes in young people a sense of responsibility and committment and it's a story with power to bond people. It makes the idea of racism irrelevant and ridiculous." The narrative, said Postman, makes clear the interdependence of human beings and their need for solidarity. Waste and indifference is depicted as evil. If any part of the spaceship is poisoned, everyone suffers. This says the extinction of a rain forest in Brazil is not just a Brazilian problem, the pollution of the ocean is not just a Miami Beach problem and the depletion of the ozone layer is not just an Australian problem.

  The Story of the Fallen Angel. In this story, human beings -- whatever our past may have been -- are now in a situation where we must live forever in a state of imperfect understanding. We make mistakes all the time. It's in our nature to make mistakes. The curriculum here is the study of error and our heroic effects to overcome it. Students are taught to accept our cosmic status as the error-prone species. In this narrative, for us to believe we are God-like or perfect is among the most serious sins of which we are capable. "The Greeks call the sin hubris. The Christians call it pride. Scientists call it dogmatism," said Postman. "The meaning of Angel is we are capable of correcting our mistakes provided that we proceed without hubris, pride or dogmatism."

  The Story of America as an Experiment. A narrative of "stunning and dangerous questions" that offers a sense of national pride without psychopathic nationalism or the belief that America is superior to all other countries. "Is it possible to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people? And who are the people anyway? And how shall they proceed in government themselves? And how shall we protect individuals from the power of the people? And should we do all of this in the first place? "The point is these questions are still unanswered and will always remain so," said Postman. "The American Constitution is not a catechism but a hypothesis. It is less the law of the land than an expression of the lay of the land as it has been understood by various people at different times." Endless questions over democracy, citizenship and human rights have been debated by various nations over the centuries and we still don't the know the answers. "There's the rub and the beauty and value of the story," said Postman. "So we argue and experiment and complain and rejoice and argue some more without end. In this story we needn't conceal anything from ourselves. No shame need endure forever and no accomplishment merits excessive pride. All is fluid and subject to change." This story, said Postman, allows student participation in the great American experiment and teaches "which things are worth arguing about and what happens when those arguments cease."

In suggesting the three new narratives for public education, Postman said he doesn't mean to imply that his proposed stories represent absolute truth. "These are simply ways of finding meaning in life and in learning," he said.

In light of Postman's ideas, Bill Gate's self-serving endorsement of computers in education looks pretty lame. Without a national media that even comprehends the issues at stake in contemporary education, Gates is allowed to put out his drivel without challenge.

Postman expresses his ideas in The End of Education (Knopf). Bill Gates ideas about education are in The Road Ahead (Viking).

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From Pretenses to Real Meaning: 
A Book Review of Teaching as a Subversive Activity 
January 29, 1998 
by Robin Martin

Almost 30 years ago, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner wrote a book called Teaching as a Subversive Activity. This book has played a significant role in helping teachers across the years to question the traditional wisdom of the school system. As the title implies, it is a book is about: subversive teaching.

What is subversive teaching? For Postman & Weingartner (1969), subversive teaching is the conscious act of teaching with the "inquiry method" and in doing so, realizing that this changes everything. They pull heavily from Marshall McCluhan’s work around the idea that the medium is the message, and that merely labeling ideas ("Oh, this is just the discovery method") diverts our attention from the complex processes that are at work.

They explain:

"The inquiry method is not designed to do better what older environments try to do. It works you over in entirely different ways. It activates different senses, attitudes, and perceptions; it generates a different, bolder, and more potent kind of intelligence. Thus, it will cause teachers and their tests, and their grading systems, and their curriculum to change. It will cause college admissions requirements to change. It will cause everything to change." (1969, p. 27)

Looking back, we must now question: Was this inquiry method ever fully integrated into our schools, or was it merely assimilated into the existing structures so that the change of which Postman & Weingartner spoke was never fully realized? Is it an approach to education that we might want to revisit, as we continuously search for "reforms" that are more in harmony with our visions for what we want our community and educational system to be.

In contrast to a "production" approach to teaching, the inquiry method focuses on the process, rather than the product. Thus, a good teacher is one who realizes the "answers" are not in the books, but within the learners themselves. Doing and experiencing are the key ingredients to real learning, and how and what we learn does not happen sequentially and especially does not happen for all learners in the same way at the same time.

A subversive teacher, then, is one who firmly realizes these "truths" about learning. Despite the system’s focus on product (predetermined curriculum and test scores), the subversive teacher actively attempts to redesign the structure of the classroom to focus instead on process. Some of the attitudinal characteristics of such "teachers in action" as listed by Postman & Weingartner include:

·         The teacher rarely tells students what he thinks.

·         Generally, he does not accept a single statement as an answer to a question.

·         He encourages student-student interaction as opposed to student-teacher interaction, generally avoids acting as a mediator or judging the quality of ideas expressed.

·         He rarely summarizes the positions taken by students on the learnings that occur. He recognizes that the act of summary or "closure" tends to have the effect of ending further thought.

·         Generally, each of his lessons pose a problem for students.

·         His lessons develop from the responses of students and not from a previously determined "logical" structure. (Postman & Weingartner, 1969, p. 33-36)

Postman & Weingartner give much attention to challenging the traditional methods of teaching quite directly, as well as suggesting alternative approaches.

In criticizing the traditional approaches to schooling, they describe school as a place where real issues are not dealt with. They even attack the supposedly "progressive" types of essay questions and collaborative work assignments which are highly rated by most people, especially the defenders of "high standards," & makers of standardized tests. As educational critics, they write: "…we can be sure their approval rests largely on a carefully cultivated schizophrenia that is necessary, in present circumstances, to their academic survival" (p. 49). Thus, this is not a book to read if you are rigidly attached to even some innovative school methods or tests, as the authors are both critical and harsh toward much of the system as we know it. Rather, it is for teachers and parents who are ready to question everything about the traditional structures of teaching and wanting to challenge your assumptions of what schools are about and what they perhaps could be about, if we are willing to move beyond our past and envision something different.

Continuing on this topic of dealing with pre-defined curricula such as essay questions, Postman & Weingartner write:

"The children know that none of these questions has anything to do with them, and the game that is being played does not require that the questions do. The game is called ‘Let’s Pretend,’ and if its name were chiseled into the front of every school building in America, we would at least have an honest announcement of what takes place there. The game is based on a series of pretenses which include: Let’s pretend that you are not what you are and that this sort of work makes a difference to your lives; let’s pretend that what bores you is important, and that the more you are bored, the more important it is; let’s pretend that there are certain things everyone must know, and that both the questions and answers about them have been fixed for all time; let’s pretend that your intellectual competence can be judged on the basis of how well you can play Let’s Pretend." (p. 49)

In a later chapter Postman & Weingartner begin to discuss establishing environments for learning that are not based on teaching children "trivia," but instead based on helping children to create their own meanings. They write:

"As soon as students realize that their lessons are about their meanings, then the entire psychological context of schools is different. Learning is no longer a contest between them and something outside of them, whether the problem be a poem, a historical conclusion, a scientific theory, or anything else. There is, then, no need for the kinds of "motivation" found in the conventional Trivia content. There are few occasions for feelings of inadequacy, few threats to their sense of dignity, less reason to resist changing perspectives. In short, the meaning-maker metaphor puts the student at the center of the learning process. It makes both possible and acceptable a plurality of meanings, for the environment does not exist only to impose standardized meanings but rather to help students improve their unique meaning-making capabilities. And this is the basis of the process of learning how to learn, how to deal with the otherwise ‘meaningless,’ how to cope with change that requires new meanings to be made." (p. 97)

Postman, N. & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Company, Inc.

April 2000  Teaching As A Subversive Activity

By David Hill Teacher Magazine

NEIL POSTMAN AND CHARLES WEINGARTNER
(Delacorte Press, out of print)

It's 1969. The war in Vietnam is raging. The anti-war movement has reached a fever pitch. Militant leftists are bombing draft offices and ROTC buildings. The nation appears to be coming apart at the seams.

Against this backdrop emerges a provocative little book titled Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, two unknown education professors at Queens College in New York. Billed as "a no-holds- barred assault on outdated teaching methods," the book features a clichéd red apple on the cover—except that this apple is a bomb and the stem is a lit fuse. The message is clear: Before our schools can be saved, they must first be destroyed.

"What is it that students do in the classroom?" the authors ask. "Well, mostly, they sit and listen to the teacher. Mostly, they are required to believe authorities, or at least pretend to such belief when they take tests. Mostly, they are required to remember. They are almost never required to make observations, formulate definitions, or perform any intellectual operations that go beyond repeating what someone else says is true....It is practically unheard of for students to play any role in determining what problems are worth studying or what procedures of inquiry ought to be used."

Schools, they urge, must teach young people to think critically about society, politics, and culture. To that end, they propose doing away with grades, tests, textbooks, courses, and full-time administrators. Teachers must abandon their traditional roles as authority figures and become more like consultants or coaches. No more "content." No more "subjects." No more "irrelevant" classes.

Instead, learning must become a process, not a product. Teachers should teach by asking questions—not questions to which they already know the answers, but questions that will get kids to think for themselves. Postman and Weingartner offer these examples: "What bothers you most about adults? Why?" "How can 'good' be distinguished from 'evil'?" "What are the dumbest and most dangerous ideas that are 'popular' today? Why do you think so? Where did these ideas come from?" And so on.

The purpose of this "new kind of education," they write, is to create "a new kind of person," one who is "an actively inquiring, flexible, creative, innovative, tolerant, liberal personality who can face uncertainty and ambiguity without disorientation, who can formulate viable new meanings to meet changes in the environment which threaten individual and mutual survival."

Postman and Weingartner weren't the only educators advocating such radical notions. A short list of like-minded reformers of the day includes John Holt, Ivan Illich, and Herbert Kohl. Their ideas were put into practice at so-called "open schools," which did away with many traditional components of schooling. But in the late 1970s, open education fell under fire, and a back-to-basics backlash swept the country.

Even Postman's views on education changed. In his 1979 book, Teaching as a Conserving Activity, he wrote, "Frankly, I don't know if I have turned or everything else has. But many of the arguments which then seemed merely opposite, now seem acutely apposite, and this book is the result of a change in perspective." Postman didn't make a complete 180-degree shift—he distanced himself from the back-to-basics crowd—but his calls for school dress codes and firm discipline were surprising, to say the least. In recent years, Postman, now chairman of the department of culture and communication at New York University, has written several books lamenting the corrupting influence of technology on civilization.

Read today, Teaching as a Subversive Activity is by turns dated, silly, and profound. Faddish words and phrases like "entropy," "future shock," "credibility gap," and "cybernetics" place the book firmly in its 1960s context. And some of the authors' proposals sound either half-baked or merely antagonistic, like the recommendation that all teachers undergo some form of psychotherapy as part of their inservice training.

Still, Postman and Weingartner's central argument—that the purpose of school is to teach students how to learn and think—is as valid today as it was 30 years ago. In one chapter, they advise teachers to "try to avoid telling your students any answers, if only for a few lessons or days. Do not prepare a lesson plan. Instead, confront your students with some sort of problem which might interest them. Then, allow them to work the problem through without your advice or counsel." Now there's a subversive idea.

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Teaching as a Subversive Activity
@22 April 2000

We all dwell in an unstable buzz of molecules. Some of these atomic tides have become stable enough for a while, and recursive enough in their relationships, to somehow generate that sense of "I", the identity which allows us to view other assemblies as entities of greater or lesser relevance to the preservation of "I".

We classify these other entities, and their relationship with self, on a scale from solids to photons, and from embedded conviction to diaphanous hope. At some hard to pin down, but robust perimeter of certainty, we declare all within to be our system of knowledge and being. Within all elements must harmonize, or at least develop protective shells of mutual ignorance, like pearls cohabiting blindly within our living oyster. And having settled upon this system of knowledge, for better or for worse, we become immensely protective of it. It is, after all, US, and all which threatens it threatens US.

Enter the teacher. A teacher's role is to induce new knowledge into the knowledge systems of other beings. A desperate task, universally unwelcome to the owners of those working systems, no matter that they willfully put themselves in harms way by enrolling for a "course" in this or that. Until the moment of having to learn new knowledge, it doesn't occur to them that a threat to old knowledge is being posed. They bite, swallow a mouthful of the new stuff, and gag. It's foreign matter.

So what makes for a great teacher? Subversion. There's no doubt about it. Qualifications, references, classroom years ... none of it matters in the end, not in the business of real teaching. The poseurs are legion. They instruct others in curriculums, they dole out mouthfuls of information with threats and gold stars, they get people to pass exams. But mostly they don't succeed in teaching new knowledge systems.

A teacher is that rare individual who coaxes the existing knowledge systems of his students out of hiding, drags every last tentacle of the monster from the depths into broad daylight, hoses off the slime, wrestles it to the ground when it puts up a fight, and finally gives it a heart transplant. That's subversion. That's teaching.

All opinions expressed in Thor's Unwise Ideas and The Passionate Skeptic are entirely those of the author, who has no aim to influence, proselytize or persuade others to a point of view. He is pleased if his writing generates reflection in readers, either for or against the sentiment of the argument.

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What Should We Teach?

Perspectives / Provocative Questions

Marge Scherer

"Please be advised that page 61 of this book has been left blank deliberately." Thus reads the first line of Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969), a book that had an impact on many educators in the 1970s.¹ The purpose of the blank page (as explained on p. 60) was to provide the reader space to list questions about "What's worth teaching?" and "What's worth knowing?"

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner invited educators to consider what they would do if the entire curriculum disappeared. What if you had to develop the questions that would help your students internalize the concepts that they would need to survive in the changing world? Anyone who came up with How did the ancient Egyptians earn their living? or other such questions that had factual answers was told to use his or her own paper. The authors were looking for deep relevance on the order of What does meaning mean? and What is the difference between good and evil?

Some of us on the faculty of my high school took the lesser question—What do you want to learn?—to the students, and born from the brainstorming was a series of minicourses. I taught Women in Literature and Language as a Medium, which combined semantics, grammar, journalism, and the psychology of communication. Those were creative days, and everything we did seemed new. But, as I look back, I see that, fortunately, the old curriculum did not disappear. We reinvented the reading lists, but most of us were so rooted in our traditional educations that we did not produce radical changes. Our aim was to refresh our teaching and motivate more students to enjoy learning while continuing to meet all requirements for college.

This month as we reexamine the question—What should we teach?—the irreverent tone of Teaching as a Subversive Activity seems humorous but hardly shocking, and its message, although still relevant, simplistic. The teaching context has become more complex. In many schools, multicultural and women's literature are part of the mainstream, but in other classrooms, the works of minority authors are either not present or over-represented. Technology and the sciences have introduced an explosion of new ideas and skills to learn, but most students are not enrolled in higher-level courses, whether by choice or lack of opportunity (see Holloway, p. 84). The question of whose history or literature to teach is not being posed so much by individual educators as it is by committees who, with the advice of citizens and policymakers, have created—and revised—comprehensive, if verbose, standards of learning for all students. For all the richness of content, the achievement gaps remain wide.

Meanwhile, the emphasis on testing and accountability is shaping decisions about content. Some say the emphasis on answers will diminish the individual's quest for meaning; others hope that the new accountability will demand more meaningful content for more students.

Authors in this issue voice thoughtful perspectives. Robert Moses (p. 6) explains why algebra is a gateway subject that students must master to compete in the technological workplace. With his philosophy of "each one teach one," he connects algebra and citizenship: the understanding of algebra is an empowerment for the student and a responsibility to share with others. An endorser of traditional content, Moses uses innovative teaching strategies that make mathematics meaningful to students.

George D. Nelson, director of Project 2061, presents a framework for thinking about science and math that applies to almost every other subject, too. "Before we can think about the what and the who of the curriculum, we need to think about the why," he says.

Will the knowledge or skill significantly enhance long-term employment or educational prospects? . . . Will the content help citizens participate intelligently in making social and political decisions? . . . Does the content have pervasive cultural or historical significance? . . . Does the content help individuals ponder the enduring questions of what it means to be human? (Nelson, p. 13)

The questions are worthy of the blank page in Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Turn our pages for the discussion.

Endnote

¹ Postman, N., & C. Weingartner. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Delta.