Industrial society, as a precursor to our pragmatic framework,
needed literacy in order to get the most out of machines, and to
preserve the physical and intellectual capability of the human
operator. It invested in education because the return was high
enough to justify it. A qualified worker, a qualified physician,
chemist, lawyer, and businessman represented a necessity for the
harmonious functioning of industrial society. One needed to know
how to operate one machine. Chances were that the machine would
outlast the operator. One needed to study a relatively stable
body of knowledge (laws, medical prescriptions, chemical
formulas). Chances were that one and the same book would serve
father, son, even grandson. And what could not be disseminated
through literacy was taught by example, through the
apprenticeship system, from which engineering profited a lot.
What education generated were literate people, and members of a
society prepared for relations without which machines made
little or no sense at all. The more complex such relations, the
longer the time needed for education, and the higher the
qualifications required from those working as educators.
Education ensured the transmission of knowledge, filling empty
containers sent by parents, from settled families, as incoming
students to schools and colleges. Industrial society
simultaneously generated the products and the increased need for
them. Some would argue that all this is not so simple.
Industrialists did not need educated workers. That is why they
transferred a lot of work to children and women. Reformists
(probably influenced by religious humanism) insisted on taking
children out of the factories. Children were taught to read in
order to uplift their souls (as the claim went). Finally, laws
were enacted that forbade child labor. As this happened, industry
got what it needed: a relatively educated class of workers and
higher levels of productivity from employment that used the
education provided. Under the right pragmatic conditions, an
educated worker proved to be a good investment.
Alan Bloom detailed many of the motives that animated industrial
philanthropists in supporting education. I beg to differ and
return to the argument that industrial society, in order to use
the potential of machine production, had to generate the need for
what it produced. Indeed, the first products are the workers
themselves, projecting into machine-based praxis their physical
attributes, but foremostly skills such as comprehension,
interaction, coordination. All these attributes belong to the
structural condition of literacy.
Industrial products resulting from qualitatively new forms of
human self- constitution were of accidental or no interest to
illiterates. What would an illiterate do with products, such as
new typewriters, books, more sophisticated household appliances?
How would an illiterate interact with them in order to get the
most out of each artifact? And how could coordination with
others using such new products take place? We know that things
were not exactly divided along such clear-cut borders.
Illiterate parents had literate children who provided the
necessary knowledge. The trickle-down effect was probably part
of the broader strategy. But all in all, the philanthropists'
support of education was an investment in the optimal functioning
of a society whose scale necessitated levels high enough for
efficient work. Education was connected to philanthropy, and it
still is, as a form of wealth distribution. But it is not love
for the neighbor that makes philanthropists' support of education
necessary, rather the sheer advantage resulting from money
given, estate or machines donated, chairs endowed. Cynical or
not, this view results from the perception one experiences when
noticing how generosity, well supported by public money, ends up
as a self-serving gesture: donations that resulted in buildings,
scholarships, endowments, and gifts named after the benefactor.
The obsession with permanence-some live it as an obsession with
eternity, others as a therapeutic ego massage-is but one of the
overhead costs associated with literacy.
Lines from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales come to mind:
"Now isn't it a marvel of God's grace/that an illiterate fellow
can outpace/the wisdom of a heap of learned men?" How a manciple
(probably equivalent to a Residence Life Administrator and
Cafeteria Head combined) would perform today is worth another
tale. Education, as a product of the civilization of literacy,
has problems understanding that literacy corresponds to a
development in which written language was the medium for the
spoken. Nevertheless, it did learn that today we can store the
spoken in non-written form, sometimes more efficiently, and
without the heavy investment required to maintain literacy. As
an industry, with the special status of a not-for-profit
organization, education in the USA competes in the market for
its share, and for high returns. Endowments qualify many
universities as large businesses that are buffered from the
reality of economics.
With or without the aid of philanthropy, learning has to free
itself from its subordination to literacy and restrictive
literate structures, as it previously freed itself from its
subordination to the church, in whose bosom it was nurtured.
Obviously, if this new awareness manifests itself only in
mailing out videotapes instead of printed college catalogues,
then we may ask whether it is educators, or only marketers, who
understand the current dynamics. The same should be asked when
some professors put their courses on tape, in the belief that
canned knowledge is easier for the student to absorb. On-line
classes break with the mold, but they are not yet the answer, at
least as long as they do not belong to a broader vision
reflected in different priorities and appropriate content.
There is nothing intrinsically bad about involving media in
education, but the problem is not the medium for storage and
delivery. Media labs that are covered by dust because they
convey the same useless information as the classes they were
supposed to enhance only prove that a fundamental change is
necessary. Fundamental, for instance, is the skewed notion that
knowledge is transferred from professors-who know more-to
students-who know less. Actually, we face a reality never before
experienced: students know more than their teachers, in some
disciplines. In addition, knowledge still appropriate to a
subject a short time ago-call it history, politics, or
economics, and think about classes in Soviet and East European
studies- has been rendered useless. Physics, mathematics, and
chemistry underwent spectacular renewal. This created situations
in which what the textbooks taught was immediately contradicted
by reality.
Should education compete with the news media? Should it become an
Internet address for unlimited and unstructured browsing? Should
education give up any sense of foundation? Or should
universities periodically refresh their genetic make-up in order
to maintain contact with the most recent theories, the most
recent research techniques, the most recent discoveries? These
are more than enough questions for a pen still writing one word
at a time, or for a mouth answering questions as they pile up.
Without posing these questions-to which some answers will be
attempted at the conclusion of this book-no solution can be
expected. The willingness of educators and everyone affected by
education to formulate them, and many more, would bear witness to
a concern that cannot be addressed by some miraculous,
all-encompassing formula. The good news is that in many parts of
the world this is happening. Finally!