No one can declare better ways of teaching without considering
the real child. In a world of choice and free movement, children
are more likely to come from families that will consist of a
single parent. Many children will come from environments where
discrimination, poverty, prejudice, and violence have an
overpowering influence. Such an environment is significant for a
society dedicated to democratic ideals. We have to face the fact
that childrearing and education are being transferred from family
to institutions meant to produce the educated person. With the
best of motives, society has created factories for processing
children. These socio-educational entities are accepted quite
obligingly by the majority of the people freed from a
responsibility affecting their own lives. "Everything will be
fine, as long as the education of the new generation basically
repeats the education of the parents," sums up the expectations
regarding these institutions.
Although we know that, generally speaking, cycles (of production,
design, and evaluation) are getting shorter, we maintain
children in education well past the time they even fit in
classroom chairs. One needs to see those adults forced to be
students, full of energy, frustrated that their patience, not
their creative potential, is put to the test. Dropping out of
high school or college is not indicative of a student's
immaturity. Society's tendency to decide what is best for the
next generation has determined that only one type of education
will ensure productive adults. Society refuses to consider
humans in the variety of their potential. From the Projection of
Education Statistics to the Year 2006, we learn that the total
private and public elementary and secondary school enrollment in
the USA will increase from 49.8 million in 1994 to 54.6 million.
Of the 49.8 million in 1994, only 2.5 million graduated high
school, and by the year 2006 the number will not exceed 3
million. Students themselves seem to be more aware of the
excessively long cycle of education than do the experts who
define its methods, contents, and goals. This creates a basis
for conflict that no one should underestimate.
Growing up in an environment of change and challenge is probably
rewarding in the long run. But things are not very simple. The
pressure to perform, peer pressure, and one's youthful instincts
to explore and ascertain can transform a student's life in an
instant. The distance between paradise (support and choice
without worry) and hell (the specter of disease, addiction,
abandonment, disappointment, lack of direction) is also shorter
than prior generations experienced it. Hundreds of TV channels,
the Internet, thousands of music titles (on CD, video, and radio
stations), the lure of sports, drugs, sex, and the hundreds of
fashion labels-choosing can be overwhelming. Literacy used to
organize everything neatly. If you were in love, Romeo and Juliet
was proper reading material. If you wished to explore Greece,
you started with Homer's epics and worked your way up to the
most recent novel by a contemporary Greek writer.
The problem is that drugs, AIDS, millions of attractions, the
need to find one's way in a world less settled and less patient,
do not fit in the neat scheme of literacy. The language of
genetics and the language of personality constitution are better
articulated through means other than books. Heroes, teachers,
parents, priests, and activists are no longer icons, even if
they are portrayed to be better than they were in reality. Bart
Simpson, the underachiever, "mediocre and proud of it," is a
model for everyone who is told that what really counts is to
feel good, period.
Still, some young people go to school or college full of
enthusiasm, hoping to get an education that will guarantee
self-fulfillment. All that is studied, over a long period of
time and at great financial sacrifice, comes not even close to
what they will face. They might learn how to spell and how to
add. But they soon discover that in real life skills other than
spelling and arithmetic are expected. What bigger disappointment
is there than discovering that years of pursing a promise bring
no result? If, after all this, we still want both literacy and
competence for experiences which literacy does not support, and
often inhibits, we would have to invest beyond what society is
willing and able to spend. And even if society were to do so, as
it seems that it feels it must, the investment would be in
imposing useless skills and a primitive perspective on the new
generation, until the time comes when it can escape society's
pressure. Education in our day remains a compromise between the
interests of the institution of education (with tens of thousands
of teachers who would become unemployed) and a new pragmatic
framework that few in academia understand.
One of the elements of this equation is the practical need to
extend education to all, and if possible on a continuous basis.
But unless this education reflects the variety of literacies
that the pragmatic framework requires, admitting everyone to
everything results in the lowest general level of education. The
variety of practical experiences of self-constitution requires
that we find ways to coordinate access to education by properly
and responsibly identifying types of creativity, and investing
responsibility in their development. Continuous education needs
to be integrated in the work structure. It has to become part of
the reciprocal commitments through which the new pragmatic
framework is acknowledged.
To all those dedicated to the human aspects of politics,
business, law, and medicine, who deplore that the technicians of
policy-making can no longer find their way to our souls, all
this will sound terrifying. Nevertheless, as much as we would
like to be considered as individuals, each with our own
dignity, personality, opinions, emotions, and pains, we
ourselves undermine our expectations in our striving for more
and more, at a price lower than what it costs society to
distinguish us. Scale dictates anonymity, and probably
mediocrity. Ignorance of literacy's role in centuries of
productive human life dictates that it is time to unload the
literacy-reflected experiences for which there is no reference
in the new pragmatic context.
Who are we kidding?
Scared that in giving up literacy training we commit treason to
our own condition, we maintain literacy and try to adapt it to
new circumstances of working, thinking, feeling, and exploring.
In view of the inefficiency built into our system of education,
we try to compromise by adding the dimension characteristic of
the current status of human experience of multiple partial
literacies. The result is the transformation of education into a
packaging industry of human beings: you choose the line along
which you want to be processed; we make sure that you get the
literacy alibi, and that we train you to be able to cope with
so-called entry-level jobs. Obviously, this evolves in a more
subtle way. The kind of college or university one attends, or
the tuition one pays, determines the amount of subtlety.
Students accept the function of education insofar as it mediates
between their goals and the rather scary reality of the
marketplace. This mediation differs according to the level of
education, and is influenced by political and social decision
making.
As an industry for processing the new generation, education acts
according to parameters resulting from its opportunistic search
for a place between academia and reality. Education acknowledges
the narrow domains of expertise which labor division brought
about, and reproduces the structure of current human experience
in its own structure. Through vast financial support, from
states, private sources, and tradition- based organizations,
education is artificially removed from the reality of expected
efficiency. It is rarely a universe of commitments. Accordingly,
the gap between the literate language of the university and the
languages of current human practice widens. The tenure system
only adds another structural burden. When the highest goal of a
professor is to be freed of teaching, something is awfully wrong
with our legitimate decision to guarantee educators the freedom
necessary for exercising their profession.
Behind the testing model that drives much of current education is
the expectation of effective ranking of students. This model
takes a literate approach insofar as it establishes a dichotomy
(aptitude vs. achievement) that makes students react to
questions, but does not really engage them or encourage creative
contributions. The result is illustrative of the relation
between what we do and how we evaluate what we do. An
expectation was set, and the process of education was skewed to
generate good test results. This effectively eliminates teaching
and learning for the sake of a subject. Students are afraid they
will not measure up and demand to be taught by the book.
Teachers who know better than the book are intimidated, by
students and administration, from trying better approaches. Good
students are frustrated in their attempts to define their own
passion and to pursue it to their definition of success.
Entrepreneurs at the age of 14, they do not need the feedback of
stupid tests, carried out more for the sake of bureaucracy than
for their well-being. Standardized tests dominated by
multiple-choice answers facilitate low cost evaluations, but also
affect patterns of teaching and learning. Exactly what the new
pragmatics embodies-the ability to adapt and to be proactive-is
counteracted through the experience of testing, and the teaching
geared to multiple-choice instruments.
The uncoupling of education from the experiential frame of the
human being is reflected in education's language and
organization, and in the limiting assumptions about its function
and methods. Education has become a self-serving organization
with a bureaucratic "network of directives," as Winograd and
Flores call them, and motivational elements not very different
from the state, the military, and the legal system. Like the
organizations mentioned, it also develops networks of interaction
with sources of funding and sources of power, some driven by the
same self-preserving energies as education itself. Instead of
reflecting shorter cycles of activity in its own structure, it
tends to maintain control over the destiny of students for longer
periods of time. Even in fields of early acknowledged
creativity-e.g., computer programming, networking, genetics, and
nanotechnology-education continues to apply a policy that takes
away the edge of youth, inventiveness, and risk.
The lowest quality of education is at the undergraduate level in
universities, where either graduate assistants or even machines
substitute for professors too busy funding their research, or
actually no longer attuned to teaching. This situation exists
exactly because we are not yet able to develop strategies of
education adapted to new circumstances of human work and to the
efficiency requirements which we ourselves made necessary. The
"network of recurrent conversations," to use Winograd's
terminology again, or the "language game" that Wittgenstein
attributed to each profession, hides behind the front of
literacy and thus burdens education. Once accreditation
introduces the language game of politics, education distances
itself even more from its fundamental mission. Accreditation
agencies translate concerns about the quality of education into
requirements, such as the evaluation of colleges and
universities based on scores on exit tests taken by students.
These are supposed to reflect academic achievement. In other
cases, such scores are used for assessing financial support. The
paradox is that what negatively affects the quality of education
becomes the measure of reward. Test results are often used in
politicians' arguments about improved education, as well as a
marketing tool. In fact, to prepare students for performance
makes performance a goal in itself. Thus it should come as no
surprise that the most popular book on college campuses-today's
education factories-is a guide to cheating.
Many times comparisons are made between students in the USA and
in Japan or in Western European countries. In many ways these
comparisons are against the pervasive dynamics of integration
that we experience. Still, there are things to consider-for
instance, that Japanese students spend almost the same amount of
time watching TV as American students do, and that they are not
involved in household tasks. Noticeable differences are in
reading. The Japanese spend double the number of hours that
American students do in reading. Japanese students spend more
time on schoolwork (the same 2-to-1 ratio), but much less on
entertainment. Should Japan be considered a model? If we see
that Japanese students rank among the best in science subjects,
the answer seems to be positive. But if we project the same
against the entire development of students, their exceptional
creative achievements, the answer becomes a little more guarded.
With all its limitations, the USA is still more attuned to
pragmatic requirements. This is probably due more to the
country's inherent dynamics than to its educational
institutions. Largely unregulated, capable of adaptive moves,
subject to innovation, the USA is potentially a better network
for educational possibilities.
What caused the criticism in these pages of evaluation is the
indecisiveness that the USA shows-the program for school reform
for the year 2000 is an example of this attitude-and the
difficulty it has in realizing the price of the compromise it
keeps supporting. Once Japanese businesses started buying
American campuses, the price of the compromise became clear.
Universities in the USA were saved from bankruptcy. Japanese
schools, whose structured programs and lack of understanding of
the new pragmatics made for headlines, were able to evade their
own rigid system of education, reputed for being late in
acknowledging the dynamics of change. Abruptly, the
Americanization of world education-study driven by
multiple-choice tests with a dualistic structure-was
short-changed by a Japanization movement. But in the closer
look suggested above, it is evident that the Japanese are
extricating themselves from drastic literacy requirements that
end up hampering necessary accommodations in the traditional
Japanese system of values. Although caution is called for,
especially in approaching a subject foreign to our direct
experience and understanding, the trend expressed is telling in
its many consequences.
What about alternatives?
A legitimate question to be expected from any sensible reader
refers to alternatives. Let us first notice that, due to the new
pragmatic framework, we are more and more in the situation to
disseminate every and any type of information to any imaginable
destination. The interconnectivity of business and of markets
creates the global economy. In contrast, our school and college
systems, as separate from real life, and conceived physically
outside our universe of existence, are probably as anachronistic
as the castles and palaces we associate with the power and
function of nobility; or as anachronistic as the high stacks of
steel mills we associate with industry, and the cities we
associate with social life. Some alumni might be nostalgic for
the Gothic structures of their university days. The physical
reference to a time "when education meant something" is clear-as
is the memory of the campus, yet another good reason to look at
the homecoming party in anticipation of the football game, or in
celebration of a good time (win or lose).
To make explicit the shift from a symbolism of education,
coordinated with the function of intellectual accomplishment, to
a stage when debunking this symbolism, still alive in and
outside Ivy League universities, is an urgent political and
practical goal is only the beginning. There is no justification
for maintaining outmoded structures and attitudes, and investing
in walls and campuses and feudal university domains. As one of
the successful entrepreneurs of this time put it, "anything that
has to do with brick and mortar and its DISPLAY is-to use some
poetic license-dead." The focus has to be on the dynamics of
individual self-constitution, and on the pragmatic horizons of
everyone's future.
Fixing and maintaining schools in the USA, as well as in almost
any country in the world, would cost more than building them
from scratch. The advantage of giving up structures
inappropriate to the new requirements of education is that,
finally, at least we would create environments for interaction,
taking full advantage of the progress made in technologies of
communication and interactive learning. There is no need to
idealize the Internet and the World Wide Web at their current
stage. But if the future will continue to be defined more by
commerce expectations than by educational needs, no one should
be surprised that their educational potential will come to
fruition late.
Humans do not develop at the same pace, and in the same
direction. Each of us is so different that the main function of
education should be not to minimize differences through literacy
and literacy-based strategies that support a false sense of
democracy, but to identify and maximize differences. This will
provide the foundation for an education that allows each student
to develop according to possibilities evinced through the
relations, language-based or not, that people enter into. The
content of education, understood as process, should be the
experience, and the associated means of creating and
understanding it. Instead of a dominant language, with built-in
experiences more and more alien to the vast majority of
students, the ability to cope with many sign systems, with many
languages, to articulate them, adapt them to the circumstance,
and share them as much as the circumstance requires, should
become the goal. Some would counter, "This was attempted with
courses labeled modern math and resulted in no one's
understanding it, or even simple math." There is some truth in
this. The mathematically gifted had no problem in learning the
new math. Students who were under the influence of literate
reasoning had problems. What we need to do is to keep the mind
open, allow for as much accumulation as necessary, and for
discarding, if new experiences demand an open mind and freedom
from previous assumptions. Some students will settle (in math or
in other subjects) for predominantly visual signs, others for
sounds, some for words, for rhythm, for any of the forms through
which human intelligence comes to expression. Interactive
multimedia are only some of the many media available. Other
possibilities are yet to emerge. The Internet is in the same
situation. A framework for individual selection, for tapping into
learning resources and using them to the degree desired and
acknowledged as necessary by praxis, would be the way to go. Not
only literacy, in the accepted sense, but mathematical literacy,
biological, chemical, or engineering literacy, and visual
thinking and expression should be given equal consideration.
Cross-pollination among disciplines traditionally kept in
isolation will definitely enhance creativity by doing away with
the obsessive channeling practiced nowadays.
Education needs to shift from the atomistic view that isolates
subjects from the whole of reality to a holistic perspective.
This will acknowledge types of mediation as effective means of
increasing the efficiency of work, the requirements of
integration, and the distributed nature of practical experiences
in the world today. Collaborative effort needs to be brought to
the forefront of the educational experience. We can define
communities of interest, focused on some body of experience
(which can be incorporated in an artifact, a book, a work of
art, or someone's expertise). Education should provide means for
sharing experiences. A variety of different interests can be
brought into focus through sharing and collaborative learning.
There are many dimensions to such an approach: the knowledge
sought, the experience of the variety of perspectives and uses,
the awareness of interaction, the skills for intercommunication,
and more. Implicit is the high expectation of sharing, while at
the same time maintaining motivations for individual achievement
and individual reward. This becomes critical at a time when it
becomes more and more evident that resources are finite, while
expectations still grow exponentially. The change from a
standardized model, focused on the quick fix that leads to
results (no matter how high a cost), to the collaborative model
of individuality and distinction re-establishes an ethical
framework, which is urgently needed. Competition is not
excluded, but instead of conflict-which in the given system
results in students who cut pages from books so that their
colleagues will fail-we ought to create an environment of
reciprocally advantageous cooperation. How far are we from such
an objective?
In the words of Jacques Barzun, a devoted educator committed to
literacy, education failed to "develop native intelligence." In
an interesting negative of what people think education
accomplishes, he points to the appearance of success: "We
professed to make ideal citizens, super-tolerant neighbors,
agents of world peace, and happy family folk, at once sexually
adept and flawless drivers of cars." All this is nothing to be
ashamed of, but as educational goals, they are quite off the
target. Citizenship in the society of the new pragmatic context
is different from citizenship in previous societies. Tolerance
requires a new way to manifest it, such as the integration of
what is different and complementary. Peace, yes, even peace,
means a different state of affairs at a time when many local
conflicts affect the world. As far as family, sex, and the
culture of the car are concerned, nothing can point more to the
failure of education. Indeed, education failed to understand
all the factors involved in contemporary family life. It failed
to understand sexual relations. Faced with the painful reality of
the degradation of sexual relations, education resorted to the
desperate measure of dispensing condoms, an extension of what
was gloriously celebrated as sex education. The flawless drivers
never heard the criticism voiced by citizens concerned with
energy waste. We made students rely on cheap gasoline and
affordable cars to bring them to school and college, instead of
understanding that education needs to be decentralized,
distributed, and-why not-adapted to the communication and
interaction possibilities of our times. The Green Teens who are
active against energy waste might be well ahead of their
educational system, but still forced to go through it. Moreover,
education should be seen in the broader context of the other
changes coming with the end of the civilization of literacy: the
status of family, religion, law, and government.
While education is related to the civic status of the individual,
the new conditions for the activity of our minds are also very
important. Ideally, education addresses all the facets of the
human being. New conditions of generalized interconnection almost
turn the paradigm of continuing education into continuous
education that corresponds to changes in human experience
unfolding under even more complex circumstances. It might well
happen that for some experiences, we shall have to recuperate
values characteristic of literacy. But better to rediscover them
than to maintain literacy as an ideal when the perspectives for
new forms of ascertaining ourselves as human beings require
more, much more, than literacy.