Education has to become a living process. It should involve
access to all kinds of information sources, not only to those
stored in literate formats. These resources have their specific
epistemological condition-a printed encyclopedia is different
from a database. To access a book is different from accessing a
multimedia knowledge platform. Retrieval is part of the practice
of knowledge and defines a horizon for human interaction. All
these differences will become clear through use, not through mere
assertion or imitation. The goal of education cannot be the
dissemination of imitative behavior, but of procedures. In this
model of education, classes are groups of people pursuing
connected goals, not compartments based on age or subject, even
less bureaucratic units. A class is an expression of interest,
not the product of statistical distribution based on birth and
zoning. The physical environment of the class is the world, and
not the brick and mortar confined room of stereotyped roles and
interactions. This might sound hollow, or too grandiose, but the
means to make this happen are progressively becoming available.
Here is one possible scenario: Students approach centers of
interactive education after the initial phase of acculturation.
Perhaps the word center recalls one of the characteristics of
the civilization of illiteracy. By their own nature, though,
these centers are distributed repositories of knowledge stored
in a variety of forms- databases, programs pertinent to various
human practical experiences, examples, and evaluation
procedures. With such a condition, such centers lend themselves
to making refreshable knowledge available in all imaginable
formats. On request, its own programs (known as intelligent
agents) search for appropriate sources through the guidance of
those in need, independent of them, or parallel to them. Requests
are articulated in voice command: "I would like to know ...." Or
the requests can be handwritten, typed, or diagrammed. Such
interactive education centers are simultaneously libraries of
knowledge, heuristic environments, laboratories, testing
grounds, and research media. The hybrid human-machine machine
that constitutes their nucleus alters as the individual involved
in the interaction changes.
As we all know, the best way to learn is to teach. Students
should be able to teach their neural network partners subjects
of interest to their own practical experiences. In many cases,
the neural networks, themselves networked with others, will
become partners in pursuing practical goals of higher and higher
complexity. The fact that students interact not based on their
address and school district, not based on homogeneity criteria
of age or cultural background, but on shared interests and
different perspectives gives this type of education a broader
social significance: There is nothing we do that does not affect
the world in its entirety. Repeating these words ad nauseam will
not affect the understanding of what this means, as one practical
endeavor of global consequential nature can.
In the model suggested, interests are identified and pursued, and
results are compared. Questions are widely circulated. What
students appropriate in the process are ways of thinking,
procedures for testing hypotheses, and means and methods for
ascertaining progress in the process. Professional educators,
aware of cognitive processes and freed from the burden of
administrative work, no longer rehash the past but design
interactive environments for students to learn in. Teachers
involve themselves in this interaction, and continue to evolve
as knowledge itself evolves. Instead of inculcating the
discipline of one dominant language, they leave open choices
for short and long-term commitments, their own included.
Not having to force themselves to think in an imposed language,
students are freed from the constraints of assigned tasks. They
are challenged by the responsibility to make their own choices
and carry them through. In the process, differences among
students will become apparent, but so will the ability to
understand how being different, in a context of cooperative
interactions, is an asset and not a liability. Motivation is
seeded in the satisfaction of discovery and the ability to easily
integrate in a framework of practical experiences that are no
longer mimicked in education, but practiced in discovery.