The conversation about the relationship between technology, culture, and education has been a good one. The idea have been interesting and well reasoned. In many cases, I think many of the comments have been spot on as far as they went, but as I thought about this myself this week, I came to a different conclusion.
Technology is a Cultural diagnostic and Education is the process by which societal norms are maintained within that culture. Restated: Culture is the sum of its Techology. Education maintains the rules.
We’ve been thinking locally when considering technology in a kind of parochial construct of “here and now,” I think. Even when taking a broader view, we tend to think of a seminal technology — Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age — but while these semantic hooks serve to provide a mental short cut, the reality is that the culture was defined by the sum of the technologies — a cultural gestalt that we have since identified for the purposes of classification and identification. Within every culture there are subcultures based on a variety of perspectives that are not limited to the haves-and-have-nots. We talk about the Digital Divide today but the Industrial Age was comprised of a similar spectrum of people who had access to the means of production and those who did not. I suspect it started in the Stone Age as tribes jealously guarded the secret locations of prime deposits of flint, chert, and obsidian.
Within that context then, it seems to me that the role of education has been to maintain the rules, norms, and mores from generation to generation. The process by which the young gain the knowledge required to take up their roles in the society. When technological change — and Cultural definition — was slow, the cultural purpose of Education was to preserve knowledge across the generations. As that rate of change became faster, the institution of Education became a kind of moderating influence, throttling the rate of change by insisting that maintenance of past cultural norms be maintained. On the downhill run to the future, Education has long been the handbrake that has prevented a culture from being over come. Changes in the culture leech slowly into the institutions of Education providing a kind of “knowledge lag” so that the rate of change might be moderated by keeping a mixture of old and new — a kind of carburetor of culture — striving for the proper mix of existing culture (air) and new (fuel).
The problem today is that, while the purpose of Education is the same, the rate of change in Technology and the subsequent redefinitions of Culture are coming too fast. The carburetor is flooded with the stream of innovation, and there is too little of the old left in that redefined culture to maintain the engine of Education as unassimilated changes are pouring in unmoderated.
As metaphor, it’s certainly strained, but as organizing theme, I think it has some support if we look back over the last 50 years. Transistor radios, then walkmans — cultural iconography at this point — and often confiscated in the classroom as a kind of distractive influence that was intolerable at the time. Flash forward to calculators and the cry to “first learn math before leaning on the crutch.” The parallels are inescapable, and the differences today are based in the speed with which technology is being adopted without the moderating influence of education, and that the very nature of that technology encourages — even requires — that the institutions be by-passed as being too slow, to cumbersome and with too much intertia to be relevant.
Technology remains, I think, the diagnostic of Culture. A Culture is defined by the sum of its technologies. Education, however, if it is to retain its function of maintaining the rules across generations, needs better ways of learning what the Cultural rules are — and better mechanisms for teaching the populace how to survive during rapid cultural change.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The rate of change for culture in regards to technology is in deed definitely moving at “ludicrous” speed and sometimes we can barely hang on to the railing. At times, education can hardly manage what is happening within the culture. From the time I was in school to the students of today it has struggled to keep up with the new definitions and the products of those definitions. The whole question of how do we teach to the 21st century student is just now being worked on, but eight years too late. Before you know it the students of the next decade starting in 2010s will be different than the students of this decade will most likely change and culture redefined again. It is at that point we’re back to holding on to the railing for dear life.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I agree the change is too fast, at times it is almost overwhelming the amount of change that is happening. I admit that even I get overwhelmed and frustrated at the speed technology changes. I feel that as a teacher, I must at the cutting edge of what is happening, how can my students learn if I don’t have a grasp of it myself? The questions now it, how do we overcome these obstacles? How do we maintain this pace?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 am
Technology certainly is changing cultures and I think that perhaps teachers could trust their students a little more to allow the students to show the teachers some tricks of the trade sometimes. I read earlier from Phaedrus about how technology is being utilized with cell phones, and while my new cell phone still awaits me to switch sim cards and dive into it, my daughter is punching away on her new BlackJack. I mean my 14 year old could teach me some stuff, if I would just ask, instead of my only comment to her about her phone regarding the bill. And as far as MySpace goes, I do think that it could be useful for educational purposes that does not just hold a central theme of socializing. I read once somewhere where a teacher suggested that the students set up a profile for George Washington as a history assignment. And Podcasts, I think, could be part of instruction for teachers. I think that the reservations to try some of these uses of technologies are because the teacher may not know how to do it, and if so, then let the teacher just ask one of the students…just to get the ball rolling. These are just my thoughts and I do realize that many schools will not encourage this type of instruction because they area too concerned with the educational rules. It will take someone to push for these types of technological based teaching strategies, if the school does not support it. I hope to walk into a classroom one day where all the kids have their headphones in and their cell phones out on their desk right next to their pencil and calculator.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Sorry for the late reply, but life gave me a small window and I am trying to take advantage…
The educational reigns seem only necessary to the point of what is considered necessary for their adult life. If we only expect adults to correspond in texting-shorthand, why bother teaching them proper grammar. With the advent of spell-check and grammar corrections, why bother with teaching spelling either. I have posed these questions to English teachers only to receive cutting glares or chastising. The same response will be received from me when one talks about using calculators to learn math. The question asked usually being, “Why force addition/subtraction/multiplication/division on students when calculators can do the work for them?” My response is similar to my lecture on the whiny student comment, “When are we ever going to use this math in ‘real’ life?” Math is not a series of processes, equations and memorization. It is a way of thinking. Each exercise is a physical exercise of the mind. It is a training in logic and mental flow. Math may be my love, but I understand the need for all content areas’ base knowledge and their progressions from novice to expert. Jumping to a topic in the ‘future’ of your post, Literacy has many faces and each content area should be defined by each generation as to what is expected of their students as they grow into adults. Mental acuity should lay at the forefront of every decision.