Still Dewy After All These Years; Experience and Education

I have not known any scholar for whom the reading of Dewey is an easy undertaking. I am no exception yet, I am always compelled to analyze and discuss his work because as an educational theorist, his work continues to be prescient and pivotal to the American educational system, as it currently exists. As difficult as it is to analyze Dewey, I will try to distill him into a few concrete points.

Dewey’s theories are formed in the nexus of the ending of industrialism. He comes of age at the start of the progressive era where new ideas about society, work and citizenship. Everything about America was changing at this time of societal expansion and it all filtered into our education system. John Dewey was one of the most major contributors to our changing educational system.

In the essay Experience and Education, Dewey discussed the inherent tension of creating and managing systems on a macro level and showed us that education sits as squarely within that tension as any other system. Dewey illustrated the divide that existed and still exists between theory and practice as well as the need to dispense with the “isms” that create a bifurcated view of education.

Dewey pointed to the issues surrounding the practice of traditional education as stagnation and looking backward towards already constructed knowledge. Such teaching pre-supposes the teacher as the sole power in a classroom, and puts forth curriculum that can be uncreative, disconnected from the youth and devoid of real world application. According to Dewey “Teachers are the agents through which knowledge and skills are communicated and rules of conduct are enforced.”(p5) It is in this way, that teachers become transmitters of culture but also keepers of the status quo for both good and ill.

Conversely, progressive education presents its own problems in form, function and organization as well as the locus of authority and control. Dewey posed the question of whether when external authority is rejected whether “it does not follow that all authority should be rejected, but rather that there is need to search for a more effective source of authority.” (7) Dewey also discussed the “inchoate” nature of curriculum that is driven by amorphous ideas which in modern times continues to be an issue for progressive constructivist educators. Ultimately he points to the tendency for both sides to drown in dogma, rendering both sides as ineffective and lobbies for a more integrative approach to teaching and learning.

Gert Biesta in his book The Beautiful Risk of Education (2013), Biesta continues Dewey’s discussion. Feeling still the need to challenge the schisms of traditional VS. progressive theories of education, as well as the ill informed division of theory from practice. As a former classroom teacher and currently as a professor in teacher education programs it is interesting to note that the conversation hasn’t changed that much. My hope is that that tension that Dewey discussed will continue to keep us moving forward and looking at what works. Showing us that there is little benefit from being dichotomous.

My provocations:

  • How can we move forward from the current dichotomy of theories about education into a more integrative model.
  • What is the implication for teacher education programs in a time where curriculum is bought and sold, often with little input from the teachers who will use it.
  • Dewey is often misquoted or understood in very segmented ways. How can we as educators get a greater understanding of his theories as practice in modern times?
  • Can the cyclical discussion of traditional VS progressive education be solved, and is it beneficial to the field of education that it is not?

 

Response to Pedagogy

While removing the work of Paulo Friere from a cultural and historical context is an oversight that the author himself would likely condemn, I think many of the ideas expressed in the first two chapters of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” still resonant within the current setting, and so will not attempt to venture into the historical significance of his work. Friere (1970) writes describing the concept of co-intentional education “Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge.” This method of education stands in contrast with the more transmission or “banking” model of education, where the student is treated as an empty receptacle where information is transmitted directly to the student who passively receives it. In such a model, emphasis rests on the recitation of learned facts rather than the personal development of individual thought structures to support a more meaningful process of learning.

Given that the title of these certificate courses includes the word “interactive,” it likely represents some central aspect of an ideology of pedagogy in which we have vested some interest. What is the significance of interactivity in teaching and learning? What elements of education can either hinder or facilitate such interaction and the co-construction of knowledge between “student” and “teacher”?

While the namesake may not be translated into a concise English equivalent, how would you attempt to define to concept of conscientização?

How can technology be used to resolve the “teacher student contradiction (Friere, p. 72-73)? Consider the ten attitudes and practices that are provided as examples.

Borrowing from the tradition of de Beauvoir, Friere advocates for changing the situations of those who are oppressed rather than the consciousness of that which oppresses them. Do you agree that this is an admirable goal? Why or why not? If we change the nature of a social consciousness, by equivocating the teacher and the student, is it possible that we have changed nature of knowledge acquisition itself?

 

Reference

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Rev. ed.). New York: Continuum,1970.

Materials from OER workshop + Event on social justice & scholarship

Two docs I’d like to share:

Both incorporate a lot of material I’ve put together specifically for faculty at City Tech, but the contents have wide application for anyone interested in integrating free/open course content into their curriculum.

Also, a plug for “Scholarship Matters,” a talk on social justice and open scholarship with speakers, Jessie Daniels, and Megan Wacha.

Location: City Tech, Atrium 632 (Faculty Lounge) – amazing train access: 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, R, F

Date/time: Tuesday, October 20 from 4 – 6 p.m.

FREE WINE and CHEESE!!!

Forum? Blog? Censorship conference

Hey ITP!

I wanted to link everyone to the censorship conference happening at Princeton today. I just listened to the Information Technologies panel and a lot of the questions about censorship and about technologists working with policy makers in a human way felt very DH.

Here is the blurb from the Air-L internet researchers listserv:

“Today, Friday October 9 2015 the Princeton Center for
Information Technology Policy aka CITP will present a Conference on
Internet Censorship, Interference, and Control which will examine questions
like: What is the current state of internet accessibility”

<https://citp.princeton.edu/event/conference-on-internet-censorship-interference-and-control/>Today,
*Friday October 9 2015* the *Princeton Center for Information Technology
Policy <https://citp.princeton.edu/> *aka CITP will present a *Conference
on Internet Censorship, Interference, and Control
<https://citp.princeton.edu/event/conference-on-internet-censorship-interference-and-control/>
*which will examine questions like: What is the current state of internet
accessibility, and what technologies and policies can help protect
international security and human rights in this area? This conference will
explore research by both computer scientists and political scientists into
internet censorship, interference, and control. We will consider
interdisciplinary perspectives on relevant contemporary questions: What is
the state of the art in network measurement, and how can information about
social and political conditions better inform future measurements? How
should computer scientists measure and study offensive technologies, such
as China’s denial of service attacks on Github, and what role should policy
play in responding to these security threats? How extensive are national
firewalls, internet surveillance, and filter bubbles, and how should
citizens and governments respond? Speakers include *Wendy Seltzer* and *Roger
Dingledine*. The conference will be streamed live via *Princeton Media
Central <http://mediacentrallive.princeton.edu/>*

Midterm Paper Topics

Assignment
Write a five to ten page paper on ONE of the topics listed below.

1. We began this semester by reading Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and watching Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Write a critical comparison of the book and the film, making certain to incorporate insights and analysis about notions of cyborgs, embodiment, and technological change from Haraway, Hayles, and Nakamura and/or Thompson and Schivelbusch in your analysis.

2. Trace one keyword, such as “cyborg,” “body,” “network,” “tool,” “machine” or “technology” across three or more of the readings we have completed so far this semester. How does each author you have chosen to analyze treat that concept? What concerns seem shared? Which author’s version of the keyword do you find most useful and/or provocative? Why?

3. Reflecting on historical perspectives of technological change, consider Marx’s, Thompson’s, Schivelbusch’s, and Rosenzweig’s analyses of particular events in the history of technology.  Discuss the theories and conclusions of these writers, paying particular attention to the ways each depicts people’s actions and responses to technologies in the past and, with the notion of human agency in mind, how their perspectives might inform our responses to new and future technologies.

4. Write a bibliographic review essay that sketches out a critical dialogue about one of the key texts we have read this semester. You might, for instance, examine the critical reaction to Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” OR research the influence that a figure like Marx has had on subsequent theorists of technological change (such as Thompson, Schivelbusch or Rosenzweig), OR consider the ways neuroscience and/or gaming have helped reshape approaches to pedagogy.  Your essay should work towards a synthesis of the critical discourse, making clear what kinds of debates, concepts, and terms delimit and define that discourse.

5. Write an essay comparing the histories of technological development (as outlined by Rosenzweig and Bush) and the American university system (as outlined by Brier, Kerr, Christensen, and Bousquet) since 1945. What are the forces that shape change in these fields? How are they alike or dissimilar? What do these histories portend for the present and the future? What do they mean for your own work, which necessarily must engage both trajectories?

6. Write a manifesto in which you argue for a more sophisticated relationship with technology than a technophilic/technophobic binary.

7. Design your own topic. You will need to have the topic approved by Lisa and Michael before you begin work.

Rationale and Guidelines
There are four main reasons why scholars write papers: 1) to develop and improve their thinking on a subject; 2) to contribute to their fields; 3) to earn all the benefits that come from publication (mercenary, but true); 4) any combination of the aforementioned. As a scholar, it is perfectly legitimate for you to write this first paper simply with the goal of improving your thinking about interactive technology and pedagogy, but we strongly recommend that you consider this an opportunity to contribute to your field and to enjoy the benefits that accompany publication.

We therefore ask you to consider exploring several journals in your field. Look at their publication guidelines and any current calls for articles they have, and look at our prompts in relation to them. If none of our prompts coincide with your interests and/or their calls, construct your own topic that does. Write with an eye toward submitting the paper to one or more of these journals. Save yourself some time now and format your papers according to their guidelines (e.g. if they want APA style, use APA style now). Consult with us for suggestions about where you might submit your work.

Unless you are submitting to a journal with different citation/formatting requirements, please default to the following formatting guidelines: double-spaced, 1″ (2.5cm) margins on all sides, 12-point Times New Roman font, and appropriate citations using MLA or Chicago 16 style (the guide to which you can find on the Mina Rees Library website). Please submit your paper as a Word document to BOTH [email protected] and [email protected] and upload it (if you want your fellow students to read it) to the course Group site under “Files.”

Kerr needed a rap session with Freire

First, I’ll start with a very terse critique of Kerr’s The Uses of the University turned “multiversity.” I give anyone, including Kerr, credit for engaging in any reasonably thoughtful discussion of the university because higher education discourse often inspires a deer in headlights level of frustration (I would say he pushes, at the very least, to the brink of paralysis).

I felt a palpable sense of angst throughout this reading, despite agreeing with a number of points throughout Kerr’s account. I couldn’t shake a constant sense of distrust towards an individual at the pinnacle of privilege, speaking so clinically, and dispassionately about his own subject – ironic considering his biography. Kerr took the structuralist portrayal of the university slightly too far for me, but considering his time, and position (I am calling the kettle so black right now…) it would seem pretty difficult to avoid. This is not to say that there isn’t tremendous value in revealing the skeleton and arteries of large institutional organisms. I think in part, his methods are an overture to what I believe is a core purpose of the university (see 4th paragraph). But since we live in America, and it’s election season, the myriad problems of bureaucratic systems with gargantuan societal mandates are all too familiar to us. And in national politics as in the university, binarism rises to the top of the discourse most of the time.

My fatigue with partisan, radical discourse in mainstream politics today makes me loathe to broach the “university” and “multiversity” nomenclature. I also didn’t find it particularly riveting. Instead, I want to talk about what I think Kerr’s discussion missed. His account of the two great university traditions, the British undergraduate system, and the German graduate system, is the most he speaks on the role of teaching and learning in the university, besides a brief aside about technology’s potential to supplant instruction, and free up research time. This is a true blunder. If the academy were to put the same level of value on teaching as on scholarship, (and perhaps unsilo the two) I think it would help clear up a lot of discord about the “university,” inside and out.

How to improve teaching and learning? Hire scholars who are good teachers. They exist, and the two practices don’t need to be mutually exclusive. I’m talking about people who care deeply about critical pedagogy. I think critiques on the merit of liberal arts colleges versus community and technical colleges matter a little less when students are equally given the space to develop critical literacies and are empowered to become scholars in their own right, no matter their discipline of interest or level of advancement. Unfortunately, the current system of faculty tenure and promotion fails to make room for teaching, let alone incentivize it. The contingent faculty labor band aid damages the situation more. Yet despite this, many faculty still find opportunities to drive critical pedagogy into their curricula. They’re doing this without fanfare or additional remuneration? There must be something to this teaching thing.

Provocations:

Relate any number of topics to the text: the university’s role in perpetuating the class system, fueling neoliberalism, the corporatization of the university, college as commodity

What can critical pedagogy fix? What can’t it?

Respond to this quote:

“This creates new roles for education; but it is also part of the process of freezing the structure of the occupational pyramid and assuring that the well-behaved do advance, even if the geniuses do not. The university is used as an egg-candling device; and it is, perhaps, a better one than any other that can be devised, but the process takes some of the adventure out of occupational survival, and does for some professions what the closed shop has done for some unions.” p. 83-84 of The Uses of the University by Clark Kerr.

Lepore and Bosquet

Of course when I responded to Robert last night and mentioned how there weren’t any other posts up, I didn’t realize that I was responsible for provoking this week! So sorry for the delay.

I already summed up some of my thinking about the Bosquet and Lepore readings on Robert’s thread, so rather than repeat myself, I thought I’d cut right to the chase with some questions.

Lepore:

  • Lepore traces the history of theories of change, from divine providence to historicism, progress, evolution, growth, innovation, and now disruption — “a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation, and shaky evidence.” One historical theory of change that Lepore leaves out is Marx’s, which in some ways borrowed from Darwin’s evolution, but as we know from our reading and David Harvey’s lectures, relied on a dialectic of many other components. How might we use Marx’s ideas about how societies change to help us understand disruption’s popularity, or to help Lepore debunk it?

Bosquet:

I’m making lots of Marx connections today. Bosquet focuses on changing labor relations in the academy, writing: “Late capitalism doesn’t just happen to the university, the university makes late capitalism happen. The flexible faculty are just one dimension of an informationalized higher ed — the transformation of the university into an efficient and thoroughly accountable environment through which streaming education can be made available in the way that information is delivered: just in time, on demand, in spasms synchronized to the work rhythm of student labor on the shop floor” (44). 

  • Bosquet’s notion of disruption is far different then Christensen’s — he’s writing about grassroots actions that adjuncts and graduate students might take to raise consciousness about and organize for better working conditions, higher salaries, and tenure. What role might stronger unions and this form of disruption play as universities seek to address “the crisis of higher ed” through tech innovations, as described in the other readings?
  • We extended Marx’ analogies about the machine, the tool, and the power source to computers a few weeks ago in class. How might Marxist ideas about the role of the machine and technology come in to play in thinking about the mechanization of university teaching and learning? To what extent does the analogy hold? Where might it break down?

The Historical Expansion of Higher Education

In Chapter 2 of Dr. Steve Brier’s text, we see the extensive history of public education in California and New York as a result of the Zook Commission of the 1940’s. Driven, like many institutions, by the economic shifts (positive and negative) of a post-war state, both states institute a tri-part system of higher education. As a native Californian, I was impressed by Brier’s clear discussion of the hierarchical structure in California, a structure that he admits still maintains its hold today. While a handful of California State Universities grant doctoral degrees, the exclusivity of this terminal degree is still largely reserved for University of California students. The prestige of these universities is akin to that of exclusive private universities. As a result, community colleges and CSUs educate the vast majority of practitioners and professionals at a variety of levels.

The “success” of the tri-part structure was not as strong in New York, but the tensions between the private elite schools and the growing public institutions were much like the UC-CSU wars on the west. The fight for access to education for all students was clear on both coasts, but New York actually maintained this commitment for a lengthier period of time than its western counterpart. What we notice is this need for public education but a state government refusal to provide necessary funding.

As the student population grew and the number of institutions followed suit, the hierarchal tension trickled down to student populations and manifested itself in student resistance (50-58). Ironically, the UC Chancellor’s attempt to maintain a bureaucratic structure bent on UC elitism did not account for the student-led Free Speech Movement’s mission to undermine such systems. Sadly, while these movements led to the revitalization of the social sciences and an expansion of community colleges (along with an increase in consciousness raising among the masses) on both coasts and in-between, they eventually adversely affected the blurring of the stratification of these growing public institutions. Consequently, remediation was essentially removed from the CUNY senior colleges, and student tuition was integrated at the junior, senior, and graduate levels on both coasts.

Dr. Brier’s work elucidates the contradictions of equitable access to education and the maintenance of systems of economic power. It speaks to this nation’s simultaneous attempt to meet the needs of marginalized populations as it adheres to business management models. At the risk of sounding like Marx (and a number of radicals), I read this work as an explanation of the inevitable tensions that arise from an educational system that is born out of an industrial capitalistic (and sexist and racist) economic structure and political structure. While the aims of the Zook report carry significant merit, the deeply flawed economic and governmental structures of the nation ensured limits. And the current neoliberal movements have spurred a new wave of defunding of higher education (65-66) that could very well mean a retrogression.

Upon reading this text, I could not help but think of my longstanding love-hate relationship with UC schools (not meant to incite convo). Outside of that, I was riveted by the live broadcasts of over-enrolled undergrad courses, the connections to Little Brother, the rich historical accounts, and the mention of the mechanization of education. A number of questions came to mind:
*What do I do with this new information?
*Is there an underlying conversation of “quality” across these higher ed systems?
*What does this history reveal about power? Did the students REALLY win?
*What do we make of education now? How close/far are we to/from the Zook vision and how do we gauge that?
*How do we explore curriculum & pedagogy at these three levels of education?
*What does this narrative of education funding politics say about our history and future in higher ed?

Please don’t answer all my questions–just thinking aloud…

The Eversion and the Emergence of the Digital Humanities

I don’t mean to give Steve Jones short shrift — across the board, I am a huge fan of his careful scholarship which compellingly combines media archaeology, literary study, history, and theory. Forgive this brief and belated response to his Introduction.

Using metaphors from preeminent science fiction author William Gibson, Steven Jones aligns a transition from the cyberspace conception of the internet popularized in Gibson’s 1984 Neuromancer to Gibson’s new conception, eversion, with the shift from isolated computing to social networking. He also describes the disciplinary shifts within and from humanities computing and within the new movements of “the digital humanities.” Jones locates the primary transition in the years 2004-2008, when platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the rise of GPS and GIS, made the internet more social and more mobile.

I guess my provocations for the class are of disciplinarity and materiality.

  1. How do those in the social sciences respond to Jones’s literary version of DH? Does the impact of the metaphor shift pertain to questions outside of cultural imagination and in scientific inquiry?
  2. What is your mixed reality? Where do you personally find the materiality of the internet most palpable (in stashes of leftover cables from bygone electronics? in the feel of your phone? in the visible branding of restaurants or local businesses with facebook “like”s? in the new object sensitive scanners that don’t break bindings as they digitize?)j
  3. Are you convinced that the digital humanities is the humanities everted (turned inside out)?