Part 17 (2/2)

Students know from their own experience that there is no intrinsic detere-and this is probably the first shock one faces when noticing how large illiterate populations function and prosper in modern society The economy absorbed the majority of the dropout population The almost 50 of the American population considered functionally illiterate partakes, in itsof the country In other countries, while the nueneral tenor is the same Well versed in the literacy of consumption, these people perforine turning

Plenty of questions

Industrial society, as a precursor to our praget 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 business of industrial society One needed to kno 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 sarandson And what could not be disseh the apprenticeshi+p syste 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 er the tiher the qualifications required fro as educators

Education ensured the trans empty containers sent by parents, froes Industrial society sienerated the products and the increased need for theue 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 woious hu children out of the factories Children were taught to read in order to uplift their souls (as the claim went) Finally, laere enacted that forbade child labor As this happened, industry got what it needed: a relatively educated class of workers and higher levels of productivity froht pragood investment

Alan Bloom detailed many of theeducation I beg to differ and return to the argument that industrial society, in order to use the potential of enerate the need for what it produced Indeed, the first products are the workers the 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?

Hoould an illiterate interact with theet 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 invest of a society whose scale necessitated levels high enough for efficient work Education was connected to philanthropy, and it still is, as a forhbor that makes philanthropists' support of education necessary, rather the sheer advantage resulting froiven, estate or machines donated, chairs endowed Cynical or not, this view results froenerosity, well supported by public esture: donations that resulted in buildings, scholarshi+ps, endowifts named after the benefactor

The obsession with permanence-some live it as an obsession with eternity, others as a therapeutic ego e-is but one of the overhead costs associated with literacy

Lines froue to the Canterbury Tales corace/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 proble that literacy corresponds to a develope 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 coh returns Endowe businesses that are buffered from the reality of econo 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 nearenessout 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 theas 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 problee 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 fundae is necessary Fundae 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 soe still appropriate to a subject a short tio-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 beco? 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 h questions for a pen still writing one word at a ti questions as they pile up

Without posing these questions-to which some ansill 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 soood news is that inFinally!

The equation of a coed, and the efficiency of hu to the scale ascertained itself as the new rationality, the practical experience of self-constitution had to adjust to new circuic borderline But there is a definite discontinuity bethat constituted the relatively stable underlying structure of literacy and what constitutes the fast-changing underlying structure of the pragmatic framework

Because in our own self-constitution literacy is only one a the efficiency that the new scale requires, we come to realize, even if public discourse does not exactly reflect it, that we cannot afford literacy the e have until now And even if we could, we should not People recognize, even if only reluctantly, that the literacy machine, for soeneration with a skill of li perspective is continuously contradicted by the ever new and ever renewing huh which we becom of literacy is, as we have seen, a luxury which a society, rich or poor, cannot afford Conditions of human life and praxis require, instead of a skill and perspective for the whole of life, a series Skill and perspective need to be understood together Their application will probably be limited in ti the language, but very few see language and language-based disciplines as the prerequisite for the less than life-long series of different jobs students of today will have Although colleges e and the hues of mathematics-a discipline that has diversified spectacularly-and of visual representation is so obvious that one can only wonder why the voices of e association Matheerial, froal The realization that calculus is first of all a language, and that the goal of education is fluency in it, corresponds to an awareness that est time with respect to musical scores, but the champions of literacy always refused to accept The sa, con In today's education, the visual needs to be studied at least as round of deeper changes, education is focusing on its on redefinition The e is fro the ee, history, matics of education finally should be Education needs to be conducive to interaction and to the forthe impertinence of literacy, so students to think” They do not realize that students think whether we teach thee, and fa they, closer to their condition than to that of their teachers The ated by students and supported by their inventiveness and dedication They have becas of education And students have beco their own experience

To be a child

No one can declare better ways of teaching without considering the real child In a world of choice and free movement, children are le parent Many children will come from environments where discrimination, poverty, prejudice, and violence have an overpowering influence Such an environnificant for a society dedicated to de and education are being transferred from family to institutions meant to produce the educated person With the best ofchildren These socio-educational entities are accepted quite obligingly by thetheir own lives ”Everything will be fine, as long as the education of the new generation basically repeats the education of the parents,” su 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 498 million in 1994 to 546 raduated high school, and by the year 2006 the number will not exceed 3 million Students the cycle of education than do the experts who define its oals This creates a basis for conflict that no one should underestimate