Part 18 (1/2)

Growing up in an environ 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, disappointenerations 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 fashi+on labels-choosing can be overwhel neatly If you were in love, Ro 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 contes, 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 schee 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, soe full of enthusiasuarantee self-fulfillreat financial sacrifice, coht learn how to spell and how to add But they soon discover that in real life skills other than spelling and arither disappoint a pro no result? If, after all this, we still want both literacy and competence for experiences which literacy does not support, and often inhibits, ould have to invest beyond what society is willing and able to spend And even if society were to do so, as it see useless skills and a prieneration, 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 ould becomatic 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 prag 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 developrated in the work structure It has to becoh which the new praged

To all those dedicated to the human aspects of politics, business, law, andcan no longer find their way to our souls, all this will sound terrifying Nevertheless, as much as ould like to be considered as individuals, each with our own dignity, personality, opinions, emotions, and pains, we ourselves under for more and uish us Scale dictates anonynorance 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 prag?

Scared that in giving up literacy training we commit treason to our own condition, we maintain literacy and try to adapt it to new circu

In view of the inefficiency built into our syste the dimension characteristic of the current status of human experience of multiple partial literacies The result is the transfors: you choose the line along which you want to be processed; we et the literacy alibi, and that we train you to be able to cope with so-called entry-level jobs Obviously, this evolves in a e or university one attends, or the tuition one pays, determines the amount of subtlety

Students accept the function of education insofar as it oals and the rather scary reality of theto the level of education, and is influenced by political and social decision eneration, education acts according to para from its opportunistic search for a place between acadees the narrow doht about, and reproduces the structure of current huh vast financial support, froanizations, education is artificially removed from the reality of expected efficiency It is rarely a universe of coe of the university and the languages of current human practice widens The tenure systeoal of a professor is to be freed of teaching, souarantee educators the freedo 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 e thee creative contributions The result is illustrative of the relation bete do and hoe evaluate e do An expectation was set, and the process of education was skewed to generate good test results This effectively eli for the sake of a subject Students are afraid they will not ht by the book

Teachers who know better than the book are inti 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 outStandardized 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 toof education fro is reflected in education's language and organization, and in the li assumptions about its function and anization with a bureaucratic ”network of directives,” as Winograd and Flores call them, and motivational elements not very different froanizations mentioned, it also develops networks of interaction with sources of funding and sources of power, soies as education itself Instead of reflecting shorter cycles of activity in its own structure, it tends to er periods of ti, coy-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 eventheir 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 terenstein 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 encies translate concerns about the quality of education into requirees and universities based on scores on exit tests taken by students

These are supposed to reflect academic achieve 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' argu tool In fact, to prepare students for perforoal in itself Thus it should coe ca

Many times comparisons are made between students in the USA and in japan or in Western European countries In ainst the pervasive dynas to consider-for instance, that japanese students spend al TV as American students do, and that they are not involved in household tasks Noticeable differences are in reading The japanese spend double the nu japanese students spend more time on schoolwork (the same 2-to-1 ratio), but much less on entertainment Should japan be considered athe best in science subjects, the answer seeainst the entire development of students, their exceptional creative achieveuarded

With all its limatic requirements This is probably due more to the country's inherent dynaulated, capable of adaptive moves, subject to innovation, the USA is potentially a better network for educational possibilities

What caused the criticises of evaluation is the indecisiveness that the USA shows-the program for school reform for the year 2000 is an exa the price of the co Once japanese businesses started buying American campuses, the price of the compromise became clear

Universities in the USA were saved froraid syste the dynae Abruptly, the Americanization of world education-study driven by multiple-choice tests with a dualistic structure-was short-changed by a japanization ested above, it is evident that the japanese are extricating themselves fro necessary accommodations in the traditional japanese systeh caution is called for, especially in approaching a subject foreign to our direct experience and understanding, the trend expressed is telling in its itimate 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 disseinable destination The interconnectivity of business and of lobal econoe 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 Soic for the Gothic structures of their university days The physical reference to a ti” is clear-as is the ood reason to look at the hoaood time (win or lose)

To make explicit the shi+ft from a symbolism of education, coordinated with the function of intellectual acco this syue universities, is an urgent political and practical goal is only the beginning There is no justification forin walls and campuses and feudal university domains As one of the successful entrepreneurs of this ti 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 dyna andschools in the USA, as well as in al the up structures inappropriate to the new requirements of education is that, finally, at least ould create environressThere 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 h 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 associatedit Instead of a doe, with built-in experiences more and more alien to the vast n systees, to articulate them, adapt them to the circumstance, and share theoal Some would counter, ”This was attempted with courses labeledit, or even siifted had no proble the new math Students ere under the influence of literate reasoning had problems What we need to do is to keep the mind open, allow for as , if new experiences demand an open mind and freedom from previous assumptions Some students will settle (in ns, others for sounds, soh which huence comes to expression Interactive multimedia are only some of the e The Internet is in the same situation A fra resources and using theed as necessary by praxis, would be the way to go Not only literacy, in the accepted sense, butliteracy, and visual thinking and expression should be given equal consideration

Cross-pollination a disciplines traditionally kept in isolation will definitely enhance creativity by doing aith the obsessive channeling practiced nowadays

Education needs to shi+ft from the atomistic view that isolates subjects from the whole of reality to a holistic perspective