Part 43 (2/2)
No cognitive path should be forbidden or excluded, as long as hurity, in all aspects, is maintained and human interaction supported in the many possible forrity is the ele individual direction into focus As it is practiced today, education cultivates rity and the develop that you can cheat your teacher but not yourself without affecting the outcority appears as so incidental to the experience Collaboration on a project of common interest introduces elements of reciprocal responsibility in respect to the outcome Since outcoer aa goal
In order to accoreater number of manifestations than the ones just described-we need to free education froer be understood as exclusively linear Neither can we continue to apply a deterministic sequence of cause and effect in domains of non-deterministic interdependencies, characteristic of distributed cooperative efforts Neither hierarchy nor dualism can be cultivated in the educational environment because the dynamics of association and interaction is based on patterns of changing roles within a universe focused on optimal parameters, not threatened by the radical disjunction of success vs failure Coh e but which fail in the new pragh practical experience the need for a different viewpoint, for values outside the i should be imposed on the individual
Shakespeare and Boole are neither loved, nor understood, nor respected more by those ere forced to learn how to spell their naical rules The very presence of art and science, sport and entertainal system in educational forrams for human interaction opens the possibility for discoveries As serious as all theseits students happy, without satisfaction In each instance of education, good or bad, the hu, as a natural entity, is broken in Tension will always be part of education, but instead of rewarding those rate complementary moments
No, I do not advocate interactive study from the beach or fro huration in the world of practical experiences around the clock But as education frees itself fros, classes that correspond to shi+fts, holidays and vacation time-it should also let students make choices that are closer to their natural rhythms Instead of physical co-presence, there should be interactive and cooperative creativity that does not exclude the playful, the natural, and the accidental
If all this sounds too far-fetched to bring about, that is because it is Even if the co centers to with them attitudes rooted in traditional expectations There is ht with the current systee it But with each nucleus of self-organization, such as on-line classes on subjects pertinent to working on the network, seeds are sown for future developes in one field or another-coy, non-linear electronic publishi+ng-thefor the educational system to process students and to deliver them, at no cost to the corporations that will ey Instead of endowing university chairs dedicated to the study of the no longerand post-acade
To preach that in order to be a good architect one has to know history and biology andthe rules of literacy in a world that effectively does not need them To create an environment for the revelation of such a need, if indeed it is acknowledged as humans discover neays to deal with their questions, is a very different task How n language, or che question It assuht mixture and how future hue, the proportions change, and the context changes first of all
As opposed to the current hierarchy, which proclairaphy and reading as necessary, education needs to finally acknowledge coe self-definition in and through skills best suited to practical experiences of self-constitution in a world that has escaped the cycle of repetition, and pursues goals unrelated to previous experiences Instead of doing aith or rationalizing intuition, or being suspicious of irrationality, education will have to allow the individual to pursue a search path that integrates theoals where intuition, and even irrationality and the subconscious, are applicable They should be freed fro alternatives
A wake-up call
All this relies heavily on the n environments that stimulate responsibility and self-discipline The broad-stroke educational project sketched up to here will have to address the precise concerns connected to how and when education actually starts, what the role of the family should be-if the family remains a valid entity-and how variety and multiplicity will be addressed
In today's words and expectations, even in today's prejudices, education is of national interest in one main respect: to equip students with skills so they can contribute to the national coffers in the future But the arena of econolobal economy, not an economy defined by national boundaries
The trans-national ineering, far fro finished, made it quite clear that for the sake of efficiency, productive activities are relocated without any consideration for patriotism or national pride, never mind human solidarity and ethics
In today's world, and to so of the individual through cultivation of thefacts It is its oard to enjoy subtleties, or to generate thee the e in the rich world of emotions Prepared for work that is usually different from what educators, economists, and politicians anticipate, people face the reality of work that becomented and mediated On the assembly line, or in the ”analysis of symbols” (to use Robert Reich's term), work is, in the final analysis, a job, not a vocation
Physicians, professors, businesser flippers perfor work of its highest but often neglectedan identity in the act- negates this motivation Replaced by external rationale-the substance of commercial democracy-the decline of inner motivation leads to lack of interest, reduced co creativity Education that processes humans for jobs promises access to abundance, but not to self-fulfillment The decline of family, and new patterns of sexuality and reproduction, tell us that expectations, sublime on their own merit, of improved family involvely, the challenge is to understand the nature of change and to suggest alternatives, instead of hoping that, hty dollar (or yen, franc, ain becoe is not faced, education will only becoeneration
Many scholars of education have set forth various plans for saving education They do not ignore the new pragmatic requirements They are unaware of them Therefore, their recommendations can be classified as lobality will not result fro rhymes from Mother Goose (with its i to them the Mother Goose of other countries
The Victorian and post-Victorian vision transferred upon children, the expectation of ”everything will be fine if you just do as you're told,” reflects past ideals handed down through the e
The most ubiquitous presence in modern society is the television set It replaced the book long ago Notwithstanding, TV is a passive h inforital television, which extends the presence of computers, will h resolution or not Television in digitally scalable formats is an active medium, and interactivity is its characteristic Education centers will integrate digital television, and open ways to involve individuals regardless of age, background and interests We can all learn that there are several ways of seeing things, that the physics of time and music report on different aspects of temporal characteristics of our experience in the world The ant dance of a ballerina, can benefit froraphy, considered byThe new media of interaction that are embodied in educational centers should be less obsessed with conveying infor of instances of change
But these are only examples What I have in mind is the creation of an environe of aesthetic aspects is learned parallel to scientific knowledge
The formats are not those of classes in the theory or history of art, or of similar art oriented subjects As exploration takes place, aesthetic considerations are pursued as athe effort It is quite clear that as classes dynaes and different backgrounds Taking place in the public domain of networked resources, this education will benefit from a sense of creative competition At each moment in time, projects will be accessible, and feedback can be provided This ensures not only high perforical viewpoint, but also aesthetic relevance
The literacy-based educational establishment will probably dismiss the proposals set forth as pie-in-the-sky, as futuristic at best Its representatives will claim that the problem at hand needs solutions, not a futuristicnuclei supported by the econoesteda practice that at least has some history and achievements to report The public, no matter how critical of education, will ask: Is it permissible, indeed responsible, to assuenerate new student attitudes, especially in view of the reality of metal detectors installed in schools to prevent students fro weapons? Is it credible to describe experiences in discovery involving high aesthetic quality, while mediocrity makes the school system appear hopelessly danancy and classes where students bring their babies are the concern of underpaid teachers but not of visionaries More questions in the sa water in the desert is not as simple as it sounds
We can, indeed, dream of educational tools hooked up to the terminals at the Kennedy space Center, or to the supercomputers of the European Center for Research of the Future We can drea the unknown, and of on-line education in a world where everyone envisions high accoh the use of resources that until noere open to very few But unless society gives up the expectation of a hoatory education that forces individuals ant-or do not want-to prepare themselves for a life of practical experiences into the same mold, education will not produce the desired results Good intentions, based on social, ethnic, or racial criteria, on love of children, and humanistic ideals, will not help either While all over the world real spending per student in public education and private institutions increased well above the levels of inflation, fewer students do honment This is true not only in the USA but also in countries with high ade, such as France, Gere of our considerations, all this e in society Education is not an autonoh students, teachers, parents, political institutions, economic realities, racial attitudes, culture, and patterns of behavior in our commercial democracy In today's education, parochial considerations take precedence over global concerns Bureaucratic rules of accues for a better future of millions of students What appears as the cultivation of the mind and spirit is actually no more than the attempt to polish a store hile the store itself lost its usefulness long ago It makes no sense to require millions of students to drive daily to schools that can no longer be maintained, or to pass tests when standards are continuously lowered in order to somehow justify them
Consues in patterns of human activity, not only students need education, but practically everyone, and probably educators first of all Connection to education centers needs to be different fro in a class dominated by a teacher On the interactive education networks, age no longer serves as a criterion Learning is self-paced, motivated by individual interests and priorities and by the perspectives that learning opens A sense of co through a diversity of perspectives and ways of thinking and doing
Nothing can help generations that are onistic than ours to find a coround than an experience of education emancipated froing and engaging at the same time Education will be part of the continuous self-definition of the huhout one's entire life
Whether we like it or not, the econo This does not automatically mean that we can or should let the feedback loop follow a course that will eventually lead to losing the stability of the syste If consu force, however, ould all end up enjoying ourselves to death But the solution to this state of affairs is not to be found in political or educational ser To blame consumption, expectations of abundance, or entertain answers to educational worries Education will have to integrate the human experience of consumption and facilitate the acquisition of co cooperative projects involving not only the production of artifacts, but also self-iroith television as theirto reality cannot be bla reality as a show interrupted by thirty-secondht to provide a context for their integration in captivating practical experiences, instead of trying to neutralize thees that will alter the relation between viewers and originators of nitive characteristics and motor patterns of couch potatoes and eneralized TV and interactive networking are very different from those of people educated as literate These characteristics will be further reshaped as digital television beco about history, or another country, is inally relevant to praxis in the new context of life and work, the ability to view, understand ies, and the ability to edit theenerate one's own iaging the student, education heads into oblivion As difficult as it is to realize that there are no absolute values, unless this realization is shared by all generations, ill face enerational conflicts than we already face Television is not the panacea for such conflicts, but a broad ground for reaching reciprocal awareness of what it takes to e
Sure, we are focused here on a television that transcended its mass communication industrial society status, and reached the condition of individual interaction