We’ll Need A Crane
Here’s some wisdom that might sound familiar:
There is a world of difference between the modern home environment of integrated electric information and the classroom. Today’s… child is attuned to up-to-the-minute “adult” news… and is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines.
That was Marshall McLuhan… written in 1967. Before 1:1, before podcasts, before Smartboards, before DVD players, before cell phones, before VCRs, before the internet, before fax machines, before personal computers.
As Adrienne Michetti pointed out in this recent post, technology must be reforming our curricular goals. More than 40 years ago, McLuhan was arguing not just for a technology integrated classroom, but one that isn’t fragmented by the irrelevant contextual limitations of the school day.
Adrienne concluded her post with the question about how to move this forward. The difficulty in solving this 40-Year-Old Problem might also be revealed in McLuhan’s book (The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects) ; he quotes Alfred North Whitehead:
“The Major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”
We’ll need a crane.
Quote from:
McLuhan, Marshall, and Fiore Quentin. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Digitized Edition. San Francisco: Hardwired Press, 1967. Print.
Note: To show the relevancy a little clearer, I removed the word ‘televised’ at the first ellipsis.
Don’t forget the wrecking ball!
After some months of re-introducing myself to the U.S. education system after 7 years of international education, I can confirm Whiteheads convictions that wrecking something may be our only option in the face of stalled and abandoned work in the area of technology integration. I have the unique opportunity of returning to a school district that I worked in years ago (is it really 15 years ago) where I implemented labs and networks long before these things were conceived of in most places. I had Apple IIe’s humming with disk drives and MECC software and we had classes coming to the lab two and three times a week to explore, create, and experience all that we could offer. It wasn’t drill and kill. Our cornerstone was Logo and construction of ideas and control of robots. Keep in mind – this is 1992 and we had the first Apple network based on 40MB hard drives. We were the first to adopt the iMac shortly after I left for my first tour in China.
Jump ahead to 2009. My two children in grades 3 and 6 have now been back in public schools for a little over 2 months. My daughter has touched a computer twice – both times to take and Accelerated Reader test. My 6th grade son went to the computer lab for the first time last week – to type his report (no internet access). The computer labs that I helped create and the computers that are in classrooms generally sit unused. I substituted in a Kindergarten classroom in one of the newer buildings. Smart board in place – never used and incorrectly installed. It’s only functioning as a high priced screen for the projection unit that is operating, but largely used for showing DVDs. There are no laptops in this district and limited access to wireless. The beginner class in technology for 11th graders starts with Dreamweaver and Fireworks.
The sad truth is, this is the picture in the majority of Washington school districts. There are bright spots – I found some decent usage in one poverty stricken small school district that impressed me despite the age of the equipment. But the vast majority have stripped themselves of technology use out of deference to state testing and core subjects. Teacher tech seems centered on visualizers – those rather simple cameras that act a lot like an overhead.
All of this would be troubling enough if it weren’t for the additional lack of perceptible difference in any instructional practices. At back to school nights, I was listening to information about bus schedules and security concerns – drop off zones and accountability – nuts and bolts.
So, before I make this too long…
Bring on the wrecking ball.
While international education may have a shot at renovation and the instrumental curriculum you seek, American education needs to be wiped from the map – time to start over and build something that isn’t based on common denominators and a glaring lack of sustainability of anything attempted in the last two decades.
Insert here – picture of imploding building.
Thanks for that input and first hand account, Jon. I can imagine your frustration over the stagnation that you find on your return. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say “All of this would be troubling enough if it weren’t for the additional lack of perceptible difference in any instructional practices.”
What I take from McLuhan’s statement is that it really isn’t about technology at all- he didn’t even know what a smartboard was. He never opened a laptop, never heard a podcast. Instead, we need to use what we have. What he describes as lacking in the 1967 classroom is still lacking in many schools today. So you’re right- its all about practice. Education simply needs to be current; curriculum needs to engage students with the same sensory stimulation that they get from video games, movies, and the internet- and it needs to be connected.
Agreed. Wholeheartedly!
Technology should be ubiquitous.
Kids need to do more than produce and process. They need to articulate their learning process every step of the way.
Powerful stuff, David!
I can certainly empathize with many of Jon’s sentiments, as I too have entered the American education system (and am studying in it) after 8 years spent internationally and 3 years in Canada. I often find myself thinking as I am trawling through readings, “We just need to start all over again — get rid of everything and build from the ground up.” Whitehead’s quote is especially relevant.
Thanks for continuing the conversation, David. It’s funny that you should begin by mentioning McLuhan. The inspiration behind that post came from some previous reading for another course I’m taking whereby we’ve been discussing just that: whether or not the medium is relevant, significant, or inert in providing instruction. It’s been an ongoing debate since McLuhan’s time, and several proponents of instructional design and ed tech have argued that the medium is not the message — it is simply the delivery platform. I’m personally on the fence on this one, as I keep changing my mind; there are certainly strong arguments on both sides.
I’m beginning to feel, as you alluded, that whether the medium is the message or not is unimportant — we must recognize that the media are changing the learning landscape, and completely redesign education to adapt. And that’s why we’ll need that crane!
Interesting points, Adrienne, I hadn’t really thought about it in that way. I had spent so much time looking at McLuhan from a filmmaking standpoint, I’ve only just now begun to re-engage his work as an educator. I suppose in terms of education medium vs. message depends on how you look at it- i think his assessment of ‘hot’ vs. ‘cold’ media suggest the exact sort of thing that has been the topic of conversation in engaging students. I can see though, that the metaphor for teachers that would be a bit controversial, but very relevant to some of the discussions happening today. I think you could read “the medium is the message” as ‘teaching students to learn’ instead of ‘teaching content’. The medium (learning) is the message – teaching students how to learn. As opposed to the traditional view of the the medium (learning) simply being vehicle for the content (subject matter).
I don’t know if that is relevant to your course or not, but thanks for taking the conversation in that direction- there’s a lot to think about!
Yes, that is one way to look at it. Another way is to look at it as in, if the medium is the message, then do we need to create media that have learning built into them? Because if the medium is not the message, then we use need to use existing media, but give it an instructional purpose, which can be difficult.
Indeed, lots to think about!
My guess (and its a guess) is that McLuhan would say that all media have learning built into them. He wrote about how a lightbulb creates the environment around it by defining space in a new way. My reading of this would be that we learn about our environment from the information that is generated by the presence of light.
I think I’m explaining that right, I’m a big fan of “Understanding Media” but find parts of it a bit oblique and am always left a bit in the dark by his lightbulb example (ha ha, get it?…. oh nevermind…sorry). Let’s look at books instead- books are systems of delivery for information, but our primary concern isn’t teaching what is in a specific book, but teaching students literacy.
I think that might be the best way to explain my understanding of what would be a ‘mcluhan-esque’ interpretation of modern pedagogy; its not about creating new media its about providing fluency in existing media.
We’ll Need A Crane = familiar wisdom but worth revisiting http://bit.ly/3dXtsFQuote
We’ll Need A Crane http://bit.ly/3dXtsFQuote