It's been snowing here. Well, that's a slight understatement - I'm pretty much snowed in at this moment. That's not a big deal for most of my Ohioan and Pennsylvanian buddies, but this is a big change for me. If I were on my island with this amount of snow, the whole country would shut down and curl into a tiny ball until it cleared. That seems like a thoroughly sensible response to me, but my life and environment have changed, and so I need to alter my response to snow. I now live in Ohio (or the Tundra as I think of it), and part of living in Ohio is that I have to learn to deal with the snow. I'm working on altering my habits and practices so that I'm prepared for bad weather (i.e. getting a snow shovel seems like a good idea, and having plenty of food in the freezer) and slowly but surely my mental processes and reactions to snow will start to change as well. It's not always fun, but circumstances change; the world changes, and as human beings one of our most wonderful abilities is to adapt. However, over the past week I've been thinking about the lack of change in our schools even as the world changes in front of our very eyes. Interestingly, the two chapters I've just read on writing and knowledge inside and outside modern institutions seem to also suggest that very little has changed over the years.
Bazerman, C. & Rogers, P. (2008). Writing and secular knowledge outside modern European institutions. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbooks of research on writing: History society, school, individual, text, pp. 143-156; and Bazerman, C. & Rogers, P. (2008). Writing and secular knowledge inside modern European institutions. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbooks of research on writing: History society, school, individual, text, pp. 157-175.
As I read about the history of writing and knowledge, I was struck by a description of Chinese education many centuries ago. In China, they developed exams and a canon of texts that stayed pretty constant. The authors describe it as an "exam culture" where "knowledge of the key texts and of the expected form of the essay outweighed substantive understanding of the specifics of knowledges, values, and arts expressed within the texts" (p. 152). Is it just me, or is this a pretty accurate description of our school system today? We have our key texts (best that I don't start a rant about the canon of literature in this post), which students are asked to understand in a very narrow way. Kelly Gallagher talks about this in his book Readicide (2009). He describes how students are more willing to read texts when they can see the value in them. He gives an example of teaching Hamlet, where he has his students translate a passage and then relate it to today's real world. He explains that when students are "exposed to the wisdom" (Gallagher, 2009, p. 77) in a text and how that wisdom relates to today's world, they start to value the text - and I would assume, learn more. But Gallagher's approach isn't the norm, and I know from personal experience and from discussions with others, that our canonical texts are taught in ways that mean students pass exams without seeing the knowledge and value of those texts. How can ancient China's school system and today's US school system, light years away apart it would seem, be so similar? Has nothing in education changed? This is one to ponder further...
Open knowledge
One further area I'd like to discuss is one mentioned at the end of page 172, where the authors mention the "modern university" and people committed to "open production and circulation" of texts and knowledge (p. 172). I agree that modern universities will become more and more open with their knowledge and texts over time, and I think that new technologies encourage this. I've recently been looking at the Open Source courseware offered by MIT and the British Open University online. Both of these projects make online resources available, for free, to anyone who wishes to use them - this could be anyone from an octogenarian at home wanting to learn about making kites, for example, to other universities using these courses as supplements to there own courses. We can also see a more open atmosphere in the number of journal articles that are now freely available online, although to get to the really good stuff, you have to be affiliated with a university license. While I do not see universities becoming so "open" that all courses, texts and knowledge will eventually be available for free, these things do point to a more "open" culture in universities.
However, even as I talk about the open nature of knowledge in modern universities I am reminded of a fascinating conference in England that I went to a couple of years ago. The key note speaker explained how new technologies such as blogging, social networking, and bookmarking meant that people academics could be more open about their new ideas and ongoing research projects, and gain immediate feedback and support from colleagues while in the process of conducting research. This was told to us as if it was the most wonderful thing for students and researchers everywhere - with Web 2.0 we can all be open about our ideas and research. But would I write my dissertation ideas on this blog for all the world to see? Absolutely not. There is fear - and the questions asked by the audience in this conference highlighted this fear - among academics about having their ideas stolen. So, how open can the modern university ever be with this underlying culture of secrecy still prevalent in universities today?
I'm afraid I'm rambling now, so it is time to leave you and find a snow shovel!
I, too, am struck by the history of how the Chinese controlled information through education, "much scholarly production was summary, commentary, and interpretation of the classic texts" (p.152). The movement was meant to objectify written commentaries, but to the sacrifice of perhaps reflection and opposition. When opposition to the dynasty was suspected by way of private institutions or subjective interpretations, schools were closed and written artifacts were burned. Censorship of the written word has always been a means of political control. I think of early Christendom when the Church selected the books of the Bible that most suited them and destroyed the rest. During the Inquisition books that were deemed heretical were burned. In 1936, Republican gunmen, perhaps because of his opposition to the rising political power, shot Federico Garcia Lorca. He was a prolific and powerful poet and it might have been feared that his word would stir the masses. These examples serve to remind me that if we teach our students to reflect while writing, unpopular ideas might surface and make some "old schoolers" uncomfortable. Let's stir the pot!
ReplyDeleteYour post makes me wonder how we will decide on canonical texts in the future when there is so much diversity regarding what is available and will it matter that we may not even know who shaped it/write it (in an OpenSource environment). One could make the argument that Wikipedia may be making a stab at creating our common TEXT (although I've heard recently that contributions to Wikipedia are dropping off.)
ReplyDeleteI, too, find it really ironic that we research and discuss how schools can improve, BUT we are so slow to implement or accept change. HOWEVER, boy are we willing and able to complain. Perhaps, schools are afraid to change because they see the "system" working and see success through their rosy colored glasses. What about those kids who fall between the cracks or who drop out and end up in an adult education class? Did they fail or did we fail them? Just because they didn't want to be an obedient little body in the same, old desk everyday, doesn't mean they are not smart enough to learn. Chances are they are probably smarter than us because these young individuals choose to go against the (school) "system" and find a way to learn about our world in a way that is more interesting than sitting passively in a desk for 6 or 7 hours a day!!
ReplyDeleteI think you have a good point about the comparison between our current education and China's ancient system from years ago.
Perhaps as Bazerman & Rogers mention that it is the "rising costs of commercially produced research publications have also affected access in both developing and developed worlds" (p. 172). Is this what is forcing us into such an electronic world? I must agree also that I would not want to put my dissertation ideas out there as I was working on them for fear my hard work would be stolen! Although there are alot of things I like about the electronic age, there are an equal number of things that scare me, too!