Edmund Bacon, of the Philadelphia town-planning commission, discovered that school children could be invaluable researchers and colleagues in the task of remaking the image of the city. We are entering the new age of education that is programmed for discovery rather than instruction. As the means of input increase, so does the need for insight or pattern recognition.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
by Marshall McLuhan 1964
Ed just found this passage in McLuhan's book.
Ed: "The medium is the message, so there's no need for content, because the medium is the content. Technology is its own content."
and:
"The 21st century won't require knowing content. It will require being able to recognize patterns."
So.....I guess that explains why my district is buying Smart Boards while the parents are raising money to buy books. Forty-three years after Marshall McLuhan announced the end of instruction, the general public is still stuck in the Knowledge is Good stage of cultural evolution.
How Knowledge Helps by Daniel Willingham
Overvaluing process at the expense of content might be the most destructive force in both American curriculum and teacher training.
ReplyDeleteSuch a mindset has a hidden consequence. The vapid, hollow drones this instruction creates will be largely friendless and, as an extension, won't be capable of interesting the opposite sex for more than three seconds. It's going to play hell with the reproduction rate, but I'd rather those whose minds are wholly divorced from content don't have kids anyway.
Can you imagine going on a date with someone who knows the dynamics of a conversation but has absolutely nothing to talk about? Giambattista Vico is spinning in his grave.
Overvaluing process at the expense of content might be the most destructive force in both American curriculum and teacher training.
ReplyDeleteIt's right up there!
The vapid, hollow drones this instruction creates will be largely friendless and, as an extension, won't be capable of interesting the opposite sex for more than three seconds.
ReplyDeleteoh....I don't think so
I'm not sure there's anyone out there who really doesn't know anything; Marhsall McLuhan was an ecnoomist (right?)
Ed was marveling today at the fact that some of the people who push the anti-content line the most intensely are people who themselves have huge stores of knowledge.
As far as I can tell, the consequences of all this are pretty much the consequences we've been living with for quite some time now, namely a pretty serious "knowledge deficit," and a whopping big science-and-math deficit.
ReplyDeleteEd keeps promising to find out for me how many Americans are enrolled in hard science graduate programs at NYU.
ReplyDeleteThe number is tiny.
I've sensed the same irony with the professors of process - many of them are truly experts in something. Their charges, though? Not the same. The flatness exhibited by so many current and soon-to-be college students is disturbing.
ReplyDeleteReally, I'm not an elitist with this stuff. I'm the last guy to insist on high culture. I just prefer people - personally, professionally, all relationships - who know things. Most of these kids don't and won't.
I've sensed the same irony with the professors of process - many of them are truly experts in something. Their charges, though? Not the same.
ReplyDeleteThat sure seems to be the story.
I just prefer people - personally, professionally, all relationships - who know things.
ReplyDeleteMe, too.
Carolyn once characterized herself as a "content freak."
ReplyDeleteHere we go....The United States has quietly withdrawn from an international study comparing math and science students.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20205125/site/newsweek/
Actually, McLuhan was an English professor (not an economist), and his comments on the medium being the message are often taken out of context.
ReplyDeleteWhat he's really driving at is that we need to be aware of the effect that our media have on us - that if you want to know what television (for example) is doing to the way that we think and act, you need to look at the nature of television itself, not any particular program (ie the content).
Same goes for the alphabet, for example, which threw the ancient world on its ear 2500 years ago, or the printing press 500+ years ago.
I don't say this as a blanket endorsement of the man or his ideas - just wanted to clarify an inaccuracy.
Brett - thank you!
ReplyDelete"Economist" didn't sound right to me, either....Ed thought he was an economist.
ReplyDeleteEd has read the book, however.
ester
ReplyDeleteAm I understanding this correctly?
Have we withdrawn from TIMSS?
(I'll go read instead of skim...)