jerome bruner and the process of education: "It is surely the case that schooling is only one small part of how a culture inducts the young into its canonical ways. Indeed, schooling may even be at odds with a culture's other ways of inducting the young into the requirements of communal living.... What has become increasingly clear... is that education is not just about conventional school matters like curriculum or standards or testing. What we resolve to do in school only makes sense when considered in the broader context of what the society intends to accomplish through its educational investment in the young. How one conceives of education, we have finally come to recognize, is a function of how one conceives of culture and its aims, professed and otherwise. "Professed and otherwise - that's chilling. What is the aim of our culture? What is the professed aim and what is the "otherwise" / unstated aim? That's what makes being a disruptive educator such a problem - you are caught up in the system (you are the system!) I imagine that it is incredibly hard to balance your personal "aims" with those of the system.
I wonder if there is a big happy place where the goals of the culture completely match up with everyone within the culture... The goals of the principle and the school board match up with our disruptive educators. It sounds like Nazi Germany - maybe our democracy can't be divorced from the struggling oppostites and that we are doomed to inch along in herky jerky movements of the pendulum swing.
I see a big fight in education ahead of us. It truely is the frontline of culture. Will the students see it as a completely out of touch internment camp whose main purpose is to stupify and pacify? and whose main outcome is a distrust of leadership on one hand and blind acceptance on the other?
oh Geez, do I really want to be an educator?
I have to blame this mad ramble of a post on someone - I blame these guys - jerome bruner and Mark Wagner.
2 comments:
I'm happy to take the blame for any potential disruptive educator who finds himself questioning the aims of his culture. Incidentally, since you mention Democracy in this post, I hope you know Dewey's "Democracy and Education" was very much a forerunner to Bruner's thoughts. And, yes, students find school completely out of touch with their reality as "digital natives" (look up Marc Prensky's metaphor if you're not familiar with it already).
Thanks for the comment over at Educational Technology and Life. I hope you've followed the blog after my recent move (and complete overhaul) to wordpress and a new URL. http://edtechlife.com
It was fun to discover your blog as well. It goes into the "and life" category in my aggregator.
Thanks for commenting Mark! I've been reading your blog for a while now.
Yes, I did follow you over to http://edtechlife.com, but I couldn't get your feed to MyYahoo. So, you are on bloglines - which I check, but it's not like being on my homepage :)
Yes, question the aims of your culture. I really like reading you and doug noon of Borderland for this type of disruptive educator perspective. As you focus on games, he sort of focuses on reading / writing. I love his tag line:
My name is Doug.
I'm from the government.
I teach your kids.
hmmm.. Dewey's "Democracy and Education"
Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.), New York: Free Press. Classic discussion of education for democracy ('sharing in a common life') that includes an important reconceptualization of vocational learning. It remains (for me at least) an infuriating book to read. At times ideas are not expressed with the clarity they deserve; there is repetition; and not enough signposting for readers. But... there is gold in these hills.
1916!
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
By Marc Prensky
starts out like this:
It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
I like it already!
Thanks for commenting Mark and good luck with everything!
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