If one were to agree with Thoreau’s remark that our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end, it would only justify the notion that technology – from the railway to the iPhone – has done nothing more but extended human life, with all its tragedies and wonders, and made it slightly more liveable. Technologies, nonetheless, deliver more than an extended, more liveable life. It is only too simplistic to think otherwise.
To object to technologies without admitting their benefits, to get excited about what they do without acknowledging what they undo, means to argue, like a one-eyed prophet, for argument’s sake. All of this is to say that the following thoughts and questions stem from a position that belongs to neither extreme.
As anyone - technophile or technophobe alike – would agree, the use of any technology is largely determined by the structure of the technology itself. Counter to a technological determinism, the notion that technology will shape culture, culture – society that is – will shape technology with equal measure.
We are not passive consumers. Rather, we appropriate our tools to fit our daily lives and interests and, in return, we redesign technologies anew. Moreover, technologies form part of our daily lives even when we sleep (those wearing Fitbit would know). Thus, they bring an ecological - a total - change to our life. Just like a butterfly does to its own ecosystem.
Therefore, technologies are not impartial tools that we can add to or subtract from our system without expecting radical change. The question is: does anyone realise, even bother to think of this? Does anybody bother to ask how do we prepare those most susceptible to the ecological power of technologies? Equally, how do we prepare our children to benefit from them too?
The recent announcement that the Ministry of Education, together with “other” (industry?) players, launched an initiative to pump €15 million in technological equipment for schools, creates the necessity to emphasise even more the what, why (it should) and how spending millions of euros to bring (newer) technology will improve children’s learning and well-being in the ecosystem of schools.
In Technopoly, Neil Postman recalls a story of Socrates in which he tells about King Thamus of Upper Egypt who, when meeting Theuth, the inventor of number, geometry and writing, among other things, asks: “Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practise it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction and, in consequence, be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.”
Writing – and any other technology, for that matter – can demonstrate both failures and successes from their use. Nonetheless, as Thamus warns, pupils “will receive information without proper instruction”.
If there ever is a problem in education newer technology certainly will not solve it
In a word, pumping millions of euros into dressing classrooms in newer technologies will not guarantee how well children learn. Proper instruction will.
The investment, the article goes on, is only a “first step”. Yet, this first step seems to prioritise the equipment more than its receiver. This only makes sense since “other players” are involved in the decision for investment.
To digress a little, bringing technologies into the classroom was not necessarily inevitable. Roger Dale et al, David Buckingham and Neil Selwyn, among others, have repeatedly argued that industry, rather than the curriculum and educators, have been the main drivers behind such strategies. Raising digitally-skilled children as the intention behind the €15 million investment is an over-simplistic idea.
Yes, the computer is indispensable and useful. The benefits of digital devices are undeniable. Yet, Postman says, there are winners and losers in this technological world.
Jaron Lanier warns that the winners will be those few who own the technologies because of the most intimate data they now possess about us, the users. Convenience tempts the user to succumb to the pleasure of editing the perfect profile online, unaware, as one goes, of what s/he pays in exchange.
Lanier’s view resonates in Harold Innis’s words that technologies develop “knowledge monopolies”. The monopolists, usually a minority, dictate to the rest.
The losers share intimate information everywhere. They enthuse about the accessibility and convenience technologies provide, unaware that nothing that they need, in fact, happens to them.
Announcements such as the €15 million investments excite the losers, distracting them from the very issue that needs investment: that pupils will and do receive large quantities of information without proper instruction. To build on that, one may even argue that a new digital gap arises, one where we now talk about lack of digital skills not lack of access to technologies. Because, why would 12-year-olds post pictures of themselves in bikini and make-up (often with parents’ knowledge) on social sites like Facebook if proper instruction on the consequences from such actions was in place to begin with?
Pumping digital devices into schools creates an unprecedented challenge for the latter. Schools existed for the past 400 years precisely because they were the knowledge monopolies. With digital devices, the knowledge monopolies fall apart. Schools (read people involved in education) then must challenge or at least stay abreast of the newer technologies by offering the wisdom and the proper instruction that no technology can (replace them to) deliver. Does such wisdom and instruction exist right now? If not, what investment is available or foreseeable to ensure that such instruction and wisdom is achieved and maintained?
To return to Thamus. He warns that Theuth’s pupils will lose wisdom for mere recollection of information. Bringing over (newer) technologies to the school will not guarantee the nurturing of wisdom, rather, it opens the doors to the technologies that already entangle outside school life and overtax from children’s precious time - time that is supposed to be spent on practising basic literacy skills and, simply, play.
The aim here is not to reject the idea of investing in education. Like Theuth’s, most tools have come about with good intentions in mind. Nonetheless, one should look with sceptical eye on the idea of paying more for the tools than for instruction of those who will use them.
For, could one argue that if half of the €15 million were to be pumped into teachers’ salaries and training it might deliver the desired (whatever that is) improvement in education? Is, ultimately, the chisel that makes the bad table or the carpenter?
If there ever is a problem in education newer technology certainly will not solve it.
In all this, one could imagine Thamus addressing the Ministry of Education: “Dear ministry, my paragon of educators, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practise it. So it is in this; you, who are the leader of education, have out of fondness for your offspring come to believe newer technology will advance education, whereas, in fact, it will tax more from children’s time than is necessary for them to master basic literacy skills and enjoy unstructured, imaginative play; it will entice more multitasking which we all know leads to bigger troubles; it will question the role of teachers in a mediated environment; it will deprive children of necessary face-to-face interaction, the less of which, research shows, leads to poorer learning; it will expose children to a barrage of information in the googol without proper instruction. And even though you cannot see beyond the next election, your decisions affect our children’s lives.”
Velislava Hillman is completing a PhD on the effects of digital devices on creativity and learning in children with the University of Westminster.