Let’s find out Neil Postman’s ideas on copyright law and fair use rights!
The faith is that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world; which is to say, that non-triviial schooling can provide a point of view from which what is can be seen clearly, what was as a livdng present, and what will be as filled with possibility.
What this means is that at its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
Page x.
Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
“With some reservations but mostly with conviction, I use the word narrative as a synonym for god, with a small g.”
Page 4.
Cultural pluralism entered some schools beginning in the 1930s: “the history, literature, and traditions of different immigrant groups were included as part of the great tale of the American Creed.” This:
Certain versions of what is now called “multiculturalism” reject all of these ideas and seriously threaten the future of public, as opposed to private, schools: “the idea of public education debends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness.”
Public education does not serve a public; it creates a public. “The question is, What kind of public does it create?”
Pages 16 to 18.
“The truth is that school cannot exist without some reason for its being, and in fact there are several gods our students are presently asked to serve.” These include:
Pages 27 to 34.
Neil Postman quoted Diane Ravitch arguing that technology challenges the tradition that children should be educated in school:
In this new world of pedagogical plenty, children and adults will be able to dial up a program on their home television to learn whatever they want to know, at their own convenience. If Little Eva cannot sleep, she can learn algebra instead. At her home-learning station, she will tune in to a series of interesting problems that are presented in an interactive medium, much like video games. . . . Young John may decide that he wants to learn the history of modern Japan, which he can do by dialing up the greatest authorities and teachers on the subject, who will not only use dazzling graphs and illustrations, but will narrate a historical video that excites his curiosity and imagination.
(I’ve seen Ravitch speak in person, and I’d be surprised if this is her real, personal, unqualified opinion. But I don’t think Postman would be misleading. In any case she respected the h in historical.)
Postman responded:
In this vision, there is, it seems to me, a confident and typical sense of unreality. Little Eva can’t sleep, so she decides to learn a little algebra. Where did Little Eva come from, Mars? If not, it is more likely she will tune into a good movie. Young John decides that he wants to learn the history of modern Japan? How did young John come to this point? How is it that he never visited a library up to now? Or is it that he, too, couldn’t sleep and decided a little modern Japanese history was just what he needed?
What Ravitch is talking about here is not a new technology but a new species of child[.]
Postman also quoted Hugh McIntosh, writing for the National Academy of Sciences: “Having trouble with a science project? Teleconference about it with a research scientist.” And responded:
It is always interesting to attend to the examples of learning, and the motivations that ignite them, in the songs of love that technophiles perform for us. It is, for example, not easy to imagine research scientists all over the world teleconferencing with thousands of students who are having difficulty with their science projects.
Pages 38 to 40.
“Schools are not know and never have been chiefly about getting information to children.”
We are overwhelmed with information, and what is needed is technology education: education not about how to use technology but about how technology changes society.
Every school, save those ripped asunder by separatist ideology, tries to tell a story about America that will enable students to feel a sense of national pride. Students deserve that, and their parents expect it. The question is how to do this and yet avoid indefference, on the one hand, and a psychopathic nationalism, on the other.
As it happens, there is such a story available to us. It has the virtues of being largely true, of explaining our past, including our mistakes, of inviting participation in the present, of offering hope for the future. It is a story that does not require the belief that America is superior to all other countries, only that it is unique, youthful, admirable, and opened wide to unfulfilled humane possibilities. No student can ask more of his or her country. No school can offer more.
I propose, then, the story of America as an experiment, a perpetual and fascinating question mark. The story includes the experiences of those who lived here before the European invasion, and of those Europeans who provided the invaders with both their troubles and their ideas. After all, every story has a prologue. But the story properly begins, as Abraham Lincoln saw it, with a series of stunning and dangerous questions. Is it possible to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? And who are the people, anyway? And how shall they proceed in governing themselves? And how shall we protect indivuduals from the power of the people? And why should we do all this in the first place?
“[T]hese questions are still unanswered and will always remain so.”
Pages 70 to 71.
[I]n steering clear of patriotism, educators miss an opportunity to provide schooling with a profound and transcendent narrative that can educate and inspire students of all ages. I refer, of course, to the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument.
“I would expect that whatever approach might be taken, every teacher would have read the following documents and books:”
Page 132.
Great American experiments that can be discussed in school include public education (or “Is it possible to have a coherent, stable culture made up of people of different languages, religions, traditions, and races?”) and “Is it possible to preserve the best of American traditions and social institutions while allowing uncontrolled technological development?”
There is no question that listlessness, ennui, and even violence in school are related to the fact that students have no useful role to play in society. The strict application of nurturing and protective attitudes toward children has created a paradoxical situation in which protection has come to mean excluding the young from meaningful involvement in their own communities. It is hardly utopian to try to invent forms of youthful participation in social recunstruction as an alternative or supplement to the schooling process. Moreover, as things stand now in many places, the energy of the young is an obstacle that schooling must overcome.
As a more conventional but probably even more “impractical” reform, “I propose that we realign the structure of what are called “major subjects” so that (if you will forgive the unplanned alliteration) arcaeology, anthropology, and astronomy are given the highest priority.” The current categories have not been as permanent as they seem: “in this context, it would be helpful if the training of teachers and administrators included attention to the history of “subjects” so that there may be some understanding of how, when, and why subjects were formed. This would assist in shielding school people from the dangers of hardening of the categories.”
Page 102.
“If we are interested in increasing awareness of the preciousness of the Earth, of its place as our home, both in the past and the future, then no subject will serve as well as archaeology.”
Page 104.
This story portrays people as imperfect, as error-makers.
Proposed reforms:
To try to renew a teacher’s sense of the difference between teaching and learning, to eliminate packaged truths from the classroom, and to focus student attention on error are part of an uncommon but, I believe, profound narrative capable of generating interest and inspiration in school.
Page 118.
As things stand now, teachers are apt to think of themselves as truth tellers who hope to extend the intelligence of students by revealing to them, or having them discover, incontrovertible truths and enduring ideas. I would suggest a different metaphor: teachers as error detectors who hope te extend the intelligence of students by helping them reduce the mistakes in their knowledge and skills.
“There are many honorable books that take human error as a theme.”
“Such books are not normally included as part of the education of teachers. Were they to be used, teachers would likely come to three powerful conclusions.”
All subjects can be taught from a historical perspective.
I can think of no better way to demonstrate that knowledge is not a fixed thing but a continuous struggle to overcome prejudice, authoritarianism, and even “common sense.”
Pages 121 to 124.
“When we incorporate the lives of our ancestors in our education, we discover that some of them were great error-makers, some great error-correctors, some both. And in discovering this, we accomplish three things.”
Of course, to ensure that the last of these lessons be believed, we would have to make changes in what is called “the classroom environment.” At present, there is very little tolerance for error in the classroom. That is one reason students cheat. It is one of the reasons students are nervous. It is one of the reasons many students are reluctant to speak. It is certainly the reason why students (and the rest of us) fight so hard to justify what they think they know. In varying degrees, being wrong is a disgrace; one pays a heavy price for it.
Page 125.
Suppose teachers made it clear that all materials introduced in class were not to be regarded as authoritative and final but, in fact, as problematic—textbooks, for example. [. . .] It is best, of course, to eliminate them altogether, replacing them with documents and other materials carefully selected by the individual teacher (what else is the Xerox machine for?). But if elimination is too traumatic, then we would not have to do without them, only without their customary purpose. we would start with the premise that a textbook is a particular person’s attempt to explain something to us and threby tell us the truth of some matter. But we would know that this person could not be telling us the whole truth. Because no one can. We would know that this person has certain prejudices and biases. Because everyone has. We would know that this person must have included some disputable facts, shaky opinions, and faulty conclusions. Thus, we have good reason to use this person’s textbook as an object of inquiry. What might have been left out? What are the prejudices? What are the disputable facts, opinions, and conclusions? How would we proceed to make such an inquiry? Where would we go to check facts? What is a “fact,” anyway? How would we proceed in uncovering prejudice? On what basis would we judge a conclusion unjustifiable?
Page 126.
Occupied with such inquries about how a fact became a fact and what objectivity means in history, students
will discover how often humans were wrong, how dogmatically they defended their errors, how difficult it was and is to make corrections. Do we believe that our blood circulates through the body? In studying the history of biology, students will discover that 150 years after Harvey proved blood does circulate, some of the best physicians still didn’t believe it. What will students make of the fact that Galileo, under threat of torture, was forced to deny that the Earth moves? What will students think if they acquaint themselves with the arguments for slavery in the United States?
Will our students become cynical? I think not—at least not if their education tells the following story: Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adeventure in overcoming our errors. There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong.
Pages 127 to 128.
Learning a foreign language:
Even a language as similar to English in structure and vocabulary as Spanish will give different connotations to ideas and things, and therefore will suggest that the world is not exactly as the English language depicts it. Of course, languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Russian will reveal this fact much more precisely. If it is important that our young value diversity of point of view, there is no better way to achieve it than to have them learn a foreign language and, it should go without saying, to begin to learn it as early as possible—in the first grade, for example.
Educational visionaries
insist that competence in using computers is essential in a global economy, apparently believing that speaking a foreign language is not; at least one does not hear the importance of foreign-language learning spoken of very much. As I have already said, almost everyone is in the process of learning to use computers, irrespective of houw much attention is given to the task in school. But if our schools pay little attention to foreign-languages, about 80 percent of our population will remain monolingual (at present about 32 million Americans speak a foreign tongue, leaving more than 200 million who do not). I suppose that if one must be monolingual, English is quite satisfactory, since it embodies the worldviews of so many different languages. But the point is that our young ought not to be monolingual, and if the schools paid less attention to driver education and other such marginal tasks, our students wouldn’t be.
Pages 150 to 151.
Teaching religion:
To say that something must be done delicately does not mean it cannot be done. Of course it can, if we do it with mature preparation. We must proceed, for example, with the knowledge that many students and their parents believe their story is the literal truth. There is no need to dispute them. Nothing could be further from my mind than that comparative religion studies should aim at “narrative busting” or even, for that matter, a superficial cynicism. The idea is to show that different people have told different stories; that they have, at various times, borrowed elements from one another’s narratives; that it is appropriate to treat the narratives of others with respect; and that, ultimately, all such narratives have a similar purpose.
[T]here will be students who belive not only that their narrative is “true,” but that all others are false. How does one cope with that? I am not sure, but one might proceed, first, by making students aware of those religions that do not insist on an exclusive truth—for example, Bahai, which takes the view that the prophets of all religions spoke the truth, although in different words, with meanings suitable to the times in which they spoke.
One may take the historical approach, “which inevitably reveals the dynamic nature of religious belief.”
[T]here is nothing disrespectful, and everything honest, in showing students that even within religions that insist on an exclusive “truth,” truths change. But, of course, this does not adequately address the fact that certain fundamental truths of each particular religion do not change. The Christians belived the Messiah came[(a cursory look at the world’s situation refutes that)]. The Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come. The Buddhists don’t believe in a Messiah at all. The Hindus believe in reincarnation. The Muslims do not. What then? The answer to any student who believes that other religions are simply wrong (or, as the [in his later life] Christian apologist C. S. Lewis put it, are more primitive) is that he or she may be right. But, as the First Amendment implies, we cannot be sure, and, therefore, while everyone is permitted to be sure in his or her own mind, no one is permitted to prevent anyone from disagreeing.
Pages 155 to 156.
Definitions:
From the earliest grades through graduate school, students are given definitions and, with few exceptions, are not told whose definitions they are, for what purposes they were invented, and what alternative definitions might serve equally well. [. . .]
In a thousand examinations on scores of subjects, students are asked to give definitions of hundreds of things, words, concepts, procedures. It is to be doubted that there are more than a few classrooms in which there has been any discussion of what a definition is. How is that possible?
Page 172.
Questions:
Everything we know has its origin in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings. Then how is it possible that no more than one in one hundred students has ever been exposed to an extended and systematic study of the art and science of question-asking? How come Alan Bloom didn’t mention this, or E. D. Hirsch, Jr., or so many others who have written books on how to improve our schools? Did they simply fail to notice that the principal intellectual instrument available to human beings is not examined in school?
Page 173.
Metaphors:
such simple verbs as is or does are, in fact, powerful metaphors that express some of our most fundamental conceptions about the way things are. We believe there are certain things people “have,” certain things people “do,” even certain things people “are.” These beliefs do not necessarily reflect the structure of reality. They simply reflect a[] habitual way of talking about reality.
Page 176.
In schools, for instance, we find that tests are given to determine how smart someone is or, more precisely, how much smartness someone has. If, or an IQ test, one child scores a 138 and another 106, the first is thought to have more smartness than the other. But this seems to me a strange conception—evey bit as strange as “doing” arthritis or “having” criminality. I do not know anyone who has smartness. The people I know sometimes do smart things (as far as I can judge) and sometimes do dumb things—depending on what circumstances they are in, how much they know about a situation, and how interested they are. Smartness, so it seems to me, is a specific performance, in a particular set of circumstances. It is not something you are or have in measurable quantities.
[Oh, how I agree with him— how I’ve agreed since long before I read him, and still Postman hasn’t yet expressed all my feelings on “intelligence.” However, we cannot blame the schools, for these ideas have currency. And there would seem to be some grounding in reality for the use of two terms he took on next, continuing directly: “In fact, the assumption that smartness is something you have has led to such nonsensical terms as over- and underachievers. As I understand it, an overachiever is someone who doesn’t have a lot of smartness but does a a lot of smart things. An underachiever is someone who has a lot of smartness but does a lot of dumb things.”In any case, the larger point:]
“The ways in which language creates a worldview are not usually part of the schooling of our young.”
Pages 176 to 177.
Alfred Korzybski wrote that human beings can accumulate knowledge from the past and communicate knowledge to the future through their ability to use symbols, which in turn is made possible by abstracting: selecting, omitting, and organizing the details of reality to experience the world as patterned and coherent. Although the physical world is in constant flux, the use of words allows us to map the world.
In focusing on this process, Korzybski believed he had discovered why scientists are more effective than the rest of us in solving problems. Scientists tend to be more conscious of the abstracting process; more aware of the distortions in their verbal maps; more flexible in altering their symbolic maps to fit the world. His main educational objective was to foster the idea that by making our ordinary uses of language more like the scientific uses of language, we may avoid misunderstanding, superstition, prejudice, and just plain nonsense.
Pages 179 to 182.
And a brilliant final word on technology (2nd paragraph):
Technology education is not a technical subject. It is a branch of the humanities. Technical knowledge can be useful, but one does not need to know the physics of television to study the social and political effects of television. One may not own an automobile, or even know how to drive one, but this is no obstacle to observing what the automobile has done to American culture.
It should also be said that technology education does not imply a negative attititude toward technology. It does imply a critical attitude. To be “against technology” makes no more sense than to be “against food.” We can’t live without either. But to observe that it is dangerous to eat too much food, or to eat food that has no nutritional value, is not to be “antifood.” It is to suggest what may be the best uses of food.
Page 191.
Postman, Neil. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995 (reprinted New York: Vintage Books, 1996).