[iDC] Deinstitutionalizing education

Mon Oct 25 13:36:17 UTC 2010

Jodi,

I think that context here, is everything.  I have long been skeptical
of online education.  My experience leads me to believe that many
people (I include myself in this number) need to discover social space
and the risks and pleasures associated with it.  And I believe that
only from intimate encounters with each other can we form the cultural
attitudes necessary to abstract social existence to the point where it
can be meaningfully signified online.  And, as evidence of this, I
offer up my own use of networks.  As someone who is a bit skeptical of
the whole project, I think it is easier to approach it with an amount
of attentiveness that would probably not be there if I simply assumed
this approach were equivalent to or superior to physical proximity and
the demands it places on communication.  In other words, and this is
hardly an original point, the value of communication is determined to
a degree by the various things that are invested in it....  whether
these investments be social, psychic, economic, etc.

Against the backdrop of austerity, then, these types of endeavors are
going to be invested with value that will undoubtedly color the
conversation against the idea of community.  This isn't to say that
all the participants will bring similar investments to the
conversation, but the more that do, the less likely you'd get an
education that is not preoccupied with the values of the institution
(which, in this instance, would be an institution founded upon
inequalities and dedicated to their acceleration).

In watching the social revolt in France, I have seen how the popular
American investments in consciousness are paying off.  As I travel
about the small town I live in, I have overheard two conversations
about what is happening in France....  the vantage point is tied to
the years of anti-French propaganda by the American right AND the
specific critique of socialism offered by the Tea Party movement.
What the conversation sounds like is a couple of old guys saying....
"Hmmm....  look at those people."  "Can you believe they are doing all
that because they want to retire at 60!"  And then drifts off into
some sort of vague mutterings about socialism and how hard we work,
but that we could also end up like that if we aren't careful....  with
lots of grim head-shaking.  But in the conversation, you can see
flickers of sympathy.  Working people here know that they are being
taken advantage of, too.  And they sense that things are getting
worse.  But the conversation pivots from a brief flirtation with
justice directly into resentment (the expression of disbelief that
they can retire at 60).  And, boom, instead of people saying, "Yeah,
they have a point!"  they mutter and shake their heads.  I suppose the
next thing for me to do is to interject into the conversation, which I
regret that I haven't done.

On the other hand, I have had conversations with people who do
ultimately conclude after seeing what's going on in France that we
should also be fighting for a chance at a better life.  But in the US,
people are pretty split between those that have achieved meager
benefits (or none at all) and don't want to see the rules changed....
and those who want to see the ethos changed even if they never taste
the fruits of their effort.  The difference is whether the perception
of inequality turns into a drive for justice and greater social
equality or into a spiral of resentment and anti-social behavior.  I
think that the capitalists have been very effective at propagandizing
people to see even things like "justice" or "empathy" or "progress"
through a sinister lens.

So, I would say (and I suspect you'd agree) that online education that
occurs against the backdrop of growing disparity is treacherous,
especially if it is a consequence of austerity being presented as a
triumph of the market.  Against this, there are a number of online
educational endeavors that do achieve greater critical thinking, the
possibility for deeper connections, and an extension of consciousness
(provided, of course, we engage seriously).  This isn't going to be a
substitute for public education.  But it might provide a
counter-narrative to the austerity measures.  But if I had to put my
money on a particular process, I would say that face to face education
is the best opportunity for preserving it, but preserving it requires
the effective dissemination of critical tools in whatever medium is
available.

This whole process of teaching students to be socially engaged,
critically aware, empathetic, reflective, etc. is something that has
to start in early childhood, before they even set foot in a school,
whether it is online or not.  Locally, the closest you get to this is
in the fairly large network of homeschoolers, most of whom are
religious, but many of whom either start out or end up being quite
capable of independent thinking.  The key difference here, is that
parents have adopted a countercultural attitude....  which isn't
always necessarily a positive one....  but which does effectively
prove that how one is invested in the process of education determines
its potential.  (Ironically, this is also a part of the dismantling of
public education....  but given what public education is often
like....  I almost always find my conversations with "unschooled"
teens to be more interesting than my conversations with educated
adults).

Peace!

Davin

2010/10/22 Dean, Jodi <JDEAN at hws.edu>:
>
>
> One should also consider the ideological role and place of celebrations of "digital learning" in the setting of forced austerity measures and education cuts in the EU, UK, and US.
>
> Does saying, "well, people can teach themselves online!" provide further justification for the neoliberal dismantling of public education?
>
> Jodi
>
>
> Jodi Dean
> Hobart and William Smith Colleges
>
> new from Polity, Blog Theory: feedback and capture in the circuits of drive, http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745649696
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net] on behalf of Ismael Peña-López [ictlogist at ictlogy.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 10:45 AM
> To: idc at mailman.thing.net
> Cc: Diego Leal; Cristóbal Cobo
> Subject: [iDC] Deinstitutionalizing education
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Not all of you may not know me as I am relatively new to the list. My
> name is Ismael Peña-López.
> Many thanks to Trebor Scholz for inviting me to share my thoughts on
> learning on the iDC!!
>
> I am a lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia in Spain where I
> work about the digital divide, specifically questions of empowerment. My
> research asks how educational institutions change because of digital
> media.
> http://ictlogy.net<http://ictlogy.net/>
>
> Along those lines, I would like to introduce some topics on the
> de-institutionalization of learning that have been enabled by ICTs. How
> is this de-institutionalization being used to reach collectives that
> dropped out of the educational system or actually never even entered it?
>
> Some of my reflections will be based on the "2010 Horizon Report:
> Iberoamerican Edition" (http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc/8050), which I
> co-authored with Cristóbal Cobo (http://ergonomic.wordpress.com/) and
> Diego Leal (http://www.diegoleal.org/) who will join me in this iDC
> discussion.
>
> Let's start like this:
>
> In many places of the world (especially in rural areas and in lower
> income countries, but not only) the educational system is deficient.
> Today, many claim against the industrialization of education, the
> "Fordization" of learning, the failure of one-size-fits-all,  the
> devaluation of knowledge, or the creation of workers instead of
> citizens.
>
> But the truth is that, in most cases, the industrialization of education
> democratized access to knowledge, even at the risk of a certain level of
> commodification. The problem is that education, especially quality
> education is increasingly difficult to scale
> (http://ictlogy.net/?p=3405).
>
> Notwithstanding, digitization of content and communications have caused
> a dire "revolution" that is transforming our society into an Information
> Society. This digital revolution has lowered the costs of creating,
> accessing  and distributing knowledge-based goods and services, and has
> also lowered the  costs of interaction, intermediation and transaction.
> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=640
> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=1332
>
> Some find this revolution a threat to educational institutions -- it
> will now be easier to circumvent them to access knowledge and experts
> around the globe at lowest costs. Some think that it can be leveraged to
> reach the unreached, to bring education to those that, because of time,
> space or financial constraints, could not attend formal education in an
> educational institution (ie. schools, universities...).
>
> Open educational resources allow for that quality content to reach
> people everywhere in the world. The MIT's OpenCourseWare project has,
> for instance, been replicated for the Spanish speaking community at
> Universia OCW (http://ocw.universia.net<http://ocw.universia.net/>), in Chinese by CORE
> (http://www.core.org.cn/cn/opencou/), in Japanese by the Japan OCW
> Consortium (http://www.jocw.jp/) or the ParisTech OpenCourseWare project
> for French.
>
> The good news is that not only institutions can produce such materials
> as Khan Academy has shown.
> http://www.khanacademy.org<http://www.khanacademy.org/>
>
> Mobility solutions have also enabled people to learn anywhere anytime
> and with the most simple devices. The Tecnológico de Monterrey or the
> Open of Catalonia  are mobile devices. And cellphones (mind you: not
> smartphones) are being used
> for many learning purposes and stand for mobile and immersive learning
> for literacy in emerging economies (ie. Sub-Saharan Africa).
> http://www.ccm.itesm.mx/tecmovil/
> http://myway.blogs.uoc.edu/
> MILLEE http://www.millee.org/
> http://ictlogy.net/?p=3556
>
> The m4lit project in South Africa Kenya is also worth mentioning
> (http://m4lit.wordpress.com<http://m4lit.wordpress.com/>).
>
> Peer to peer learning has been definitely boosted by the Internet, that
> has been able to create communities of practice and communities of
> learning despite their members being scattered on wide geographic areas.
> Red Social UIMP 2.0 (http://redsocial.uimp20.es/) to explore the new
> potentials of ICTs in Education in SpainSpanish speaking countries, Stephen Downes' page (http://www.downes.ca<http://www.downes.ca/>)
> on education, based in Canada but with participants all over the world,
> or the community around Uruguay's Plan Ceibal
> (http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/) are just some examples of social networks
> empowered by ICTs.
>
> Even autonomous learning has its chance after the development of
> Personal Learning Environments, a combination of the aforementioned
> approaches  centered on and managed by the learner.
> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects_list.php?filter_tag_project=ple
>
> And augmented reality, artificial intelligence and the semantic web
> will, in a near future, add up to the toolbox learners can use outside
> of educational institutions for their own benefit and learning.
>
> There are, of course, some dichotomies that need being addressed but the
> gates are  wide open and the possibilities many.
> http://ictlogy.net/?p=3430
>
> best,
> Ismael
>
> --
> Ismael Peña-López
> Department of Law and Political Science
> Open University of Catalonia
>
> http://ictlogy.net<http://ictlogy.net/>
> Av. Tibidabo 39-43
> 08035 Barcelona
>
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