5410 - Week 1 - R/D1

Moderation is the key in dealing with most things in life, and I feel that Technology in Education is no exception. However, as with most major societal changes, a pendulum process may occur. A far right view must first swing a bit to the left before it rests in the center.


I would like to start with the article by Postman. Postman seems to hint that his article is more about moral decay (or change depending on how you view it) and the fact that Technology cannot be the answer to fixing this decay than it is about actual issues with Technology. However, he does bring up some issues that I would like to address.


He frequently poses the question “What is the problem to which ________ is the answer?” Well, I can think of one “problem” to most of these answers is “competition” (Postman, 1993). In a capitalist country to stay afloat, you need to have the latest and greatest gadgets on your car to make people buy your car over other guy’s. You need to be able to use a word processor at the newspaper so someone else does not need to take the time to type the story so you can get your story out before the competing newspaper.


Technology is great for learning and getting information faster. Seeing that his article was written in 1993 there was no way that the statistics written in this article could still hold true, online movie rentals have surely changed the statistics on the 27,000 video outlets. Having access to the internet could provide students with much more up–to–date material than print media ever will.


If Postman is getting at the fact that technology cannot completely replace schools, then I would have to agree with him. He seems to nail the real issue when he talks about narratives and says “If teachers, children, and their parents no longer believe in these narratives, then schools become houses of detention rather than attention.” Being born in 1931 and receiving his PhD in 1958 (facts that were readily available to me from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman thanks to technology), I think that Postman knew a different America than most of our population today knows. It was a propaganda (in which technology was a means of distribution, by the way) driven time where everyone conformed to a norm. Prayer was still in schools, punishment in schools could still be carried out and the two parent family with the stay at home Mom was simply the way things worked. Perhaps, “it’s not because of insufficient information; if crime terrorizes our cities; marriages are breaking up, mental disorders are increasing, and children are being abused (Postman, 1993)", but maybe the availability of information through technology can make this world that we live in easier to manage.


Today’s educator cannot teach about creation, punish a student, say a prayer or force students to conform to a norm without having angry parents in their classrooms. It doesn’t matter if you support or don’t support these changes, it is what educators have to work with. Postman (1993) comments: “One of the principal functions of school is to teach children how to behave in groups.” In a society where both parents are often busy with careers and a declining birthrate meaning fewer siblings, more responsibility is also falling on schools to “parent” children. Unless we want to turn into an automated society of robots, then human, face-to-face schools are imperative to our way of life.


How then is an educator supposed to teach 30 different children from 30 different backgrounds and 30 individual needs in with methods developed in the 50’s? Looking back at the articles I see that Reigeluth and Joseph pose a similar question.


Some topics in the Reigeluth; Joseph (2003) article reminded me of a TV program (can’t remember which one) I was watching a few months ago about the Brooklyn Free school. (http://www.brooklynfreeschool.org/about/index.html). Students are not separated by age and can spend most of their time as they see fit, even if that includes video games. The school places a large emphasis on democracy and makes all of its decisions in that manner. The program indicated that Free Schools were popular in the 60’s but most had closed.


I liked the idea presented by Reigeluth; Joseph (2003) of “teacher as coach.” As the old saying goes “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat everyday (or something like that)”


Another topic brought up by Reigeluth; Joseph (2003) is that of self-paced learning. Are “average” learners who can keep up with the class smarter than someone who takes longer, but is still able to master the skills? What about the day when the average learner comes across a topic where he is below average? Will he possess the endurance to master those skills? Perhaps the less than average student already has mastered the skill of endurance? Will the average student still be able to recall those skills later in life, or does the saying “easy come, easy go” apply here.


In closing, Postman’s apprehensiveness about a completely technology driven society is well warranted. People are made to be with people, not machines. It would be nice to have more free time and more family time in today’s world. However, in an ever changing society and a competitive world, we need to prepare our children for the future and changing some of our traditional methods and using technology can be great aids in doing so.


Postman, N. (1993). Of Luddites, learning, and life. Technos Quarterly, 2(4).

Reigeluth, C.M. & Joseph, R. (2002). Beyond technology integration: The case for technology transformation.Educational Technology, 42(4), 9-13.