Postmodern Awakening

Postmodernism, like a comet, quietly enters our space then before any pronouncement lays waste to many of our most cherished traditions. What came before Post-modern ideas? Was it modern or pre-modern? What will come after postmodern thought? Will it be Post-postmodernism or extreme-modernism? Denis Hlynka gives a wonderful account of the impact this philosophy has had on educational terrain (Anglin, 113).

There are those who instantly reject the concept of postmodernism. Some claim that it is anarchistic. Some claim that it is counter-productive. That it destroys the logical, scientific mind-set of contemporary society and it replaces it with a vision of chaos. Some claim that it is philosophically unsound, because it revels in relativism. The critics wish nothing less than to discredit postmodernism as the root problem of the end of the twentieth century.

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As Hlynka states, “Postmodernism is not an ideology one buys into. . .it is a condition of contemporary society, and it’s a condition that many now think has been caused by technology. If that is so, then educational technologists are part of the condition.” (Anglin, 113).     Hlynka describes the reaction to this phenomenon as panic or even ridicule. We tend to believe it is possible to hide under the bed and the scary strangers will go away. This speaks to the religious fanatics who use microwaves, computers, automobiles and the internet. Technology is like a virus and it infects all of us in it’s path. No one is immune. The refrain from educationalists that basics are what our children need is falling on deaf unskilled ears. Hlynka lists the symp(tomes) as follows;

Students need and desire more voices of authority in their lives. The teacher is no more the only information authority. Television has brought many students educational experience. There was a day when the teacher was the only literate person in the community. No more.     The Canon of Knowledge must be challenged. With more voices speaking and more people with knowledge, there is no ‘one’ true knowledge. The role of the educational technologist is clearly to challenge the existing canon.     Textbooks are dated. Film technologies use to be considered a supplement to established lectures and texts. New information is constantly provided on the internet. Tele-information is not a supplement but it is the replacement for past technologies that remain dated.     There are no ‘true’ meanings to words or phrases. People possess the algorithm to decipher language code and it is not possible to attach a single meaning to any experience.     Learning is not linear. Human experience is random---nonlinear. Educational technology delivers experience in a very nonlinear manner. Reading books will be different and should be different. Hypertext is a vast improvement on an old linear hardback book. (Hlynka, p. 114-118).

To say, that our youth need not learn Shakespeare or Plato’s teachings is near heresy. Heresy, is the ability to see through the imposed cultural blindfold. Looking back, we need wonder, how did an earthling before Shakespeare or Plato ever became self-actualized! Though many would have us ‘just say no’ to cultural relativism, as Allan Bloom retorts, “. . .I have referred to Plato’s Republic, which is for me the book on education, because it really explains to me what I experience as a man and a teacher.” (Bloom 12). Bloom ‘sees’ the world so clearly, but not the Aborigines who have existed quite well for many thousands of years without Plato or Shakespeare! Relativism presents a danger to modern civilization, it abhors the truth. The truth that is made real through physical strength or economic blather. The re-convergence of humankind and nature, once disjoined by guilt and ignorance, will happen. Change is the truth.

Punctuated Technology

What will the world look like in the year 2020? Natural Science is a branch of science with varied philosophical color. Being a nonlinear scientist, the mathematics proves that every moment’s future depends on the previous moment’s past. Special Dependence on Initial Conditions, the foundation of Chaos Theory, strictly forbids Newtonian clockwork prediction unless one knows all the prior conditions exactly. The Many-World Interpretation of reality backs up Chaos theory in that all ‘realities’ are happening simultaneously! The greatest discoveries of this century, Relativity, Quantum Physics, Plate Tectonics, and Symbiotic Evolution have given us the tools to deal with our life experiences. We cannot dismiss scientific theories, but only improve upon them. Having said this, one can speculate on a future without clinging to any one outcome. Naturalists face nature openly, joyfully realizing that any collapse of the wave function of any event brings about infinite uncertainty elsewhere in the vast spacetime of nature.

What will High Schools look like in 25 years? Looking back 25 years could be a worthwhile endeavor, maybe. It could also be the chains that bind future imaginative possibilities. So, already knowing this, it’s best to just go forward and ocassionally relate back to the present and even less often to the past. This strategy has validity if one considers that computers did not have any affect until the late 1950’s! Nearing the end of the century, these silicon-units are displacing millions of bio-units (workers). Is this Darwinian evolution, Daniel Hillis, a computer programmer “. . .machines will get good enough at dealing with complexity that they can start dealing with their own complexity and you will get systems that evolve” (Rifkin, p. 61). Lynn Margulis, a world-class paradigm deconstructionist, would see an invasion of silicon-based lifeforms into bio-based lifeforms and proclaim a symbiotic union (Brockman). The Japanese are working on a 10 year program to make computers human-like. At MIT, scientists are working with linguists to discover the mechanism underlying intelligence. So, looking back would prevent one’s imagination from assuming a possible human-like machine that could make the human race, a God race. This new lifeform would have the same discontinuity we bio-units have with our God. You can hear the tin man laughing.

Distant Thunder

Without hesitation, education will quickly become ‘distant’ in that, students will not be required to be at a certain location. ‘Virtual classrooms’ will prevail within the next 25 years replacing the industrial classroom (smacks of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle). What we do need to do is step back, oh so very quickly, and discover how our schools evolved as they did. Many futurists and historians have trisected the last two centuries into the Industrial Era, the Service Era, and the Information Era. Schools are like the era, in which they are couched. “The Industrial Society is linked to the classroom in the same way as it is linked to the factories. So strong is this association that the World Bank has invested billions of dollars building classrooms in the belief that the factories would follow and people would be brought into the Industrial Age” (Tifflin, p.49).

High Schools will be virtual, existing in cyberspace, This cyberspace will be the new protoplasm that binds bio-units with one another. The non-nucleated bio-unit will now have a central nucleus (the hard wiring done by sophisticated computer networks), which would seems to mean---a new lifeform. Students and Teachers will switch between these two quantum states of being. The new lifeform will truly be a life-long learner. The Information Age classroom will alleviate the many systemic problems associated with Industrial Age educational institutions. The near instantaneous flow of information will enhance all participants in their life experiences and promote the growth that we all desire. Old structures die out---new structures take their place. The new structures have been selected to further promulgate the genetic expression of the human race. Selected by present experiences.

The cost of operating a vast disconnected national educational system is becoming uneconomical. Teachers are not able to simultaneously educate 38 students in a small classroom. Education needs to be more accessible, less expensive, up to date, relevant, tailored to fit, learner-centered, and market driven (Tifflin, p. 85). Information is zipping around the earth faster than ever before and many institutions are in the fast lane. Why must we hang on to these relics of the past (even if that past is only 75 years old), blackboards, textbooks, lectures, classrooms, schedules, teacher ratios, etc.? We continue to build Auto Parks with robots, who take our jobs, and puppet people who serenade these innovations with silly songs (Moore). We see other people doing these things and we tend to say ‘we would never do that’. But that is not true. The nation is building school after school, hiring teacher after teacher, buying books, and remaining stuck in a paradigmistic past. Money spent to fend off the certain extinction of old twentieth century technology will be directed toward the evolution of the same.

Distant education has been around for many years. With planning and strategy, curriculum specialists could wire multitudes of students to a network with ‘intelligent agents’ to educate our kids right in their own homes! Education needs a business approach--the ‘bottom line’ attitude. Cultural evolution evolves as does biological evolution. Of course, there is always a conflict between what will be extinct and what will pervade. We tend to regard technological innovation with Augustinian angst. In New World New Mind, Paul Ehrlich says, “In human history these two processes--the increase in brain size and the increase in the quantity and complexity of culture were involved in a positive feedback loop. The more culture, the more our brains increased. The larger the brain the more culture. Technology was not born between ‘urine and feces’---it was born from human ingenuity. It is not inherently evil. Technology is bringing the human race closer together than it could ever have dreamed. In 25 years, our schools will have adapted to the efficiency of our intelligent machines. Our children and our adults will be more informed and more humane. The advent of personal communication devices that let us ‘see’ our friends and family even though we may be on the other side of the planet is anything but, evil. The ability of citizens to get information tailored to their search parameters (their free will) is the most democratic of notions. Our great philosophers of economics and politics, foresaw this moment. In The Capitalist Manifesto, Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler prophetized about this idea of a world with freedom of thought and freedom of action. They conjectured that Democracy brings political freedoms and Socialism bring economic freedom. Technology is fast bringing these two diametrically opposed views together in one highly advanced creation of an already highly evolved creation---humankind.

The extreme superstructure of the current educational system will not exist in 25 years. A more intelligent, efficient, dedicated, permeable and entertaining structure will have taken its place. Education will then be something that is thought of as important and necessary as finding a career or a mate.   This transformation will not come about because of a conscious pursuit of Educational Reform, but rather as an adaptive response to the changes in the family and in the larger society (Elkind, p. 8). In 25 years, children will discover the world in a very individual way. Yet, for all the humanists who feel a very inhumane element to this scenario, this new way will be one designed by humans and implemented by humans. Many of us have no reservations with electric motors, television, telephones, airplanes, microwaves, etc.. Bloom suggests that teachers who become friends to their students are somehow perverse, or at least lacking adult manners. This monograph suggests that the educational network in 25 years will very friendly, so friendly that we may not be able to distinguish it from our most compassionate (perverse) teachers. Having a choice to go back to the Modern era or even to the pre-modern era, we would not choose this way. The autocratic, set knowledge base, static nature, nuclear family and reason over language way of life was for another time.     Our tools have brought us to another world. Can this be the ‘original sin’ that so many theological scholars have eluded. Which tools do we give up? How is it possible to not use a tool that we have imagined into ‘reality’? There was a day when there was no automated teller, no computerized telephone switching system, no world-wide web of information, and no television. Which of these culprits are responsible for the tragic loss of the nuclear family? Which do we turn our backs on? Systems do not change in isolation. Charles Babbage could be our murderer. Karl Marx or Adam Smith with their diatribes and passionate writings could be the culprits. Science has become so sophisticated that we are now able to say with honor, that we can’t predict the evolution of any system in nature. Progress or evolution is a change of state. A movement from here to there. Its trajectory is not under the control of any one organism. The forces that impinge upon humankind (everything) are not controllable. They are somewhat understandable and they are certainly fascinating. A course set to go back to another time would need even more sophisticated quantum technology.

The film Roger and Me made it very clear that we as organisms are sometimes slow to adapt. We spend a lot of our labor doing exactly what we don’t want to do! It’s not unimaginable to think that objectivism is a hoax. It’s just, scary. The freedom that we can obtain by permitting even that one basic idea to die out, is unmeasurable. The interconnectedness of all things is the convergent reality. Schools, teachers and books and grades are all part of a larger process---learning. Why is it so important to hold to old notions? Are we all learning and learning what we want when we want? It is quite evident that technology is making learning fun, accessible, less expensive, relevant, up to date, tailored to fit and learner-centered. In 25 years, people will be knocking down the doors of the vast educational network that technology will have made possible. Evidence abounds for the extinction of certain species and ideas. Craters, once a viable ecosystem, are now graveyards of the distant past. Beware of unheralded strangers, they shall transform our world. Extinction shall be a thing of the past. Resistance is futile. . .

References

Adler, J. M. (1991). Have without Have-nots. New York: MacMillan. Anglin, J. G. (Ed.). (1995). Instructional Technology. Englewood, Co.: Libraries Unlimited Inc. Adler, J. M., Kelso, O. L. (1958). The Capitalist Manifesto. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Berman, M. (1989). Coming to Our Senses. New York: Simon and Shuster. Bloom, A. (1987). The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Shuster. Bohannan, P., Glazer, M. (1988). High Points in Anthropology. New York: Alfred J. Knopf. Brockman, J. (1995). The Third Culture. New York: Simon and Shuster. Ehrlich, P., Ornstein, R. (1989). New World New Mind. New York: Doubleday Press. Elkind, D. (Sept. 1995). School and family in the post-modern world. Phi Delta Kappan, 77, 8-14. Fusfeld, R. D. (1990). The Age of the Economist. London: Little Brown. Hagen, S. (1995). How the world can be the way it is. Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books. Moore, M. (199?). Roger and Me [Film]. Rajasingham, L., Tiflin, J. (1995). In Search of the Virtual Class. London: Routledge. Rifkin, J. (1995). End of work. New York: Putnam. Smith, H. (1995). Challenge to America [Film]. Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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