Week of October 11 - Chapter 8 - Dewey
BLOG POSTS:
Nick Kendra
Matteo
Like last week, use the blog to work out ideas as you read, and point to sections in the text you think are important. Also, please:
“As I have emphasized more than once, the road of the new education is not an easier one to follow than the ol road but a more strenuous and difficult one.
“The greatest danger that attends its future is the idea that it is an easy way to follow… it is for this reason that instead of extolling its principles, I have confined myself to showing certain conditions which must be fulfilled if it is to have the successful career which by right belongs to it” (p. 90).
Dewey didn’t talk about the amazing outcomes that could be - he talked about the work that would be required to arrive at a progressive, more thoughtful educational philosophy.
“I do not wish to close without recording my firm belief that the fundamental issue is not of new versus old education nor of progressive against traditional education but a question of what anything whatever must be to be worthy of the name education” (p. 90).
Dewey circles back to the first chapter and his disinterest with either/ors. It’s not a competition, it’s not about criticizing - it’s about being thoughtful and intentional with the education that is provided to youth so as to create caring, democratic citizens who love learning. He focuses on not using the word “progressive” just to be contrary and fight against the current system.
“The basic question concerns the nature of education with no qualifying adjectives prefixed. What we want and need is education pure and simple…” (p. 90)
Dewey is interested in investing time and energy into any methods that work
1) Identify contemporary examples of continuity and interaction at work. This can be a matter of happenstance - like the emergence of cyberbullying - or planfulness, like decisions about technology in outdoor programs. How about social media? How might this be understood through the framework of continuity and interaction?
I think that continuity and interaction have combined to create a polarized, dialectically formulated political environment in the United States. Continuity, the notion that all experiences are carried forward and color future experiences, serves to intensify dialogue. I believe that this happens by connecting childhood experiences, many likely aversive, to the topical unfoldings of political discourse. This is perhaps most obvious when educated individuals condescend to those that disagree with them - touching on and activating a woundedness which contributes to a reactive doubling-down. In the same way, there is an compensatory elitist othering of those in diametrically opposed positions which serves to divorce personhood from, and objectify, those who disagree. Together, these create the seemingly incommensurable experiential worlds between which Americans seem to be divided. True to Dewey's conception of a new way forward for education, a shift in thinking is necessary to transcend this dialectic. This way is unlikely to be an amalgam of the existing positions, but quite possibly something new and revolutionary centered on the imagining of other's experiences. A shift in gaze that may allow the acknowledgement that the phenomena of the world do not unfold without us, but include us - thereby gathering the seemingly disparate strands into which the world has been split and unifying them into a wholistic experiential understanding of other perspectives.
I think the persistence of information through the internet has intensified the effects of continuity and interaction in ways that Dewey could never have imagined. The immortality of everything anyone ever posts on the internet allows the choices of the past to interact with the present in ways never before experienced. Social media, as the prompt states, is a perfect example of this, as it has become common place for politically incorrect and socially indecorous posts in an individuals past to be used as grounds for their professional disgrace years later. Another internet related example are the recent dynamics associated with privacy in the age of 5g. We are inviting smart devices into our homes and trading away privacy for convenience. This may not seem problematic until we need our privacy to protect us from political repercussions but by that time, we have already chosen our branch of the continuum. Perhaps most insidiously, advertisers and social media companies are likely using data harvested from our smart devices to manipulate our behaviors and, therefor, our continuums, without our awareness. By giving away our privacy Dewey might claim, we also give away our ability to dictate our purpose and therefore our freedom. Several other non-internet related examples of continuity and interact at play in modern circumstances are the disenfranchisement of felons, the proliferation of addictions, and the modern woman's dilemma of choosing between childbearing and pursuit of a career. Each of these examples is worthy of an essay at least.
A current issue that could possibly disrupt democracy as we know it is the invention of deepfake AI software. This software allows users to create videos of people where they are actually speaking and acting within a video, however the entire creation is fake. These have already been created, and the technology is getting stronger every day. This was brought up in an Andrew Yang podcast featuring Nina Schick. The fear is that once this technology is available to enough people, we will no longer be able to believe any video footage that we see, and objective truth and facts will disappear. At that point, the only thing that will matter is power. Any type of technology created to block this deep fake AI will only make it more powerful as it learns new ways to overcome the barriers. This technology is related to continuity as the path forward builds on the past “achievements.” Interaction is at work in that external technological forces connect with internal human drives. I just spoke with someone on Saturday who is looking to incorporate deepfake software into his platform. I told him about the fear that was discussed on the Andrew Yang podcast, and he didn’t seem to understand or care about the magnitude of this development. We are moving forward toward this technology whether we like it or not.
To learn more about this:
Is anything real? Nina Schick on the future of deepfakes | Andrew Yang | Yang Speaks
Nina Schick, author of Deep Fakes and the Infocalypse, takes us into the world of synthetic media, where videos and audio can be convincingly altered without us noticing. Nina and Andrew talk about the incredible advances in deepfake technology, how we can restore trust in a world where any video can be manipulated, and how deepfakes enable figures like Trump to benefit from something known as the "liar's dividend."
2) Answer: what do you think the role(s) of the outdoors would be in a Deweyan framework?
I think that the role of the outdoors, and the concept of natural consequences, could stand in to give form to experiential education. Dewey does not “extoll principles,” instead he suggests criteria which must be met in order to meet the standard of the new education. Perhaps his concern that experiential, progressive education may not be “adequately conceived” may be assuaged by a full immersion in a world of immediate and logical consequence where sequenced skill building is rewarded. In this way, the peril of pedagogical improvisation may be mitigated despite Dewey’s “general and abstract language.”
The outdoors has the added advantage of being a space broad enough in it’s reach to capture the imaginations, lifeways, and interests of many. It is fertile ground for the interweaving of diverse disciplines and worldviews. Dewey’s guidance to stitch a thread of individual interest, social history, natural science, and curiosity through education finds no better arena than the outdoors. Take for instance the every widening discipline of environmental science, which may swallow up subjects as broad as geography and community-based resource management or as narrow as soil science and remote sensing. The practical exploration of these varied subjects in an outdoors setting will invite the learner to take historical perspective which may consider forces ranging colonial land management and the impact of geopolitical conflict to shifts in gender roles and patterns of cultivation.
I can also see the role of the outdoors be connected to the idea of place, the sociohistorical importance that occurs within the outdoors, and to support scientific and practical learning. Place-based: Dewey believed in the importance of connecting what happened inside classrooms to the world outside the students’ home, and that is one way in which the outdoors could be discussed. Sociohistorical: Teaching history and supporting students in learning from our past mistakes and successes was key to Dewey’s philosophy - in this way, the outdoors includes key geographical and historical keys to why and how historical events occurred as they did. Scientific and practical learning: Dewey believed that science experiments as well as learning how to create practical items such as furniture were foundational to students’ education. With this vein in mind, I believe outdoors would be used as a classroom for physics, astronomy, biology, evolutionary sciences, horticultural studies, shop class, and so much more.
This was another rich blog entry. The return to the "social dilemma" content was, I think, well placed, since it is certainly an example of the interaction of cultural/technological evolution and human psychology. We are only just starting to understand its implications both psychologically and socially/politically. It is an especially compelling example because of its reciprocal effects; technology influencing psychology, which in turn influences society and politics (in some pretty dark ways).
ReplyDeleteYour answers to the question about the outdoors was also very interesting and on my read likewise captured both sides of the culture/psychology relationship. You drew attention to the "concentrating" function of the outdoors (a lens through which to see the integration of different disciplinary themes), to its sociohistorical potential, and to its developmental function as a setting for individual exploration and interest. It becomes interesting to think about where these concerns intersect; how would an "outdoor curriculum" be structured to maximize the potential across disciplinary, sociohistorical, and individual domains? Moreover, what are the local opportunities to do this that might have the most relevance to students?