Distractions Are Us, Progress Tells Us So!

A friend posted this article from the Nov. 1, NYT to his Facebook page the other day: "Technology Is Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say."

I'll note that "a version" of this was published as "For Better and for Worse, Technology Use Alters Learning Styles, Teachers Say" in the print edition.  You decide if the web gurus who apply an "SEO" praxis to headlines worked some sticky magic.

Of course, both headlines are full of ambiguities and assumptions.  Just look at the assumption that must be made to presume the reader knows what is being "meant" by the word "technology."

I think though that my favorite headline trick is the "tack-on" to both: "teachers say."

But, it's not a tack-on really, it's the whole story.  This piece purports to describe a "teacher's-eye-view" of how "generally" the fact that the world is full of the "categorically" labeled digital information devices (from computers to handheld gaming devices to Kindle Fires to iPads to Xboxes and so on) and  that kids spend more time "in front of them" than they do in school on a daily basis is both "bad and good" as regards that mythical beast "learning."

A shocking assertion of ambivalence!

But, it must be admitted that the times and "minds" (whatever that means) they are a'changin'; the world, due to its spherical nature and its gravitational response to the sun, turns, or so I'm told.

What I wanted to posit is the intention of the piece: As the ground of our being has shifted, currently, to an electronically digital "self" (please feel free to spend time slogging through the "philosophical" literature asserting our digital accoutrements are ACTUALLY extensions of our brains and so are "a part of us"), teachers have become, are, barriers to the "new learning" in this phase of humanity.

Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at Pew, acknowledged that the findings could be viewed from another perspective: that the education system must adjust to better accommodate the way students learn, a point that some teachers brought up in focus groups themselves.

“What we’re labeling as ‘distraction,’ some see as a failure of adults to see how these kids process information,” Ms. Purcell said. “They’re not saying distraction is good but that the label of ‘distraction’ is a judgment of this generation.”

What we have here is a failure to communicate!  Er, rather, what we have here is a re-adjustment bureau proposition.  Kristen Purcell has given us the "truth" of this piece--brains are changing, if you label it appropriately then it's all good.  And that is indeed the truth of culture.  Silly teachers and other "adults" can't see this is how the new brain processes information!  Is that all we mean by "think" these days?

And, as is usual, the "blame" (though it must be admitted at some point that we all approve of the change or at least tacitly accept it as human "progress," quoth the blogger), aimed so wonderfully by this "news item" so as to come from a teacher's mouth, is put upon parents.

“They need skills that are different than ‘Spit, spit, there’s the answer,’ ” said Lisa Baldwin, 48, a high school teacher in Great Barrington, Mass., who said students’ ability to focus and fight through academic challenges was suffering an “exponential decline.” She said she saw the decline most sharply in students whose parents allowed unfettered access to television, phones, iPads and video games.

I knew it was the less-than-rugged individual who was to blame (accept it, shirker) rather than the juggernaut of commercial culture that promotes and sells (requires!) brain extensions to be applied in all aspects of life (there's an app for that!).  Permissive fools, you've let us be successful in our one-sided onslaught!  Here's an interesting aside: I'm pretty sure that our public libraries are now community electronic extensions of "indigent" brains.  Heck, you can't seek/find/apply for work anymore unless you do it online.

All of this is meaningless of course.  The plough changed the world--did it change brains?  Probably.  We are our behaviors.  We are immersed in the this new world order.  Don't like it, there's always Africa...unless Gates has already "wirelessed" it...Mountains in Central America?

But I'll admit that the article (which, come now, we must see as simply an editorial in the guise of "reportage") does end with what I find the "last laugh" of the old brain, our Christian culture.  (Can the Lord be properly identified if He returns pixelated?)

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who studies the impact of technology on the brain...[says] [h]is own research shows what happens to attention and focus in mice when they undergo the equivalent of heavy digital stimulation. Students saturated by entertainment media, he said, were experiencing a “supernatural” stimulation that teachers might have to keep up with or simulate.

The heavy technology use, Dr. Christakis said, “makes reality by comparison uninteresting.”

Ah, the unreality of supernatural stimulation...this is truly the deux ex machina.

At some point we'll be forced to ask, is the machine the extension of "self," or is the organic material we  label "the body" the extension?  That chicken!  That egg!

Quick, look it up at the Wikipedia surely it knows and can tell us and put us at ease.

Schools (Don't?) Matter, Nor Does Creativity

Okay, I'll confess to being less than tactful most of the time.  But I gotta tell you, I'm pretty sick of one particular complaint that I hear (rather, read) again and again on education sites and FB pages dedicated to parent organizations against testing regimes in public education: "Your stealing my child's creativity!"

First, there's no such thing.

...since the criterion of creativity cannot distinguish between the artist and the nonartist, anyone who calls himself an artist is an artist, and anyone who calls himself creative is creative. 

Innovation is the norm of human behavior.  The human brain is so constructed that nobody ever gets anything right.  Innovation which is validated by the culture or by some subculture within the culture is called creativity; innovation which is invalidated is called error.  Creativity is validated error; error is invalidated creativity.  (Morse Peckham)

That is to say, these are cultural conventions that are not worth arguing about.  Sure, testing reduces the time your child spends "learning" something else in school, but what exactly?  Is there a "creativity" curriculum available somewhere?  Let me show you some creativity that sets my teeth on edge.

Competitive tennis, like money pool, requires geometric thinking, the ability to calculate not merely your own angles but the angles of response to your angles … Because the expansion of response possibilities is quadratic, you are required to think n shots ahead, where n is a hyperbolic function limited by (roughly) your opponent’s talent and the number of shots in the rally so far. I was good at this.  (David Foster Wallace, "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley.")

That is interesting and I'd guess you agree...but what is it saying (and why is "money pool" particularly of consequence)?  I think it says this: the brain does stuff and my (DFW's) brain does this particular stuff pretty well and I think I'll describe it this way cuz there is no way to know "cause"...'n'stuff.

But the "creativity" here says nothing at all.  Or rather, and this is indeed important, it says, "terms mathematical are metaphorical, see?"  But did you think this metaphorical or mathematically incisive--in other words, did you think that "math" is "inside" all things?

In other words, is this an example of that mythical beast, creativity?

Second, schools have never encouraged creativity--it's an obedience training institution!  And who could, with a straight face, say otherwise?  Most creativity is born of a reaction AGAINST "the man" (systems and institutions of hierarchical dominance).  So, really, you should be giving your child instructions to be ANGRY and show them how to take that anger and USE it.

Third, this, that I posted on more than one FB site today:

While I, in the spirit of solidarity, am against unfettered technology in the classroom--I have to point out that Paul Goodman nailed this issue in 1966 already pointing out the perils of GE funding of education "because they have money and tech and why not"--I am also against the blanket term "creativity." It's an easy non-specific "value" that has zero meaning. Here is the issue about technology, and specifically technology "tools" like "iPads:" they are not educational learning tools. They are very simply one thing only--a consumption portal for material products and ideological products. If you worried about "brainwashing" via TV--how in the world can you not see this incursion into the classroom as anything short of revolutionary--a mind control device in every child's hands. Let's stop the blather about creativity--this is a WAR for your independence of THOUGHT--period.

I don't know how to say this more strongly.  We are fighting "distractions."  Hunker down, people.  Find your focus at home!  The national crazy is being manufactured.

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Further to this point--i.e. that "damping" creativity is a distraction (a meaning-free zone)--Schools Matter contributor Robert Skeels offered this comment on my "Homeschooling" post:

Homeschooling. Because every child deserves to learn that humans rode dinosaurs.

Now, many of us (I wrote "most" and changed it) must wonder how in this age and time there are people who have found themselves presented with the "reasonable" explanation that Adam and Eve named dinosaurs and/or that homo sapiens lived among these behemoths.  I can certainly easily opine on this but not here.  I have thought a bit about it and written something that might be interesting to you here, "Young Earth Activists and the Gap Theory."  The easy money available for this kind of "believertainment" is almost shocking (I am hardly "shockable" any longer).

But, I don't find this an issue to worry over.  Instead it seems like the right time to "gather ye rosebuds" and so forth.

My reply to Dr. Skeels (corrected):

I wrote the following in an email to a friend who has been working to salvage a community-run school in an Midwestern city. The group is already talking about creating "hierarchy" in the management of the teaching and operational decisions and he is despairing as the community has done so much to mitigate the vicissitudes of "leadership:"

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Institutions are not for "persons" but for a "collective" or "managed" version of a "good" that serves a species (not a man or woman or child). An institution requires an explanation and an hierarchical structure.

Otherwise, I would not call it a school and I would not pay anyone as an employee but perhaps create a fund to supply the "gift" of housing and meals for the "instructor" in residence.

Perhaps this is too Ichabod Crane, but the teacher once was a kind of itinerant, seasonal worker (agrarian) who basically was paid his keep and nothing beyond as all the community lived in a subsistence manner. THAT was what was most "communally" shared--a common life of subsistence where days were not tomorrows but only today.

Further, a teacher was primarily a basic literacy and numeracy instructor unless hired per family to tutor in the more advanced knowledge (mostly classics--Greek and Latin)--here the teacher might be seen as storing up acorns against the winter.

It seems plausible to me that this is still the most useful "form" of the occupation. We must teach students how to use the tools of language--teach the way language uses us without our "self-knowledge"--and then let them fend for themselves--let them employ these strategies against the manipulation of their "perspective" by parents, preachers, politicians, con artists, and even ourselves as teachers.

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I'm not sure that we're not missing an opportunity to dismiss the institutional coercion that keeps us fighting for an "obedience center" rather than a locus of learning and human community.

In some sense I may be arguing that schools don't matter.  That is that we are clinging to an institution that we "idealize" as PUBLIC without considering it's actual mission and impact.

My wish is that we come together to agree locally on what indeed IS a public education--that is, one that we agree upon in our own places--of worship, of business, of concern.