I teach an integrative seminar for seniors in communication. As part of
our integrating work, we read two newspapers everyday. The LA Times and
The New York Times. A LOT of paper, especially since the LA Times comes
to us filled with supersales of men's suits and women's underwear (hmmm,
some of us might notice a pattern there :-) ). My students focus on
"communication in the news" but I define communication broadly for this
purpose and besides, I can't help noticing two stories in the NY Times.
(These stories appeared on monday and saturday of this week, I believe).
1. Professors of Education and Teachers/Parents out of synch. Parents
want focus on basics and discipline (drill and kill) while profs
want active learner and constructivism.
2. The jury is still out on the educational efficacy of the internet.
So I talk to my students about profs and students (its easy, because
that anyway) but focus on why profs and teachers/parents might be
out of sync and who might be "right." We talk about the real problems
of discipline in classrooms (ours included) but we have been reading
about this necessary worker of the future: tech literate, cooperative
learner, agent of own actions, etc. I remark that this is very relevant
to my own research concerns, as well as our class. And we talk about
what it would mean for active learners and discipline to co-exist
as a normal condition of development. (Blueskying, it is referred
to in one local dialect).
The internet story.
Oh SO much potential, it seems, for the construcivist, future-orinted
good folk. But on the monitary interests involved in the realization
of what happens! At least it is not GIVEN that the internet is
going to bring Bill Clinton's version of the 21st Century.
(His public relations version, not his personal version).
Despite the fact that our seats are bolted down facing forward,
our class seems to be congelling as a community of educational
practice, where an Engestrom-like view of educational activity
pervails. E-mail interaction is helping enormously to make such
changes possible.
We have agency too.
mike