Quote from Parker Palmer's "The Courage To Teach": The mythical dominant model of truth-knowing and truth-telling has four major elements.
Objects of knowledge that reside "out there" somewhere, pristine in physical or conceptual space, as described by the "facts" in a given field.
Experts, people trained to know these objects in their pristine form without allowing their own subjectivity to slop over onto the purity of the objects themselves. This training transpires in a far-off place called graduate school, whose purpose is so throughly to obliterate one's sense of self that one becomes a secular priest, a safe bearer of the pure objects of knowledge.
Amateurs, people without training and full of bias, who depend on the experts for objective or pure knowledge of the pristine objects in question.
My research has been currently focused on past revolutions (both successes and failures). My previous blog post for Mediated Cultures is my actual KYHOI proposal. I intend to further this study with the book resources that I am currently reading. Ultimately this is an update on my research and further support of my thesis.
Recently within class we have been discussing the Twitter revolution in Iran. Neda's death on camera was the initial spark for the fire of the online movement. This first video acts as a story for the actual events that took place.
And this is the real event (Be Aware: Video is blocked due to youtube flagging of inappropriate content. You will have to provide your age to view the video.)
The 2009-2o10 Iran revolution movement provoked global awareness. Twitter became the tool for revolution. Yet, it is important to discuss what the tool was actually used for. Jared Keller wrote an article stating, "But it was the critical role of Twitter as a lightning rod for international attention that established it as a tool for political communication rather than outright organization. Iran's post-election unrest was the micro-blogging service's baptism by fire as a means to observe, report, and record, real-time, the unfolding of a crisis." Keller is developing an interesting insight, and it challenges the online-offline dynamic. Is the realm of online truly a depiction of the offline movement?
Even Twitter's actual role was questioned by Charles Krauthammer, "Twitter cannot stop a bullet. There was a lot of romantic outpouring here thinking that Facebook is going to stop Revolutionary Guards. It doesn't. Thuggery, a determined regime that is oppressive, that will shoot, almost always wins." This challenges the uprisings that we are seeing today, and it provokes detailed exploration of social media and its use in social movements. Social media today has become much more dynamic. The composition of video/text/audio/mapping/real-time/etc. creates a rich equation for social movement. Yet, I argue that the focus on a leader (person or idea) establishes a focus for change.
Without a focus... are the social movements of today a result of chaos? Can a structure change if it is tossed and turned? Or does change arise from finding a weak beam within the structure and targeting a collapse (a focused change)?
What is the future of education reform? How are we being educated today? What can we do to improve? There is a major dialectic evolving from the clash between the industrialization form of education and todays "linked information" education. Neil Postman's list that defines the academic realm in his 1969 book, "Teaching as a Subversive Activity", is still relevant to the university setting we see today.
Passive acceptance is a more desirable response to ideas than active criticism.
Discovering knowledge is beyond the power of the students.
Recall is the highest form of intellectual achievement, aand the collection of unrelated "facts" is the goal of education.
The voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgement
One's own ideas and those of one's classmates are inconsequential.
Feelings are irrelevant in education.
A subject is something you "take" and, when you have taken it, you have "had" it, and if you have "had" it, you are immune and need not take it again.
There is always a single right answer.
The video at the top of this post exposes the redundancy of education reform. The author is correct in asking: Will education reform be any different this time? I would argue that it already is. Education is already within flux due to its dependency on material culture. Technology is slowly invading the college campuses, and the students are manipulating the tools to achieve academic standards. The standards are starting to become irrelevant, and a students success in the world, outside the campus, is hinging on their capacity for new media literacy.
It is no longer purely "what you know."
It is "what you know, and how you learn more."
The infrastructure of the barrel is changing (Environment -> Infrastructure -> Social Structure -> Superstructure). The infrastructure change is causing cracks in our "Academic" model. The superstructure components (Values, Ideas, Concepts) are solidified in old perceptions of academia. Reformation is necessary and already happening. What can we do to solidify the structure?
