Andy’s New Media Blog

I was a little bit troubled in class today by the number of people who seemed certain that Illich’s ideas will never come to fruition because of their belief that certain people just aren’t self-motivated enough to take their education into their own hands.  I talked a little bit in class about my belief that institutions make people apathetic because they are completely unresponsive to the specific needs of individuals and are almost always structured in a way that encourages promotion and power over justice and democracy.  I want to talk a little bit more about it because I feel that it is an excuse that has been justifying inequality throughout history.  Needless to say, I completely reject the idea that some people are inherently less motivated or educationally inclined to others.

I would challenge anyone to find someone under the age of 6 who doesn’t have big plans about all the things they are going to accomplish when they grow up.  We laugh at kids because they have no conception of how difficult it really is to become an astronaut or a doctor.  It’s when kids get into school and realize their dreams have nothing to do with the reality of their situation that they become apathetic.  Including preschool, I’m going on my eighteenth year of school, and I can count the number of teachers that actually inspired me to study further outside of the classroom on one hand.  Illich is totally right when he says that our current educational system is a colossal waste of money.  It may sound cynical, but I feel that if most people are honest with themselves, the lessons that they use every single day and affect their lives in the most meaningful ways by and large were not learned in a classroom, despite the fact that we each spent nearly forty hours a week there for twelve years of our lives.  This problem is compounded further for people that come from far less privileged circumstances than I do and may have to work or care for relatives in addition to taking a full course load in order to achieve equal status with those (like me) who have few impediments to their education.  It might be easy to say that certain people are unmotivated or unwilling to receive an education, but if you look at the circumstances of most individuals it becomes obvious that the vast majority of “underachievers” are people that don’t easily fit into boxes and as such have been pushed to the margins instead of being allowed to reach the fullness of their potential.

Anyone who read my previous blog post on popular education knows that I agree pretty much whole heartedly with what Illich talks about in Deschooling Society.  I’m not sure I would go as far as he does in his condemnation of the traditional classroom style, but his ideas about removing “the curriculum” are dead on I think.  I also don’t know if I agree with his belief in the master apprentice system as being the best way to learn.  I don’t think that it is necessary for any member of a group to be an expert on a particular subject in order for the group to collectively learn about it and help each other shape their understanding of concepts.  One of my most positive high school experiences was in AP Literature senior year when our teacher had a medical emergency that forced the class to have a long term substitute teacher for most of the year.  It was an interesting dynamic because the substitute knew just as little about the subject matter as we did, but her eagerness to understand the material in turn made us feel more willing to put our opinions forward without fearing disagreement from the always-right teacher.  I think this unguided discourse was ultimately a more effective educational tool than listening to the teacher lecture on the standard interpretations of canonical texts.

My main disagreement with Illich however, comes from his ideas about peer matching.  Although it would certainly be useful to easily group together people with similar educational (and recreational) interests, I feel that this has the potential to cause factioning which could ultimately create new institutions along different but equally limiting borders.  Illich’s main complaint against the social aspect of the classroom seems to be that students are placed together arbitrarily.  Although I understand where he is coming from, I think encouraging diversity is more important than grouping together only with people that have similar goals and interests.  People should have the opportunities to follow whatever course of study they choose in their life, but it is also important to surround yourself with people that have vastly different interests and ideas because seemingly unrelated topics almost always connect in some sort of interesting way if you look at them hard enough.  Communities are often very diverse, and this diversity should be reflected in the classroom because it should be an extension of the community as a whole.

If I’m being honest, I’d say that my comprehension of todays reading was shaky at best.  I think I understand Viola’s ideas about the potential for movies with branching plots and film editing over a computer, but I’m not sure I really understand what is so revolutionary about this idea.  Although I definitely remember a time before I could easily watch videos on my PC, the ability to do so seems like a natural step that was bound to happen.  I guess my main confusion is what specifically about computers and videotape has revolutionized the way we conceive of film.  Obviously quality and methods of delivery have changed and improved with the advent of digital technology, but this doesn’t seem to be what Viola is getting at in this article so I’ll be interested to see what other people think of it in class.

I was only somewhat surprised by how similar some of the problems Habitat had when compared to the problems with popular games like World of Warcraft.  It was almost comical when Morningstar and Farmer talked about allowing players to use weapons and kill each other, but expected users to do so in a responsible manner.  Although they never fully articulate it, I think the main barrier keeping virtual worlds from being taken fully seriously is the fact that there is complete anonymity and no real consequences.  Player vs. Player combat (pvp) is still a major question in online games.  WoW solves the problem by forcing players to choose at the outset whether they will fight on the side of the Alliance or the Horde, a decision that affects the entire course of the game.  Generally speaking, players are only able to kill players from the opposing faction with whom they are unable to speak.  This system works fairly well but is obviously just another work around such as the inability to fight within cities in Habitat.

The part about not being able to anticipate which design flaws will be seized upon by the community with disastrous results is also still very prevalent.  One of the most famous examples of this in WoW was the Zul’Gurrub disease glitch.  Soon after the game’s release, the developers released a new dungeon that extremely high level players could explore.  One of the bosses gave players a disease called “poison blood” which slowly damaged players and also jumped to other players who were nearby.  The unintended consequence of this was that the disease traveled from player to player until it reached the starting zone where low level players were unable to survive the effects of the disease for more than a few seconds.  Because of this, the game became completely unplayable for most of the low level players on any given server until the problem was fixed several days later.  It’s also worth noting that almost monthly, the developers release new updates and changes that try to make the game more fair but never quite succeed.

Another design flaw that WoW has completely failed to address is the fact that most of the new content that is introduced is only enjoyed by the select few players who are willing to spend countless hours of monotonous play time to see it.  This is a major problem with almost any mmo and leads many players (including myself) to “burnout,” something I’ll hopefully talk about more in my project presentation.

I want to expand a little bit on what I talked about in my previous post.  When Papert talks about using computers to let children develop their own learning styles without the authoritarian intrusions of the omnipresent curriculum, he is essentially talking about what many people refer to as “Popular Education.”  Although he uses computer programing as an example, the method can really be applied to any discipline.  Essentially the idea is centered around the belief that true education can only come from a willing community of learners and not from any one “expert” or teacher.  In practical terms, it means that the classroom as a whole, and not just the teacher is responsible for the direction the class goes, as well as the support and empowerment of each individual member.

The point isn’t to let student’s only study what they want and ignore everything else, but rather to find ways to make education relevant and applicable to individual’s lives.  Obviously this is a completely different educational philosophy than the system we currently have that is based on standardized test scores which attempt to apply the same standards on large numbers of individuals without any recognition of different circumstances.

In class, there was a lot of discussion about how teachers are expected to react when certain students are more educationally advanced while others need constant special attention.  Popular education’s answer to this problem would be to have the more advanced students help out those that are lagging behind.  A struggling student may be more willing to respond to someone his own age rather than the imposing presence of an adult.  By encouraging individuals within the classroom to take an interest not only in their own education, but the education of their fellow students, the class takes on a structure that allows the teacher to take on the role of helper and facilitator instead of taskmaster.

Despite agreeing with his philosophy on education, I still strongly disagree with his insistence that computers are the best way to educate young students.  Obviously computers are hugely important to every day life and people need at the very least to have a working understanding of them, but Papert’s whole argument seems to be centered around the idea that learning to program will improve our ability to think rationally and analytically.  It’s easy to see why he was getting carried away, especially when home computers were starting to take off, but to me this kind of thinking has no more inherent validity than any other academic saying that their field is best.  Obviously programming can and is a helpful learning tool for some, but for others (like myself) it isn’t.  The best way to make sure our schools are educating people properly is by giving them as many opportunities to discover whatever they’re good at as possible, putting every kid in front of a computer is too simple of a solution.

Although I’ve had a computer in my house for as long as I can remember and have been playing games on them (and other game consoles) for nearly as long.  That said, I don’t think computers were ever a major part of my formal education.  With the exception of a basic programming course I took in high school, my only other use of computers in school came in an hour long twice a week block of “computer class” that my fifth grade class went to.  I don’t remember much from those classes, except that by far the hardest part of it was when we had to learn to use LOGO.  In his article, Papert talks about the potential for teachers to use LOGO in the wrong way.  I can definitively say that my teachers used the program in a way that he would have fundamentally disagreed with.

I specifically remember our teacher giving us some very vague instructions on how to use the program then handed each of us a thick photocopied instruction manual, along with a check list of different things our program had to do in order to pass (have animation, different colors, curved lines etc.)  Luckily I had a more computer savvy friend sitting next to me that helped me out, but I definitely didn’t learn anything about computer programing or gain any “formal” knowledge from the experience.  My main concern at the time was finishing as early as possible so I could resume my game of Oregon Trail and maybe get a little bit of Math Munchers in before lunch.

I’m going to take a stand and say that this wasn’t completely my teacher’s fault.  One of the main problems is that the school system was obviously implementing computer education in an extremely half-assed way.  In order for the kind of education that Papert talks about to work, it must be fully committed to, not scheduled in as another part of an already over scheduled school day.  Another fundamental roadblock to Papert’s ideas ever coming to fruition is just the fact that LOGO seems incredibly boring compared to the computer entertainment that children already have access to.  Even over ten years ago when I last used the program, it seemed very basic and not nearly as fun as something like Mario Paint for Super Nintendo.  I can only imagine how dry and boring it must seem to kids now, who have access to even more complex electronics.  I’m not trying to say that putting computers in schools is a lost cause, but it will be if it isn’t committed to in a more real way.