Transcript The Heritage of Edupunk

Standing on the Shoulders of
Giants: The Heritage of Open
Education
Norm Friesen
February, 2009
http://wikieducator.org/Open_Education:_
Precursors
Overview
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What is open education?
What is a precursor?
Precursor #1: Antonio Gramsci
Precursor #2: Walter Benjamin
Precursor #3: Paulo Freire
Lessons from the Past
What is Open Education?
three essential components to Open Education:
1. teaching and learning (educational) processes
2. technology and technological infrastructure
3. open or free access to these processes (entails
a political/policy stand)
• The three are interrelated in complex ways; one
affects another
• has a history that goes back much further than
the Internet and open (free) source software
What is relevant to Open
Education?
Open Policy
Anti-copyright
DIY
Technology &
Infrastructure
Teaching,
Learning and
Educational
Processes
What is a Precursor?
• Can be a movement or a person
• Person or movement combining
– technology,
– education and
– a political position
in a reaction against commercialization, to
empower others
• Part of a heritage that is shared by many
faculty members.
Antonio Gramsci: 1891 – 1937
• Founding member of Communist Party in Italy
• Imprisoned by Mussolini; most famous writings
from prison (notebooks)
• Keywords:
– Ideology
– Hegemony
– Organic Intellectuals
Ideology/Hegemony as
spontaneous, cultural
• Culture: “exercise of thought, acquisition of
general ideas, habit of connecting causes and
effects” (Gramsci, 1985, 23)
• Hegemony & Ideology: "shared
ideas or beliefs which serve to
justify the interests of dominant
groups" (A. Giddens 1997)
• "spontaneous consent" of the
populace through intellectual
leadership or authority
Knowledge & Culture as Central
• Intellectual matters, cultural representations
as paramount
• This gives education, teaching and learning a
central role
• “All…are intellectuals…”
“just not …by function” or job description
• "everyone at some time fries a couple of eggs
or sews up a tear in a jacket, we do not necessarily say that everyone is a cook or a tailor."
Organic intellectuals
• Everyone’s potential for intellectual/political
engagement
Everyone: "carries on some form of intellectual
activity … participates in a particular conception
of the world, has a conscious line of moral
conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a
conception of the world or to modify it, that is,
to bring into being new modes of thought"
Gramsci & Education
• The learner as “active and creative,” not "a
passive and mechanical recipient".
• "to create a single type of formative school
(primary-secondary) which would take the
child up to the threshold of his choice of job,
forming him during this time as a person
capable of thinking, studying and ruling - or
controlling those who rule" (Gramsci 1971
p40).
And today there is hardly a [person] …who
could not, in principle, find an opportunity
to publish --somewhere or other-comments on his work, grievances,
documentary reports, or that sort of thing.
As a result, the distinction between author
and public is about to lose its basic
character. The difference becomes merely
functional; it may vary from case to case. At
any moment the reader is ready to turn into
a writer. […]
Walter Benjamin: 1892 - 1940
• associated with the Frankfurt
School of critical theory
• sociological & cultural critic
• “The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduciblity”
• Keywords:
– Aura
– Distraction
The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproducibility
• Mechanical reproduction of art means that its
“aura” “withers:” “the technique of
reproduction detaches the reproduced object
from the domain of tradition.”
• This is not bad, but good: "For the first time in
world history, mechanical reproduction
emancipates the work of art from its
parasitical dependence on ritual.“
• New forms in film of the late 1920’s and
1930’s: Bunuel, Riefenstahl, Eisenstein
• This kind of art is “received” in a state of
“distraction”
• Benjamin sees this distracted reception as
enabling a the “convergence of educational
value and consumer value in a new kind of
learning” (Eiland, 2005)
• “The distracted person, too, can form habits.
More, the ability to master certain tasks in a
state of distraction proves that their solution
has become a matter of habit. Distraction as
provided by art [means that] new tasks have
become soluble by apperception.” (W. Benjamin)
What is significant
• Aesthetic characteristics of new technical
media can present both potential and
challenges for learning
• This is politically relevant; not as direct
emancipation from earlier constraints and
limitations, but through the development of
new modes of “reception;” new sensibilities
• Technology as cultural in its educational
significance
Paulo Freire: 1921-1997
• Brazilian educator and influential
theorist of critical pedagogy
(politically engaged)
• Developed “cultural circles” for teaching
reading and writing; imprisoned for this
• Literacy was a requirement for voting.
• Key terms:
– Dialogical education
– codification
Freire on Technology
“The answer does not lie in
the rejection of the machine
but in the humanization of
man.”
I’m a “man of television”
and “man of radio.”
"It is not the media
themselves which I criticize,
but the way they are used."
Slide courtesy of: Richard A. Kahn
Slide Projectors: 35,000
• Slide projectors used to display “codified
pictures” at the centre of this instruction
• Codified pictures: visual representations of
existential situations
– “questions are implicit in the codifications”
• Present elements to be “decoded” by the
participants
• Literacy ed. is combined “with lessons in selfreflection, cultural identity & political agency.”
(Kahn & Kellner, 2007)
Freire on Technology
Slide courtesy of: Richard A. Kahn
1960’s National Literacy
Programme:
1990’s Sec. of Ed for Sao
Paulo:
Buys 35,000 Polish slide
projectors
In 1973, $13/unit est.
In 1981, $2.50/unit est.
Rate of dollar has now
increased six-fold.
In 1962, Br. Real 4:1 rate of
exchange.
Established Central
Laboratory for Educational
Informatics
Invested in “televisions,
video cassettes, sound
machines, slide projectors,
tape recorders, and 825
micro-computers.”
= A LOT OF MONEY!!!
= A LOT OF MONEY!!!
90s he faced many children without schools altogether, terrible disrepair, he speaks
of missing tens of thousands of desks and chairs. So his investment in technology
in this context is significant.
• “I don't accept [the claim] …that the ending of
school is inevitable. For me, the challenge is
not to end school, but to change it completely
and radically and to help it to give birth from a
body that doesn't correspond anymore to the
technological truth of the world to a new
being as actual as technology itself.”
– P. Freire: http://www.papert.org/articles/freire/freirePart2.html
“Education” is not a Function
• Is not a “neutral” set of techniques that are
applied to facilitate learning on a given subject
matter
• All of the precursors are clear about the
politically-charged nature of “learning” and its
rich interrelationship with technology
• This needs to be taken into account when
understanding the relationship of open
education and educational institutions
Technology is not about Function
• It is not mostly about what the technology can
do: if it was, we would have been having these
discussions in 1999, not 2009
• Just because technology can do it, doesn’t
mean it will be done (right away)
• How long will it take for an open alternative
(e.g. Linux) to overtake a dominant institution
(e.g. Microsoft)?
Open Learning as a important
“stream”
• Part of an ongoing “parallel reality” that has
been ongoing and important for
decades/centuries
• The relationship with dominant education
may change, but will happen very slowly
• Strength to be gained by looking at connection
of this the open content/education movement
to ongoing tradition
Precursor – T. Friedman?
• globalization has leveled the
competitive playing fields
between industrial and
emerging market countries
• historical and geographical
divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant
• Inevitable; culture outside of human control
• Technology as not humanized or humanizing
Lessons from the Past
• Developments occurring with technology are
not pre-set
• Technology is not destiny; it is a scene of
struggle
• Education is much more than the acquisition
of “globally” competitive skills
• We should look to experts, not journalists, to
understand global trends affecting education
• Nobel prize better than a Pulitzer!
Sources
Benjamin, W. (1936/1979). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction. Illuminations. New York: Schocken.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjam
in.htm
Gramsci, A. (1971). An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935.
D. Forgacs (Ed.). New York: Schocken.
Freire, P. (1973) Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.
Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First
Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Kahn, R. (2005). Electronic Freire: Technology in the Struggle for Peace? Third
Annual CAFE Conference. Available at:
http://richardkahn.org/writings/tep/electronicfreire.ppt
Kahn, R. & Illich Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: technology, politics and the
reconstruction of education Policy Futures in Education 5(4) 431-448.
http://richardkahn.org/writings/tep/freireillich.pdf