New Philosopher - Education

New Philosopher is a fascinating magazine to sit down and read. It only comes out quarterly - and I'm glad it doesn't come out more than that - I would become over-saturated with it - and forget how much I love. Let's dive into some of the articles I want to think more about.

Definitions:
pedagogic: of or relating to teaching. "they show great pedagogic skills"

faff: Spend time in ineffectual activity. "we can’t faff around forever"

The three pillars of media education - sex, beer, and murder was a short article but packed a lot in. The data that emerged showing that students spend about 900 hours a year in school - and spend 1500 hours a year watching TV(on the average), while overall media consumption tops out at 2500 hours was astounding and illuminating. john powell has commented on how the media(what we see and hear that is pervasive and all around us) is really what shapes our unconscious minds. And with figures like those shown in this article it isn't hard to believe that. "The number of hours per day that TV is on in an average US home: 6 hours, 47 minutes". If we think that schools are what shape our young into fully-fledged adults - than we need to do a double take and rethink that idea - just in sheer time spent - media is what shapes our young. And I think it's fascinating to remember this when thinking about implicit bias and othering - what/who teaches us that?

The hidden curriculum again reinforces the idea of why we go to kindergarten. "Working towards good grades is comparable to working hard at a job to receive a pay check at the end of the week. When a child leaves school and enters the workforce, the authoritative teacher morphs into the general manager or CEO; the school uniform morphs into a business suit or other work attire, and the compulsory curriculum morphs into a long list of work activities formally laid out in the job description(emails, paperwork, scheduled appointments)" Kindergarten teaches us to wait in lines and to follow orders - patiently and passively. The rest of school is just gradually inculcating us to sit in an office for 8 hours a day - and to do our schoolwork.

I feel that sharing this idea that our planet is a spaceship would help us get the idea that we have limited resources and that this really is a closed system. It makes sense to me, that if you were on a spaceship(or even an airplane - to make it smaller) you'd think a little more about smoking a cigarette(burning fossil fuels), and how that smoke is going to fill the entire cabin - and that somehow you'll have to clean that smoke out - and if you don't you'll die. That's our planet - it's just like an airplane - and I feel that so many people forget that. This planet is not limitless - there are hard bounds upon the space that we can occupy, there are upper limits to the amount of coal that we can pump out of the ground and into our planet. It's a space ship!

Walking your talk - whew. akrasia:Ancient Greek for knowing the best thing to do, but doing something else. The Greek knew it - and that's been thousands of years - and we still do it. "The hope of Freud and Jung - and of their modern-day successors - is that by slowly and painstakingly identifying these unseen reasons for our stuckness, we'll become unstuck, and start following the advice we know deep down to be best... Of course, even this advice for bridging the knowing-doing gap can't get you all the way across. On the printed page, it's still only information, and agreeing intellectual with it will only get you so far. You're still going to need to find a way to actually do it." It's so frustrating that there is something that has plagued the human race for 3000 years - and we really haven't gotten past that. And it feels like we're moving further from the solution. It seems like in the early 20th century there was a public education towards this thought- not so much anymore.

The classroom of the future sounds a bit scary. "Gadget fixation is part of the problem, not the solution." Do kids really need all of that technology coming at them? Sherry Turkle is pushing me right now to say - technology is ok - we just need to make sure that our children are still learning and working with each other. Being willing to ask questions and receive responses. But if we put them into a static environment where they only interact with a computer - or only participate with disembodied persons and don't take on real conversations with real people. That's what we have to watch for.

Lamingtons and Orwell caused me to write -"scary timing" and I think that stems from this quote - "The point is not to push my children into artistic careers, but to begin a discussion about value; what is worthwhile in life, and what can be sacrificed to seize it?" Yeah - rereading this article I see what I felt earlier. John Stuart Mill wrote "Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." This idea that if you have to ask - you already know the answer. And it goes further - give it a read. I guess I'm afraid that this coming true for me. Am I getting too caught up in the minutia of work? Am I starting to become committed to the "calculation of happiness?" Am I cutting the ties between things and pleasures, making joy's seem artificial? And if I am - will I suffer from akrasia?

Education! Education! Education! introduced this wonderful quote - "management consultancy is the ideology of useless posturing". If you work in an office you will surely notice that there is an amazing amount of time wasted on meeting regarding efficiency. Doh! But moving on from there - we get to the meat - this idea of what makes an effective teacher who can really initiate a "knowledge-transfer". "An effective teacher much: 1. Know their subject; 2. Be enthusiastic about it and able to convey that enthusiasm to their pupils; 3. Be able to perceive in their pupils inchoate capabilities that those pupils aren't even aware of themselves." Really - those make sense. Without any one of those three things would hamper a teacher's ability to really connect their students.

"There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Education begins the gentleman, good company and reflection must finish him." - John Locke

"Learned we may be with another man's learning; we can only be wise with wisdom of our own." - Michel de Motaigne

An investigation to be disturbed- stocisim - again! It's one of those things I just can't escape right now. But really - this article brought up something that I find to be true these days. Writing - and probably most of media - has become so commercial it's not really for the sake of art anymore - it's all fan service. This is a terrible example - but take Game of Thrones. I feel like George R R Martin wrote those first three books before there were any fans - so he could kill whichever characters he wanted to further the art that was his book. But now - with the critical acclaim and number of fans that are out there - he just can't kill the fictional characters he wants to. Jon Snow came back - maybe in the books he won't. But the show in particular just seems like it is feeding fans. "Being disturbed by stories is a dying art". Books that challenge us offer an amazing window into different thoughts and feelings. If a book can make you empathize with a completely fictional character I believe that your capacity to empathize with real people becomes that much more developed. Think about it - if I can care for someone who is just text on paper - than I can damned well care for someone who is real, and physical. (I think this is one of the reasons I hate the saying - Can you imagine? - Yes I can, I've imagined whole moon worlds, animals that have 16 legs. Ok, maybe I didn't dream them up - but by reading about them - their presence and existence was cast upon my minds' eye - and in a way I imagined them! So yes, I can imagine.)

Why school must change - outlined the three C's - Care, Concern, and Connection. They were explained to be the elements necessary for positive educational experiences. But I think the simplicity and depth to the three C's is much further reaching. Think of what Care, Concern, and Connection could do when working on the homelessness problem plaguing many cities. Or what Care, Concern, and Connection could do for the police violence against blacks in American. Or even Syrian refugees - think about the different conversations that we would be having if Care, Concern, and Connection were at the center of it. Simplicity is usually the most powerful.

Dangerous learning is a warning against shallow knowledge. It's very easy to learn a little about anything - but when that is all you learn about something - then make grand gestures based off that slim knowledge - that's where the danger sets in. A friend a while back reminded that when I was 17(as most 17 year olds are apt to do) he thought I had all the answers. My response was that I did too! It's that shallow knowledge where the impression that you've got it all figured out lives. And it's the depressingly realization that the further you swim into the depths of the lake - the less you know - and the less sure you are of which way is up. I had all the answers in the shallows - because I had seen all the shallow questions. But with depth comes more questions - and just as many answers. But the answers are different - they take on a different flavor. They aren't just blue - but blue with purple mixed in - and that's when you start treading water - and the sand falls out beneath you. "A large part of education is coming to know just how vast our ignorance is."

Automation complacency - ooh this one got my knickers in a twist - because I faced this exact thing. People seem to think that they can rely on technology to just do all the work for them once they've set up a system - and they'll just have to press the right sequence of buttons and voila! The machine outputs the product. But even on the most complex manufacturing floors - they still pull products for quality control testing. It's not just a set it and forget it thing. "As technology writer Nicholas Carr puts it:automation erodes learning by preventing true engagement with work." And I think that is true for almost any automation. If you just slam a thousand letters out the door are you really writing and engaging with those letter recipients? No! You're not. So if the intent of the letter is engagement - then you failed. If the intent of the letter is to send out the letter - than you succeeded - but that's a pretty silly intent.

A quick heads-up - just because it was one way doesn't mean it has to continue to be that way. The article is about triggers - and the seemingly resounding negative response that comes with them. It seems like the real source of this negative feedback is the notion that - "Well no one gave me trigger warnings - and I turned out just fine." But as an email from a seventy-one-year-old man, who had been abused throughout his childhood stated:
I read your op-ed at 4am and it astonished me... The very idea that a teacher or professor might alert students is completely new to me and you are completely correct to do it when it occurs to you. I glances at some of th reader comments and I noticed how many people are opposed to trigger notices. Well, there is nothing new among millenials having PTSD and it is silly to suppose this need is something new. Early trauma victims learn to disassociate, so, upon reflection, I can say that I never was present for a single day in school from kindergarten through high school and it took me eight-and-a-half years to complete my undergraduate degree... I was absent the whole time. Maybe if someone had intentionally said of indicated that I was safe, it could have been different."
Whew - would that everyone were as capable of wanting better for other people - instead of getting caught up in what they had or didn't have. It's ok for things to change - just because it was one way doesn't mean it has to continue to be that way.

In closing:
"Keeping busy" is the remedy for all ills in America. It's also the means by which creative impulse is destroyed. - Joyce Carol Oates

We have to leave ourselves a little time to just be with ourselves. - Sherry Turkle