Category Archives: Autobiographical

I bought my first ”personal computer’ in the early 1980s, when my Uncle Benson died and left me a few thousand dollars. (I won’t say what I did with the rest of the money.) I’ve been teaching using PC’s since the early 1990s; and full-time people online for the last several years. So I am no Luddite. I have to say, though, that I am beginning to get tired of the successive waves of technological change and the accompanying claims for education.

“A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution,” is typical of the big claims for technology genre. These arguments always have two main themes. The first claim is that some capability of the new technology allows students and teachers to do things they have never done before and so accelerate learning. The second, and related claim, is that while the technology seems expensive, it will soon be ubiquitous.

Each successive wave of claims tends to either ignore or minimize the relative successes of the previous wave. In “A Is for Apps,” the writer uses television as a straw man (a passive medium, unlike the I-Phone!) while claiming that mobile phones are replacing the personal computer as the preferred devise to access the internet. My theory is that many of these writers are so immersed in the NOW of consumer culture that they never really observe how technology is used.

Is a television in a Sports Bar on the night of the Super Bowl a passive medium? If everyone is talking about the last episode of Lost, is television a passive medium? Television, like any medium, is used in complex ways, depending on a myriad of factors. Similarly, it’s just silly to claim that if everyone has a “smart cell” phone we can “finally fix” education. Again, I think this sort of view is too beholden to consumer society and to a kind of Utopian rhetoric that serves as its justification.

Residents of Kankakee County, Illinois are ready for the new clean energy economy. Inspired by the calls for more green jobs during the 2008 presidential campaign, a local group of business, education, and government leaders is working to make green-collar jobs a reality in their region. They recognize the potential for green-collar jobs to transform the local economy while also benefitting the country and the environment. They also see investment in wind energy as the wave of Kankakee’s clean energy future.

Vision Energy’s $1 Billion Wind Bet in Illinois, April 21, 2009, Mac Lynch, Apollo News Service

I am really trying not to be Mr. Education-Politics Party-Pooper. These are horrible times for education, with cuts at all levels in every state. Much of that is due to the economic slowdown, although no doubt the right will not let this crisis pass without chipping away at educational autonomy in one way or the other. The real loss will access; tuition is like a tax without regulation.

We are on the verge of a real boom in education, once the economy recovers and the Obama administration gets past the health care debate. (I will avoid the obvious Dickens reference.) The highway robbery of the student loan system will probably end, releasing all sorts of money for education. The worst of the “No Child Behind” debacle is probably over, even if its effects remain.

There’s a close link between the Obama administrations’ economic stimulus package, the greening of energy, and the community colleges, too. It’s hard to complain about that, either. The community college system is probably one of the most accessible educational systems ever created. More of that is always good. But here’s where I start feeling that sharp pinch of liberal limitation.

It’s great that they are putting windmills up in Kankakee (about 2 hours north of here) and it makes sense that the community colleges would work together to try to provide the training. But it bugs me that they feel they have to do this in such a narrowly vocational way. Where’s the vision? The community colleges do much more than just train workers.

We need people who know how to work on windmills, but we also need windmill workers who have the critical and intellectual skills needed to accelerate the ongoing expansion and refinement of democracy here in the U.S. I don’t mean to disparage community college teachers. I bet they will add the critical thinking elements wherever they can. But it should be a part of the rhetoric, too.