The Fun They Had… December 9, 2009

Reading Postman’s article, I couldn’t help but think about the Isaac Asimov short story, “The Fun They Had.”  (Here’s a link to the text if you’re not familar:  http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/funtheyhad.html ) This story was written in 1951 and looks ahead to what “school” might be like in the year 2157.  At the end, the little girl, Margie, imagines how great school would have been when the teacher was an actual person and all the kids from the neighborhood learned the same thing and could talk about it.  The kind of learning in isolation that Margie is subject to is what Postman seems to be fearing in the reading for this week. 

Thinking about any current “false gods” of technology in education, I would have to say that anything can be a false god if it is seen as some kind of “magic bullet” to solve all of our educational problems.  I think back to the Clinton-era initiative to wire all schools for the internet.  That’s all well and good, but it has not transformed every classroom in American into an efficient and effective learning environment. 

As an example of a technology that I think is a “false god” at my school, several years ago, the school adopted an online program for curriculum mapping.  The phrase “curriculum map” has since become a dirty word among teachers. (I guess we’re guilty of using the “god’s” name in vain…we certainly are careful not to do it in front of the Academic Dean!)  The whole concept was pitched as a “magic bullet” – a way for us to streamline our curriculum and communicate the elements of our curriculum to each other.  If I need to know what my current students learned about verbs last year, all I have to do is call up the curriculum map of the previous teacher, and presto! I have my answer and all of my problems are solved!  If I want to coordinate what I’m teaching with a teacher in a different grade or a different subject area, all I have to do is search all of the curriculum maps and viola!  I have created a cross-curricular, cross-divisional lesson!  I’m obviously being a little sarcastic here, but the abilities of the program were presented in something very close to this manner. 

Here’s the problem.  While it’s great to have the curriculum of each teacher available online, I cannot look at what is written and determine how the teacher taught the subject, and, more importantly, there’s no way for me to know if the students actually learned it.  I can only find the answers to these kinds of questions by actually talking to the other teacher.  And that’s what a good teacher at my school will do.  I coordinate my grammar instruction with the 7th grade Latin teacher, and not once has either one of us looked at a curriculum map online.  We talk — between classes, during lunch — we find a time and we make it happen.  What I worry about is that this “false god” of online curriculum mapping is actually preventing other teachers from having these kinds of conversations with each other.  And the administration is so enamored by the “possibilities” of curriculum maps that they don’t necessarily believe that common planning time for teachers is a valuable part of our daily schedule. 

Ultimately, I think that we have to be wary of any innovation in education (technological or otherwise) that is purported to be a “magic bullet.”  Just like there’s no “magic pill” for weight loss – people have to do the work: eat right and exercise – we have to “do the work” in education.  We have to teach our students how to learn.  Learning how to learn can be a messy process, but it is one that all students need to go through.  Technology can help us get there, and I don’t think that choosing to use technology rises to the level of a deal-with-the-devil as Postman suggests, but I also don’t think that anything can completely replace the human element in education.

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