Phillip Schlechty shares in his book, Inventing Better Schools. He writes:

The business of schools is to design, create, and invent high-quality, intellectually demanding work for students: schoolwork that calls on students to think, reason, and to use their minds well and that calls on them to engage ideas, facts, and understandings whose perpetuation is essential to the survival of the common culture…Teachers invent intellectually engaging work for students and then lead them to do it.

What Schlechty is talking about here is “knowledge work.”. Everyone has different ideas of what this work will look like. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink shares six aptitudes that we need to have as we move from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. This type of engagement, though, goes beyond “intellectual” or strictly “cerebral….” or non-emotional. That’s why some are making a case for digital storytelling.

Once defined as using technology as a tool to identify and solve real life problems, “technology integration” is now more about benchmark assessment tools. Laptops, operating systems, other initiatives that cannot serve dual purpose–run popular interim assessment software AND, when there’s time, traditional communication tech apps–are ignored. Worse, as a result of increasing controls being imposed (e.g. content filtering, active directory, digital rights management through Windows Media Player and iTunes), the opportunities for using technology as a problem-solving tool is quickly disappearing. Even as it disappears in schools, it continues to be the main reason we use technology in the workplace. Teachers are not trusted to take ownership of desktop, or laptop, computers. As such, everything they do on a computer is tightly controlled, all in the interest of preventing inappropriate use. “Inappropriate” is defined somewhere by someone who has no idea what it means to be an educator, only possesses an intense desire to protect the network and/or organization. The extension of this controlling point of view, this almost neo-fascist approach to technology implementation in schools, has serious implications. Chief among them is that the freedom to innovate, available in the past, is swiftly disappearing as everything we do online or with our computers falls under regulation. As one district administrator in a school district technology department put it, “These computers aren’t their’s. If they want a computer, let them go buy one. They shouldn’t be allowed to install anything on their computers. That’s what we do for them.” If you find yourself agreeing with this perspective, then you may realize how difficult it is for teachers and students who want to innovate in today’s schools to fight this top-down approach. Some of the benefits of one-to-one laptop use include allowing students to make the equipment their own. David Thornburg refers to this as “ownership” as opposed to “loanership” (Education in Hand, 12/2005). But, how many of us would accept for use a computer or a phone that did not allow us to personally “brand it” with our personality? What kinds of controls are we putting in place in schools that go against what it means to be an educator?

THINKING CRITICALLY

Some argue that the role of Education is to socialize our children, take students through specific learning objectives that will prepare them for the workforce. But what happens when society changes so dramatically as to make schools irrelevant, if not obsolete? Consider what constitutes critical pedagogy….

Critical pedagogy goes beyond situating the learning experience within the experience of the learner: it is a process which takes the experiences of both the learner and the teacher and, through dialogue and negotiation, recognizes them both as problematic… [It] allows, indeed encourages, students and teachers together to confront the real problems of their existence and relationships… When students confront the real problems of their existence they will soon also be faced with their own oppression. (Grundy 1987: 105).

Source: Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) ‘Curriculum theory and practice’ the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm. Last updated: 30 January 2005

So, as we consider the land-grab of the digital commons by proprietary companies (a.k.a. digital land-barons), the loss of open spaces where information and ideas can be exchanged in an unregulated fashion, what hope do we have as educators of reclaiming our schools? We are like the very students we serve, unable to confront the real problems of our existence in schools. As educators, we are oppressed by content filtering, anti-ownership approaches to technology, even though lip service is paid to the idea that we use technology to transform teaching and learning. Proprietary technology is the stick that will be used to knock education to the ground.

• What can we do differently to confront the real problems of our existence and relationships?
• How can we specifically challenge the powerful forces that with one hand cut education funding, and with the other raise the bar?
• More importantly, how can we tap into the creativity that is our inalienable right as human beings even as political (e.g. NCLB’s push for increased high stakes testing) and economic (e.g. Microsoft/Apple) forces fight to legislate, regulate everything we do?

We are not a market waiting to be exploited, we are the oppressed afraid to rattle the cage. As educators, we may think the battle is over or already decided in their favor. Some ask if legislators have the right priorities or the political will to make changes. The real question is, do we have the will to confront the real problems in our teaching and change how we teach? It seems foolish to believe that if we change our instructional methods, we will successfully win against government and big business. Systemic reform–that is, top-down reform that is legislated, politicized and paid for by big business–will fail. It fails because it is not about what we really do as educators, but what their perception is.

The only reform that matters is that for which you are responsible for. When you shut the door to your classroom, what you do with those students can change everything. If you use traditional approaches to prepare students to pass the test, then they may pass the test but fail in a “flat world.” If you use problem-based learning and inquiry approaches, digital storytelling, you equip students with the tools they need to thrive in a global economy filled with qualified Indians and Chinese.

Exploring what our next steps are is what my blog entries will be about. I’m appreciative of the fact that this is a not a soap box, but an opportunity for reflective dialogue. Fellow teachers, administrators, parents, and students, I invite you to confront the real problems of your existence, to engage those with whom you associate in dialogue about these problems, and then, to take action. Let your first actions be the conversations we have here. As Socrates said…

Let us examine this question together, my friend, and if you can contradict anything that I say, do so, and I shall be persuaded.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure