Clarion Call in Defense of Public Education in a New Digital Social Order

Clarion Call in Defense of Public Education in a New Digital Social Order 

“The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education” ― Tara Westover, Educated

A Clarion is a shrill, narrow-tubed trumpet formerly used in war; also, a clear and loud description.

Let me be that soldier or educator with my call out to say that public education as decreed for hundreds of years must not be ingested by the many current online strategies to displace its value. This week for the first time, I saw a TV advertisement and a Facebook page for an online Academy to enroll students from kindergarten to high school. At the same time, the American government requested to cut more than $8.5 billion from the Education Department budget and add a proposed $5 billion plan to support private schools. Realizing the power of mass media, public opinion can be willfully diverted.  

 A public school is an icon of the community. As such, teaching takes an active role in social responsibility in a changing technological society to maintain values, manners and fundamental skills for survival. But when society has undergone such a radical change in such a short time, what do we know how to best educate for survival in this new social order of massive technological changes, information overload where quick tweets can substitute for learned input. 

The public educational process has gone through numerous reformations to meet continuing societal demands. But I worry how public education will survive this technological opponent under various names of modern education, online e-learning and free public virtual schools, especially at the elementary level.

First, I can mainly refer to my 24 years as a public-school teacher teaching grades from grade 3 (7 years old) to grade 8 (14 years old). I have an Bachelor of Education degree based on four years of university teacher preparation with core subjects as well as early childhood development, psychology  and sociology.

Yes, I worked with specific curriculum objectives as mandated by the provincial Department of Education to ensure standardized learning outcomes at every grade level. There were daily lesson plans complete with resources, outlines, activities and evaluations. There was satisfaction at the end of a class and the school year when the students left with more What I Know Now vs What I Didn’t Know when I Started.

Every subject had its particular parameters, facts, schematics, formulas, and hypothesis. But the classroom atmosphere had much more to offer. There could be 30 young people of different backgrounds, aptitudes and abilities in an enclosure who also had to learn the values of obedience, co-operation and group management.  There was mindfulness for students of limited abilities. There was problem-solving and creativity from many perspectives and challenges. There was brainstorming and decision-making with multiple variables where the best alternative was with democratic approval. Analysis was communal and leadership self-evident.

These are essential skills of listening and collaborating that are co-factors in an integrated public-school education, along with a broad based global and historical courses of study from biology to physics to algebra to ancient history to literature. It wasn’t about any student's self-centered preference about whatever I want to learn, but public participation in how society and environment continue to work together. 

No doubt, a public-school system has its constraints in a digital society. Perhaps a well-rounded core education doesn’t matter to your all-knowing cellphone. But it’s not a matter of learning to use a calculator versus learning the multiplication tables by rote; or better yet, by drawing pictures of things multiplying or dividing into equal groups. It’s not a matter of using Google to spell correctly or use grammatical syntax. It’s the sequential thinking process that matters. In my brief encounter with computers in a classroom, I have yet to see a program that outlines how to write specific stylistic paragraphs for various reasons while sharing evaluations for improvements.  

No doubt, several complaints about public education can validate discussions such as too much curriculum being teacher centered; an old grading system related to passing exams; passive disengaged students more electronically geared; overcrowding and school closures; lack of parental involvement; being passed on to higher grades without grade level adequate skills; facing negative group behaviors; too  many extra-curricular distractions; and even, possibly poor teachers who practice favoritism. But I remember my Math professor once saying all you really need is one good teacher to turn you into a life-long student ... maybe he was right … virtual or a real handshake.

No doubt, there are several compliments about online learning that works best for the self-directed motivated students, who can progress at their own pace, working in a home environment, with remote instructors and virtual tutors, with interactive media and resources, automated evaluation via digital logs, and who can manage to stay the course from entertaining games. Parent supervision may be needed  to make sure assignments are turned in. Perhaps you’d agree that this self-directed learning is better for older students or adults interested in upgrading.

But, there are also problems such as lack of social interaction or developing relationships with peers, other than communication on forums, chat rooms, message boards and videos usually with homogeneous viewpoints. So how do you learn to deal with diversity or discrepancy in different  situations?  

Undeniably, digital screens have become the natural habitat of young people in a transformation of subjects and thoughts unlike anything experienced in human history.  This Internet of all Things has created Great Changes in our society and culture forever, but where are the educational safety nets for young developing brains?

For example, my current worry and project is especially about educating teen girls who are surrounded by a brand-new vocabulary and motivation in a Selfie Domain with no training or denotation.

And therein are two problems. First, a general lack of teaching knowledge how to cope with this new subject matter. Usually, any new subject requires learning with clear objectives like any other study; preparation, asking questions, content, decision making and evaluation. Unfortunately, there is a lack of training for young girls at any level to gain any kind of understanding much less mastery over these overwhelming changes. Ignorance and confusion are a lethal mixture.

 The second problem, based on lack of preparation within the context, is how young girls are being taken advantage of by mass media which brainwashes their developing minds with adult prerogatives.  For example, how unnatural is it for young girls to sexualize their bodies to be "LIKE" adult images or role play? Part of this assault is their addiction to their cell phones and manufactured Selfies but with limited educational or survival strategies.

More than ever, I believe public schools are the best places to address and discuss this issue and others related to information overload and hyper social media interaction. These are serious social issues best dealt with by social discussion and remediation where listening, cooperation and empathy play central figures and consensus is mutual.  

I believe that business and political opportunities should not interfere in this sacred passage rite from childhood to adulthood. The future of education must not be monopolized by internet corporate giants with material agendas which is much easier to do with e-learners in digital controlled environments.

There is no doubt that technology as an integral part of daily life, for better and worse, needs to be incorporated into traditional classrooms.The fact remains that more and more educational tools, resources and Apps are always on the horizon to facilitate the learning process and improve outcomes.

But, as a final word, I hope it will be a broad-based public education with an open classroom with different backgrounds, experiences, and decision making based on majority consensus in order to show students how to effectively participate in society and produce positive contributions. 

Your comments and questions are always important to continue this discussion. 

Annemarie

amarie10@gmail.com

https://helpfulmindstreamforchanges.com

PS: You may be interested to read how 24 centuries ago, a Greek philosopher started with an image of a large cave descending into the Earth, our natural connection. Read how how Plato’s allegory of the Cave still applies even more in the search for truth via education especially in a digital world. 

Excerpt: There has never been a greater urgency to make the case that public education must remain democratic, diverse and strong; especially for young people who are the stimulus and hope as they inherit the future with greater degrees of fairness, ethics and justice, both to the kinds of society and environment they want to live in.

https://helpfulmindstreamforchanges.blogspot.com/2019/07/discovering-platos-allegory-of-cave-in.html 

Discovering Plato's Allegory of the Cave in the Cyber-World where Freedom of Education Can't Be Denied

Discovering Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in Cyber-world 

where Freedom of Public Education Can't Be Denied

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.  Plato

An allegory is a story with characters and events that reveal a hidden meaning or a moral message differing between right and wrong. Plato’s allegory of the cave from ancient Greek times still has morals to teach today's citizens undergoing a massive cultural revolution in a formidable, relentless technological cyber-world.  Not unexpectedly, we can share a common human bondage with both past, present and future timelines, but the differences are profound affecting even our youngest people.

There has never been a greater urgency to make the case that public education must remain democratic, diverse and strong; especially for young people who are the stimulus and hope as they inherit the future with greater degrees of fairness, ethics and justice, both to the kinds of society and environment they want to live in.

But 24 centuries ago, Plato started with an image of a large cave descending into the Earth, our natural connection. At the bottom of the cave is a large wall in front of which sit rows of prisoners in chains, meaning that people as public participants need to follow social rules or laws. (I would assume children were not present in these adult affairs.) Behind them is a platform where various puppets and puppeteers are performing their actions or events. Behind them burns a large fire so that only their shadows are cast on the wall. The prisoners do not see or hear the real puppeteers or their puppets but rely only on the echoes and shadows cast by these forms. Their only experiences and only words they can speak are about these shadows, thinking they are the real things.

For example, they may say “look there is a rich man” by pointing to the shadow on the wall. Plato asks would they be wrong in believing this shadow must be a real rich man without deception. Or is the perceived rich man just manifesting his image and desires in order to make people believe he is a rich man with special rights. Perhaps, it may actually be a poor man who starts the mirage and illusion on the platform itself.

The spectators can only ask the ultimate ageless question: do we gain knowledge as shadows of someone else’s reality or do we seek our own truths based on facts? 

From sitting in bondage watching shadows, people know there must be the cave’s opening at the top where they can exit into sunlight, meaning truth or enlightenment.  

Obviously we do not live in an ancient Greek world. Their wall would be more classical knowledge; images would be limited to location, harvests, marketplaces, families, some warfare, many deities to explain the forces of nature and wise philosophers who begat the name democracy meaning “whole citizens able to rule in government.”  Our connection is, as part of the perpetual human condition, that we also care for our environment, our productivity, our families, traditions, and our past and future histories.

What’s happening with today’s technological containment with modern puppeteers?

However, our physical containment is channeled deep into recent technology. We do not watch shadows cast by a fire, unless in quiet repose in front of a campfire shooting sparks into the dark sky. Our wall is the global worldview now where our planet Earth appears as “a tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam.” The audience, including young people, sit neatly within their social rules; but this time, the shadows on this wall are created by the glow of the internet screen. 

Our opinions, our glimpses of reality, our illusions of truth are controlled by the light of the internet, even more brilliantly enhanced by individual i-pads and cell phones at our fingertips.  

So, who are these puppeteers and new kinds of puppets, casting shadows and sharing messages for our behalf on our screens? Definitely, the range of scale offers an infinite variety of acts from which to choose. Once more, the nature of this medium overtakes the meaning of the message where the focus is always on the moving parts without regard to background composition or long-term effects.    

Without precedence, however, this internet medium has enabled, accelerated and extended this focus on the obvious, the loudest, the most theatrical, without attention to personal and social consequences; in other words, this is the brain limbic system fulfilling its key functions of emotions, memories and arousal or stimulation.

And so, it is that the loudest actors, loaded with the most spectacles and huckster speeches, cast their viral shadows not only on the wall but also on the personal screens of the bonded prisoners in our society; including even children, armed with their own devices.

Our modern cave has turned into a clamorous and glamorous social media circus. Each big noisy shadow is followed by an even bigger noisier shadow, without boundaries. Lines are quickly drawn along sexism, ageism, racism and elitism. Furrows are made for nationalism, authoritarianism, partisanship, and extremism. Egos thrive, tolerance suffers, toxicity normalizes, the word ‘hate’ surfaces again and again, human rights are questioned, and society fragments. Twitter-verse becomes the new Twilight Zone where the smallest words have the biggest bangs.

What kinds of problems can happen with the swarm of the biggest players?

The biggest problem is that the biggest puppeteers with the biggest shadows are the ones that proportionately fill both the worldview wall and the individual screens. Often these are the wealthy, academic and political players from corporate owned media outlets; and multinationals such as industrial and medical platforms with plans to profit from and control the masses. 

There is even the rare possibility that one puppeteer with the right celebrity hype and exposures can rise as a demigod to not only fixate the seated crowd but infiltrate the moral public conscience and give license to follow darker instincts.

The biggest immorality of such unrefined media ascension and access is when despots with the biggest microphones begin to shape the attentive populace to fit into their realities, illusionary and false as they may be. The purity of freedom of speech is ransacked by fake news and yellow journalism. Our common moral justice demands that news must rely on observed truths; but history shows how the term ‘fake news’ has been used before by tyrants to cover their own propaganda. There is no other way to explain the phenomenon of an educated man with a strong Christian faith who can blatantly describe an actual photograph of a terrible event with the most comforting lies to suffice his followers…the infiltration is complete.

Back to Plato, both our ancient and modern societies also share this common human bondage. Most people would prefer to remain in chains or keep tuning into those performers who replay their favorite programs. We tend to prefer to see shadows of reality from others, because it releases us from seeking our own truth. At the same time, often these manufactured social images affect our normal self-images to think we have no comparable abilities, skills or results but need a king on a white horse for rescue.

As changes become tougher to face, it’s easier to discriminate, bully, blame or victimize the person next to you who may be watching a different screen. In fact, the allegory continues, that if for some reason we find ourselves outside the cave, where we can find freedom, this state can be very frightening because illusions are more satisfactory for the moment. There is pain associated with liberating yourself from the past or coming into the daylight or enlightenment.

And so, people keep exposing themselves, keep clicking, tweeting and twerking, keep looking at false illusions on the wall and their screens, facing personal traumas, believing there is some sanity at least within some shadows of the loudest puppeteers. Unfortunately, this transformation can also apply to young people.

Can Plato’s truth fit into our modern society?

Back to Plato’s philosophy which is that truth exists outside the cave on the wings of education. The sun is a metaphor for freedom described as enlightenment. This is where ideas flourish, the essences of  love, justice, beauty, and service to others with decency and morality are encouraged. This is where the arts and sciences are nurtured, where the creative and spiritual contributions make connections and bind relationships.

Plato believed that everyone wants to crawl out of the cave of darkness and ignorance and walk in the light of truth. He taught his students that all of us want to be part of something higher, a transcendent reality of which the world we see is only a small part to where our human bondage can unite everything into a single harmonious whole.

Why is the Freedom of a Public Education Essential for Democratic Society?

So how do young people fit into our modern technological social revolution? 

As a captive audience, they have also been exposed to the streaming shadows and fake realities in front of their internet screens. They have vicariously adopted adult roles while often facing media abuse, trauma, addiction, hyper-sexuality, materialism and market manipulation. 

   

The moral outrage here is they are still young; their adolescent brains have not fully developed to make rational decisions or judgement calls. The associative prefrontal cortex doesn’t have the experiential inter-neuronal complexity until their early 20’s to make deductive critical reasoning. 

This transformation of youth culture via a veritable social media invasion is unprecedented, crying for discussions and solutions because young people must remain as our main stimulus to better manage changes in societal and environmental spheres. Can anybody dare say this is insidious indoctrination?

There is no doubt that digital technology saturates today’s educational platforms. Definitely there are advantages to the ability to “connect to specialized information nodes and resources in real time” and learn from social networking, blogging, message boards, Google searches, and Wikileaks. But how does individualized social autonomy explain the difference between teaching and learning via traditional methods in public schools?

My reference is personal experience. In a public classroom there are students of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and goals; including special needs. The lesson objectives are shared equally and collaboratively. Students interact at their levels and interests with a one-on-one teacher who encourages brainstorming by understanding the basics of critical thinking and making consensual decisions.

Public education creates the public where the country’s interests and civic responsibilities are talked about so that every person can hear their own voice and feedback to manage situations where multiple representations, or truths, can exist. There is no one elitist or biased puppeteer to promote his or her agenda with private enterprises. What is the better way to develop citizenship values?

In Plato’s world, the main purpose of education was to “ban individualism, abolish incompetence and immaturity, and establish the rule of the efficient.” Publicly, education was the positive measure for the operation of justice in an ideal state where ignorance was the root of vice. Properly, education started with storytelling to young children, continued with teenagers and citizens with civic roles and progressed as long as 50 years to the rare individual capable of governing the country.

Plato said, “that those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture, will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”  Maybe, perhaps you also  wonder what Plato might say about his “transcendent, integrated development of human personality” in today’s internet world of change?

Our hope is public education with equality for every child minus the bright lights of illusion. We must do better especially for our children’s sake.

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more they will hate those who speak it ... George Orwell