So many pieces of electronic equipment that we humans ostensibly own, in fact own us. They sit there smugly, their little lights gleaming malevolently waiting for us to sacrifice peace of mind and sometimes fingernails (when is the last time you changed batteries without physical pain?) in a vain attempt to make The Machine acquiesce to modest human requests.
The time is long past when an individual was able to understand the way in which his life worked. At one time your happy peasant lived in a community where everyday articles were made by known individuals in close proximity. Shoes, clothes, farm implements, food, building materials; everything was a part of a whole understood way of life. Not only did you know who made your comb, but also you knew how it was made and what it was made of. You knew and comprehended all aspects of its manufacture from raw material to finished article and, even if you couldn’t fabricate something yourself you knew someone local who could.
Now we have watches where an electrically stimulated oscillating crystal somehow tells the time; where pock marks on a disc illuminated by a beam of very strong light give us films; where micro waves cook food; where atomic explosions make the electricity work; where something on a key ring holds more music than the whole of my youthful record collection and where a phone can fit comfortably in a shirt pocket without making an unsightly bulge.
Even when something has become an everyday part of normal life, we have little or no idea how it works. As far as I’m concerned my ipod which contains ALL of my (not inconsiderable) CD collection (with room for much more) is the nearest I get to magic. If I went back in time to, say the 1950s, and managed to get access to the brightest minds in the scientific world at the time, how much hard science would I be able to give them to make them believe that the description of the electronics with which we surround ourselves today was not merely the frantic gibberings of a crazed self delusional maniac? The transistor was invented in the late 1940s, how would I describe printed circuits? Laser technology: light concentrated through a ruby and able to cut through steel – not convincing is it? Personal computers? DVD players? The Internet? DAB radio? DNA? I can’t explain any of them. It’s as if I am an ignorant savage wandering through a world made by the gods who show their care by lavishing wondrous products on us; but products whose secrets are hidden from impious eyes.
I have never forgotten working for Securicor and taking made up wage packets to factories around Cardiff. That phrase ‘made up wage packet’ in itself shows how long ago it was: imagine firms wasting time by producing little brown envelopes with large perforations in the front (to check the coins) and a half flap on the back (so you could count the notes) just before you went back to the cash office to query the amount that you had been paid. I know; I did it in the steel works!
Anyway, when working on the vans for Securicor we went to one factory and most of the workers were women at long production lines. When my mate was taking the locked case with the money to the management, I engaged the girls in conversation. I asked them what they were making, and not one of them knew. They were working all day making something of which they knew nothing. They could have been making weapons or toys; it was all the same to them. The only important thing was the wage packet that we were delivering; their part in the production process was irrelevant to them. This is a perfect example of the dislocation that characterises much of the workforce and indeed the population today.
You might think that in my own profession of teaching this xxx would not occur. A teacher, after all, is alone in a classroom with his pupils and is teaching his subject in which he has a qualification or two. But even here there is a process going on which has some affinity with the dislocation of the general population. Although most teachers are on fairly safe ground when their subjects are discussed, they are not so confident when ‘education’ is talked about. Although I can teach the novel ‘Great Expectations’ to a class, do I really understand just why I am teaching it? And if I resort to the justification that Dickens is a great writer, or that ‘Great Expectations’ is a great novel, or that English Literature is important, I haven’t really touched on the wider ‘educational’ aspects of my activity. And even if I was confident about what my subject was, would I be able to place it in the idea of a curriculum within an education system within a society.
I’m sure at one time I would have been far more confident about what I was doing: I would not have had the feeling that the truisms which underpinned the ethos of what I was doing were up for grabs. That the society in which I was living was asking far more searching questions about the very basis of my activity, but that the questioning itself was the preserve of minds beyond the mere reach of a subject teacher. The actual process of education was something beyond a single subject and a single discipline.
Questions of education have been asked ever since discussion has existed. Theories of education abound and always have, but when you just cast a cursory glance over the pseudo technospeak which is the language of modern educational discourse then the sense that you are no longer a living part of the process of educational method is undeniable. Teachers have been marginalised within their own profession by those who seek to complicate the process and limit the knowledge to adepts who embrace metaeducation and denigrate subject knowledge.
Not for the first time, appearance has transcended reality. Education for theorists has become hyper reality which unfortunately has to rely on the grubby reality of teachers teaching things to get the thing working. I am reminded of a member of the Registry staff in my university saying to me once, “You know Stephen; it’s amazing how well this place works when the students aren’t here.
Exactly.
The time is long past when an individual was able to understand the way in which his life worked. At one time your happy peasant lived in a community where everyday articles were made by known individuals in close proximity. Shoes, clothes, farm implements, food, building materials; everything was a part of a whole understood way of life. Not only did you know who made your comb, but also you knew how it was made and what it was made of. You knew and comprehended all aspects of its manufacture from raw material to finished article and, even if you couldn’t fabricate something yourself you knew someone local who could.
Now we have watches where an electrically stimulated oscillating crystal somehow tells the time; where pock marks on a disc illuminated by a beam of very strong light give us films; where micro waves cook food; where atomic explosions make the electricity work; where something on a key ring holds more music than the whole of my youthful record collection and where a phone can fit comfortably in a shirt pocket without making an unsightly bulge.Even when something has become an everyday part of normal life, we have little or no idea how it works. As far as I’m concerned my ipod which contains ALL of my (not inconsiderable) CD collection (with room for much more) is the nearest I get to magic. If I went back in time to, say the 1950s, and managed to get access to the brightest minds in the scientific world at the time, how much hard science would I be able to give them to make them believe that the description of the electronics with which we surround ourselves today was not merely the frantic gibberings of a crazed self delusional maniac? The transistor was invented in the late 1940s, how would I describe printed circuits? Laser technology: light concentrated through a ruby and able to cut through steel – not convincing is it? Personal computers? DVD players? The Internet? DAB radio? DNA? I can’t explain any of them. It’s as if I am an ignorant savage wandering through a world made by the gods who show their care by lavishing wondrous products on us; but products whose secrets are hidden from impious eyes.
I have never forgotten working for Securicor and taking made up wage packets to factories around Cardiff. That phrase ‘made up wage packet’ in itself shows how long ago it was: imagine firms wasting time by producing little brown envelopes with large perforations in the front (to check the coins) and a half flap on the back (so you could count the notes) just before you went back to the cash office to query the amount that you had been paid. I know; I did it in the steel works!
Anyway, when working on the vans for Securicor we went to one factory and most of the workers were women at long production lines. When my mate was taking the locked case with the money to the management, I engaged the girls in conversation. I asked them what they were making, and not one of them knew. They were working all day making something of which they knew nothing. They could have been making weapons or toys; it was all the same to them. The only important thing was the wage packet that we were delivering; their part in the production process was irrelevant to them. This is a perfect example of the dislocation that characterises much of the workforce and indeed the population today.
You might think that in my own profession of teaching this xxx would not occur. A teacher, after all, is alone in a classroom with his pupils and is teaching his subject in which he has a qualification or two. But even here there is a process going on which has some affinity with the dislocation of the general population. Although most teachers are on fairly safe ground when their subjects are discussed, they are not so confident when ‘education’ is talked about. Although I can teach the novel ‘Great Expectations’ to a class, do I really understand just why I am teaching it? And if I resort to the justification that Dickens is a great writer, or that ‘Great Expectations’ is a great novel, or that English Literature is important, I haven’t really touched on the wider ‘educational’ aspects of my activity. And even if I was confident about what my subject was, would I be able to place it in the idea of a curriculum within an education system within a society.
I’m sure at one time I would have been far more confident about what I was doing: I would not have had the feeling that the truisms which underpinned the ethos of what I was doing were up for grabs. That the society in which I was living was asking far more searching questions about the very basis of my activity, but that the questioning itself was the preserve of minds beyond the mere reach of a subject teacher. The actual process of education was something beyond a single subject and a single discipline.
Questions of education have been asked ever since discussion has existed. Theories of education abound and always have, but when you just cast a cursory glance over the pseudo technospeak which is the language of modern educational discourse then the sense that you are no longer a living part of the process of educational method is undeniable. Teachers have been marginalised within their own profession by those who seek to complicate the process and limit the knowledge to adepts who embrace metaeducation and denigrate subject knowledge.
Not for the first time, appearance has transcended reality. Education for theorists has become hyper reality which unfortunately has to rely on the grubby reality of teachers teaching things to get the thing working. I am reminded of a member of the Registry staff in my university saying to me once, “You know Stephen; it’s amazing how well this place works when the students aren’t here.
Exactly.
No comments:
Post a Comment