Response to Official Knowledge, written by Michael W. Apple

The text begins with the assertion that the “Right” and later the “New Right” is gaining power by systematically coloring the thought of the populous in order to see capitalism saturate every area of society including curriculum and education. In the meantime, the grassroots movements are finding themselves slowly dismantled by their own competition and rendered impotent by being folded into mainstream politics while actually isolated from any real power.

Less than 50 pages in and I know I am in a bit over my head, however enjoying it nonetheless. Roughly quoted, education is by nature riddled with political agendas and here we find no exception. The text spares no time into delving deep within the political sphere, never apologizing for it’s own self-identifying rhetoric. Words such as “progressive” and “critical” seem to identify the perspective of freedom and equality while “the Right” represents some sort of long-lived social organism that seeks political and economic control for it’s own gain. I found myself paralyzed enough by the importance of such vocabulary that I consulted the discussion pages of the Wikipedia article for the “right wing” article in search of a “democratic” source of a definition. Of course what I found was further argument and hyperbolic examples ranging from free-market and civil-liberty philosophy to Nazism. Even texts in Rhetorical studies are not immune from their own analysis.

Definitions aside, I agree that much of the “common-sense” political views I am exposed to (excluding those socialists and their newspapers, of course) tend to seek equality through free market competition. The parallel between this and social Darwinism played out in the school system made my stomach sick when I realized how I have only been comfortable with that position as long as I am not the one starving. I hope that additional readings and discussion will illuminate this topic further.

A point of confusion arose when I noticed that while value is given to teachers and communities having the power to pick their own curriculum while the mention of home schooling, where curriculum is decided on the social unit closest to the one learning, it met with a hint of disgust. Why is this the case? Could it be that if the authority to decide is done in isolation of the community the long-term results are even worse than a state mandate of uniform information?

Families have the tendency to educate their children into their parents mistaken truths (racism, religious inconsistencies) while governments run the same risks with only the illusion of democracy to protect. Both institutions are blind by my assessment, despite the fact that at the end of the day it is the family’s responsibility to raise a child.

GameQuest: Designing games for learning in higher education

 

I just found a link to a presentation I did with Les Howles and Cid Freitag during this last summer’s Games, Learning and Society conference. We tag-teamed the presentation and co-developed the content. Usually I speak up right after some group time to share stories and debrief. 

View the Video Here

Response to The Struggle for the American Curriculum written by H. Kliebard

My profession as an instructional designer has yet to afford the opportunity to think about what or why something is being taught as much as how. I took a course this semester with Michael Apple in order to begin questioning the “what” and “why” and this assigned book embodied a good portion of the answer.

The process of determining the causal relationships and dynamic tensions within a system is the beginning of a critical understanding and I believe this book was able to do so naturally and historically. I trusted and appreciated the perspective of the author (or was blinded by my agreement) and the use of first-source quotations to portray the tone in which the philosophies were originally presented. The sheer density of information demanded a slow read and careful notes be taken all while actually being quite a pleasant read.

The profoundly absurd trend of traveling further and further away from a holistic, beautiful view of education into an assembly line of competency robots was a major theme of the text and one of the most upsetting to see unfold. I’ve had only minor reflections on the work of Dewey, but in this text, his model for a school described more like a future aspiration than a short lived experiment in the past. I was particularly struck with the attention to creating a mini-society and the ability to have the simple theme of “control over environment” become the springboard into all fields of study, somewhat biased towards some sort of artful living.

Words like efficiency have a very contemporary value in my profession, usually cited from theorists such as Richard Clark. Stated most simply, why use any form of media that is more expensive than one that achieves the same objectives? For business, military and many other institutions, the answer is still to minimize the cost of education, taking the “lowest bid” for the outcome required. A good portion of the book showed that this theme rose out of a long tradition of business analysis.

As the efficiency model requires outcomes and objectives to be defined it only follows that our view of certifications, competencies, and other ways to reduce a human into a function would follow. The thinking runs so deep within the understanding of education theory that I find myself a bit at a loss even considering an alternative.

Another trend that was discussed in the text was that to divide students at early ages, sorting them into the different kinds of “raw material” that would be processed into different goods as efficiently as possible. I’m not certain if it was outright stated, but I am defiantly left with a desire to see the point of permanent decision about one’s vocation and thereby education pushed back as far as possible. It horrifies me that during my travels to southern Africa, and many parts of central and south-east Asia I have seen the practice of children being sorted performed as a key part of the maturation process. I now see the philosophy behind the practice originating in the United States where I’m sure it also still exists.