Imagining Human Possibilities: A Plea for Technological Completeness[1]
Juan José Zoreda-Lozano
Dept. of Technology and Production
Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana-Xochimilco
Margaret Lee Zoreda
Dept. of Philosophy
Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana-Iztapalapa
Summary
After
defining technology, rationality and various types thereof, a normative stance
is adopted for a rationally complete technology. This involves the fulfillment
of practical rationality further consisting of epistemic, instrumental and
teleological rationalities. It is argued that the realization of rationally
complete technology necessarily entails recourse to imagination and thus to
humanistic considerations, mainly related to social and ethical values. Next, the
authors´ ideas about the purposes of education are stated in formulating the
case for a complete educational technology expressed in humanistic terms.
Key Words: technology, rationality,
imagination, education
Somos “hijos de la fantasía.”
José Ortega y
Gasset
“As a poet and a mathematician, he would
reason well; as a mere
mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all....”
C. Auguste Dupin
in “The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe
It is not a
paradox to say that in our most theoretical mood we may be nearest to our
most practical applications.
Alfred North Whitehead, “An Introduction to Mathematics”
It is no
understatement to observe that today worldwide we are being bombarded by a
technological turn permeating cultures with its concomitant
just-released-on-the-market artifacts (always “improved”) and the promise of
some kind of utopia they will bring about in all facets of mankind in the near
future. To question the value of this
relentless onslaught most often puts one in the position of being labeled a
Luddite, who tries to prevent what “progress” will bring inevitably. We do not consider ourselves to be Luddites;
after all, this paper could not have been possible without contemporary
technology and communication!
Nevertheless, we feel it is an opportune moment to examine some aspects
of technology and the purposes it is supposed to serve. Our position is that a “complete” or
consummate technology can only be realized if it is conceived through the
humanities. That is to say, a rational,
truly genuine technology must be specifically supported in the human capacity
to imagine. Therefore, we will begin by defining terms and examining technology
in general. Then we will look at the nature and purpose of the humanities, and
its necessary concomitant, the human imagination. Afterwards, since we are both
dedicated to university education, we will critically reflect on some of the
ways technology in general has been transforming education.
At the
beginning of this paper we offer the claim of Ortega y Gasset concerning
humanity as being a misfit and alien to
nature and, perforce, having to resort to imagination—fantasía—in inventing tools for its survival. It is our hope that this exploratory paper
can stimulate further discussion on how to best create and implement technology
through the imagination so that it is in accord with truly authentic human
purposes.
Defining Technology and Rationality
We believe
in approaching our topic that it is essential to begin by defining the basic
terminology we use in their most common usages, to be further refined by
specialists. In the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online, “technology” is defined as
“the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts” or as “a particular
practical or industrial art.” In these
terms, in the New Oxford American
Dictionary, “art” is synonymous with “craft”, or “technique,” that is, “a way
of carrying out a particular task,” “and a skill or ability in a particular
field.” We might here also consider from
the same source the meanings associated with the word “practical”: “Of or
concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and
ideas”; “likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible”;
“suitable for a particular purpose”; and “[of a person] sensible and realistic
in their approach to a situation or problem.”
So, we can conclude by these meanings that technology is a scientific
way of carrying out specific actions in the best way possible.
In the OED Online, “rationality” is explained
as “a rational or reasonable view”, “the quality of possessing reason.” Continuing further we find that “reason”,
among a multitude of definitions, can mean “a fact or circumstance forming...or
sufficient to lead, a person to adopt or reject some course of action or
procedure, belief, etc.”; “the guiding principle of the human mind in the
process of thinking...in adapting thought or action to some end...”; “sanity”;
and “a sensible view of a matter.”
Hence, we can say that a person is “reasonable” when they are
characterized by “having sound judgement, sensible, sane” and “not going beyond
the limit assigned by reason; not extravagant or excessive; moderate.”
Besides
the above common dictionary meanings, let us see what views some current
philosophers hold of technology and rationality. First, Mario Bunge expands the commonly held
boundaries and maintains that technology is
The branch of knowledge concerned with designing artifacts
and processes, and with normalizing and
planning human action....Modern technology is based on science, hence it is
capable of being perfected with the help of research....[Technology] seeks new
knowledge with a practical potential. Technologists are expected to design,
repair, or maintain artifacts, such as machines and industrial or social processes. And they are expected
to serve their clients or employers, who seek their expertise to further
economic or political interests....This is why technology can be good, evil, or
ambivalent. (our emphasis, 289-290)
Miguel Angel Quintanilla defines technology as “a body of
scientifically-based knowledge that allows for the discovery, explanation,
design, and application of technical solutions to practical problems in a
systematic and rational manner” (2). He
puts particular emphasis on the notion of technology being embedded in systems,
which include, besides cognitive and economic elements, those that are of a
social, organizational, cultural, etc. nature. He firmly believes that
technology forms a part of culture of a particular society and that culture
itself is part of technology (4; 14).
Next, the
neo-pragmatist, Larry Hickman, considers technology, not merely as a set of
objects or techniques, but primarily as a form of inquiry. In referring back to John Dewey’s work on
thinking and action, he states that “all
inquiry or deliberation that involves tools and artifacts... should be
viewed as instrumental: in other words, as a form of technology” (our emphasis,
Capps 185). Thus, technology for him,
like Dewey, is a process of
deliberation in the creation and implementation of tools for specific problems.
It should be noted, as will be seen later, that Dewey considers thinking and
the “self” as “tools” in the broadest sense of the word in that they aid us in
dealing with the world.
In turn,
Manuel Liz, with whom we could not be in more agreement, links technology,
rationality, imagination, and the notion of the quality of life. He claims that
in order to be truly rational with our technologies, as in the above, of sound
judgment, we must develop our imagination in creating new technologies that
will bring about an improvement in the quality of life (48-49).
On the
other hand, Bunge refers to reason as “the mental faculty consisting in
thinking in a cogent way. [It is] the complement of experience and the guide to
deliberate action” (243). Then, in this context, the exercise of reason may be conceived as rationality, a polysemic
term of which Bunge distinguishes at least twelve distinct meanings. In what
follows, for the purpose of elaborating further on the ideas of Manuel Liz, of
these meanings we retain those of practical
rationality, epistemic rationality, instrumental rationality, and teleological
rationality. The first we understand to signify “the acquisition of means
that probably help to attain the set objectives and goals” (241). Epistemic
rationality concerns “the empirical grounding of arguments discarding
conjectures that are incompatible with the legitimate body of scientific and
technological knowledge; criticize and justify assertions through tests and
evidence employing fruitful and well established methods, and proving validity
of inferences” (241). Instrumental
rationality would be “the commitment to realize action M when this is a
objective that has priority over others with the intention of achieving a
current primary goal P, as long as the disadvantage of realizing M are offset
by the benefits accrued to P” (241). Finally, teleological or valuational
rationality or rationality of ends, consists of “suitably ordering and ranking
some objectives over others in terms of our ideals of what constitutes the best
to be achieved” (241).
In his
insightful paper “Conocer y actuar a través de la tecnología” [To know and act
through technology] Manuel Liz, besides considering relevant epistemological
and historical facts in the many-sided relationship technique (as craft)–science–technology,
explores the apparent paradox that to strive (as it should be) for complete
practical rationality in our technological pursuits necessarily entails
recourse to full fledged imagination. For him the practical rationality of
technology includes its epistemic and instrumental rationalities. Importantly,
also, as a salient component of the same practical rationality, teleological
rationality must be exercised to appraise the ends to which technology should
be put. Here, fantasy and imagination are deliberately called upon to form and
depict ex ante in our minds a desirable state of affairs or
utopia to be ushered in by the purposeful mediation of technology.
Consequently, in achieving complete practical rationality in technology, there
should be no question as to the pre-eminent and determining role that cultural,
social and ethical normative elements have to play therein. Otherwise, we would
definitely generate a defective, rationally incomplete, technology failing to
bring about the expected “quality of life”—or as Liz poignantly renders it, “A
life before death”.
In
addition, to close the circle, Manuel Liz seems to observe that, while engaging
in humanistic discourses about our material and spiritual condition on earth,
it should be highly desirable to gain a semblance of serious concreteness by
promoting wide discussions of technology in terms of the ideas mentioned above.
In other words, it is groundless and futile to regard the humanities and
technology, and imagination and reason as antagonists or contenders in human
life, if they ever were. Rather, they underscore dual and synergistic human
stances to be harmoniously entwined in our pursuit of a dignified and decent
existence, individually as well as in relation to others and nature.
As a matter
of fact, again glossing over Ortega y Gasset, as individuals or in association
with others, we bring our fantasies and imagination to fruition by molding
incessantly ourselves and our environs (social and biophysical), often
compulsively omitting teleological concerns, to suit our perceived needs,
aspirations, and desires. It would seem, at any rate, that we are always acting
out our innate, manipulative, i.e. technological traits as a species, many
times for better or worse. In some quarters, it is still commonly held that for sake of attaining a “true
humaneness”, our technological vocation should be repressed indiscriminately without due assessment. All
in all, this manichean assumption
might ultimately prove to be ill conceived. For, with no sufficiently ample
appreciation of the unavoidable
technological factors at play in all human endeavors, it may after all make
us miss genuine possibilities for expressing the manifold human potential for
sustaining goodness in our contemporary world.
The Special Qualities of the Humanities and Imagination
We have argued
that technology, far from being supposedly just instrumentalist or “neutral,”
is quite culturally and ideologically (i.e., value) -bound. This being the case, technology cannot and
should not avoid being examined under the scope of those humanist disciplines
whose purpose, as Hult states, is to engage in “inquiry into consciousness,
values, ideas, and ideals as they seek to describe how experience shapes our
understanding of the world...[dealing] in significance, insight, imagination,
and the meaning of human experience” (4; 6).
Science, basic or applied, cannot tell us the human significance of
technology. The humanities—languages,
literature, history, philosophy, and the arts—provide us with what Dewey terms
humanity’s “best tool...intelligence as method of action” (Essential Dewey II 128), that is, a process of inquiry to uncover and also to create the human purposes and consequences of any of our actions,
in this instance, technology. Dewey’s
naturalistic philosophy sees thinking itself, as well as the creation of
technology, as man’s way of interacting with an ever precarious, chaotic
existence in order to make it more stable and thus have a better world for
truly fulfilling life experiences. A
transactionalist, he never separates thought and action; our thinking already
includes its end, intentional action, or put into his terms, “ends-in-view” (Essential Dewey II 248).
Dewey’s simple definition of a tool is “what it makes possible than what
it immediately is....it remains a thing used as an agency for some concluding
event....a means for consequences” (Experience
108; 154). So then, human tools and
technology are never only mere artifacts, but things (and processes) endowed
with human intentions and meaning, which we can uncover through the
humanities. As Ellen Lagemann has
observed, the humanities can reveal to us through our interpretations what
science is unable to: “human dilemmas, aberrant phenomena, [and] erratic
occurrences” (19). Hence, the purpose of
the humanities is not to seek general laws, but as an ideographic discipline,
to search for the unique value in the particular within particular cultural
contexts (Zoreda-Lozano 2). So we can
conclude that the humanities can aid us to reflect on what are either the
explicit or implicit specific human ends in specific uses of technology.
But how do
we uncover and construct meaning? We
believe that imagining plays a critical role in thinking, as it discovers
significance and projects possible ends or consequences. Returning to Dewey, we
find that he affirms that
Deliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of
various courses of conduct. We give way, in
our mind, to some impulse; we try, in
our mind, some plan...The imagining of various plans carried out furnishes
an opportunity for many impulses which at first are not in evidence at all, to
get under way. (original emphasis, Essential Dewey II 335)
The imagination functions crucially, together with
observation, in all our mental activities (Think
223-224), as the “conscious adjustment of the new and the old” (Art 272). Jim Garrison and Linda Pacifici, contemporary
pragmatists, have reinterpreted this Deweyan notion in the following manner:
Dewey understood imagination as having an intrinsic role in
the emergence of more structured phases of the developing experience.
Imagination is the point of transition between the vague qualitative background
of inquiry and the cognitive foreground of ideas. The artistic artifacts of
creative imagination are original ideas and novel hypotheses the consequences
of which are testable by further inquiry. Inquiry
on such an account is an artistically
creative endeavor....Exploring possibilities is a further function of
inquiry. Initiating the foreground cognitive phase of inquiry and then sustaining it requires even further use
of imagination. (our emphasis 125; 127)
Therefore,
imagination can be an aesthetic moment of insight, both temporally and
spatially, of one’s present existence and that which can be “seen”, or
imagined, in the future. And as such, it is fundamental for human
empowerment. In intensifying our
perception of the present, we can picture other versions of it toward the
future. Giltin explains in making a case for the employment of art and
imagination for purposes of social critiquing that “...it is through
aesthetics, and imagination in particular, that we are able to see the way
everyday images saturate our body, mind, and soul at the same time that we can
envision alternatives to those images” (16).
In our particular situations we are capable of penetrating the surface
of things to see their origin, for what purpose were they created, and their
consequences—for better or worse---in our lives.
This
liberating potential of imagination is a current theme for many scholars in the
humanities. In his Poetics of Imagining, the literary scholar, Richard Kearney,
characterizes imagination as
the very precondition of human freedom—arguing that to be
free means to be able to surpass the empirical world as it is given here and
now in order to project new possibilities
of existence. It is because we can
imagine that we are at liberty to anticipate how things might be; to envision the world as
if it were otherwise; to make absent alternatives present to the mind’s
eye. (original emphasis 6)
Along this same vein, the educational philosopher, Maxime
Greene, has steadfastly promoted art education and the cultivation of
imagination as fundamental at all educational levels. As she states,
Imagination is the capacity to posit alternative
realities. It makes possible the
creation of ‘as-if’ perspectives....Without the release of imagination, human
beings may be trapped in literalism, in blind factuality....It is imagination
that discloses possibilities—personal and social as well as aesthetic. (65)
Pertinent to our present discussion is her position as an
advocate of educational programs which would foment the growth of imagination
to help release people from mere skill training:
We are interested in releasing diverse persons from
confinement to the actual, particularly confinement to the world of techniques
and skill training, to fixed categories and measurable competencies. We are
interested in breakthroughs and new beginnings, in the kind of wide-awakeness
that allows for wonder and unease and questioning and the pursuit of what is
not yet. (44)
Imagination
is additionally liberating because it enables us to literally step outside
ourselves into the place of the other.
Dewey, again anticipating by more than seventy years the present call
for an ethical imagination, sustains that to think is always in relation to
other things and persons, and our awareness of those interconnections is a
“judgement of value” (Essential Dewey
II 330). It is here that Dewey proposes
the “tool” of sympathy, imagining the situation at hand from the other’s point
of view, as the way to genuinely and humanly judge events through
multiperspectivity:
A person of narrow sympathy is of necessity a person of
confined outlook upon the scene of human good. The only truly general thought is the generous thought. It is sympathy which
carries thought out beyond the self and which extends its scope till it
approaches the universal as its limit. It is sympathy which saves consideration
of consequences from degeneration into mere calculation, by rendering vivid the
interests of others, and urging us to give them the same weight as those which
touch our own honor, purse, and power. To put ourselves in the place of others,
to see things from the standpoint of their purposes and values, to humble,
contrariwise, our own pretensions and claims till they reach the level they
would assume in the eye of an impartial sympathetic observer, is the surest way
to obtain objectivity of moral knowledge. Sympathy ... is the tool, par excellence, for resolving complex
situations. (original emphasis, Essential Dewey II 332-333)
In a similar mode, Hannah Arendt points to the power of the
imagination to make us cognizant of others’ experience and views so that we can
judge with a greater impartiality instead of being imprisoned in our own mind
and experience:
Critical thinking is possible only where the standpoints of
all others are open to inspection. Hence, critical thinking, while still a
solitary business, does not cut itself off from “all others.” To be sure, it
still goes on in isolation, but by the force of imagination it makes the others
present and thus moves in a space that is potentially public, open to all
sides; in other words, it adopts the position of Kant’s world citizen. To think
with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go
visiting. (qtd. in Smith 82-83).
Like Dewey
and Arendt, both Nussbaum and Greene consider paramount for the contemporary
world the necessity of the ethical imagination, here for them, stimulated
through meaningful encounters with the arts. Nussbaum’s calls for an “education
for compassion,” as a counterweight to the prevalent economic rationality
ideology, that would sensitize us to the lives of others through art. She describes this kind of formation as one
in which
...public education at every level should cultivate the
ability to imagine the experiences of others and to participate in their
sufferings..., enabling our pupils to see the human meaning of facts that might
otherwise have seemed remote. This means
giving the humanities and the arts a large place in education, from elementary
school on up, as children gradually master more and more of the appropriate
judgements and become able to extend their empathy to more people and types of
people. Cutting the arts is a recipe for the production of pathological
narcissism, of citizens who have difficulty connecting to other human beings
with a sense of the human significance of the issues at stake. (426)
Similarly, Greene has unflaggingly believed that an
imaginative people, enjoying significant experiences with the arts, tend to be
more capable of being concerned with “otherness” and the moral questions of society:
...in the kind of world in which imagination is alive,
people have the capacity to look through one another’s eyes, to take one
another’s perspective on the world....For me, the moral concern begins with
that kind of connectedness, with reciprocity, with the imagination needed to
experience empathy...enhanced and deepened by what some of us call the ethical
imagination....which can be released by encounters with the arts. (108)
Richard Kearney also affirms that “imagination is the very
precondition of human freedom,” and consequently the “ethical role of
imagining” is necessary to direct and shape human affairs (6;7). Warnock follows up
This very
Deweyan stance of Warnock, against bringing a priori prejudices,
i.e., dogmas or ideologies, that would restrain thinking, is pivotal for a
flexible, skeptical reflection with imagination. With the imagination freed, we
can seek to uncover the meanings behind present technologies, seeing beyond
images and artifacts, how they affect ourselves and others, and we can posit
alternatives that would enhance human experiences, as in the following specific
case, in education.
Reflecting on Technology and Education
In any
discussion of the relationship of technology and education, it is virtually impossible
to avoid coming to terms with the participants’ educational philosophy (ies),
whether explicitly or implicitly stated.
So, let us begin by expressing our own beliefs about the nature and
purpose of education. We are opposed to
a narrow, skill or job training driven perspective, as well as what can be also
a narrow, exclusive, liberal arts one.
We agree with Dewey’s concept of the purpose of education as primarily
that of continual “growth”: “It [education] is that reconstruction or
reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which
increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience” (Democracy 76). In truly educative experiences, at the same
time that we become aware of previously unperceived connections and relations
in our life activities, we then are all the more empowered to direct and
control them (76-77). This is the kind
of universal education that Dewey sees fit to create and constantly transform a
democracy. He really seeks to bring the
best of vocational and humanistic traditions together, stressing that “the key
to the present educational situation lies in a gradual reconstruction of school
materials and methods so as to utilize various forms of occupation typifying
social callings, and to bring out their intellectual
and moral content” (our emphasis, 315).
He realizes that this could be misinterpreted into mere skill training,
or what he terms “trade education...a means of securing technical efficiency in
specialized future pursuits” (316). He
then explains what would be its deleterious consequences counterbalanced by his
positive vision of what education should be in a democracy:
Education would then become an instrument of perpetuating
unchanged the existing industrial order of society, instead of operating as a
means of its transformation. The desired transformation is not difficult to
define in a formal way. It signifies a
society in which every person shall be occupied in
something which makes the lives of others better worth living, and which
accordingly makes the ties which bind persons together more perceptible—which
breaks down the barriers of distance between them. It denotes a state of
affairs in which the interest of each in his work is uncoerced and intelligent:
based upon its congeniality to his own aptitudes. (316)
Dewey’s idea of education is both social and personal, as
persons fulfill their own talents, and thus their own lives and those with whom
they are associated in communal relations.
It is obvious that Dewey considers all persons capable of such an
education: being the driving motors in continually reflecting on and
reconstructing their experience, their relations with others, and hence their
society through an imaginative, ethical intelligence that nourishes itself
through a healthy skepticism, an non-dogmatic approach to problems, and an
openness to put oneself in the place of the other.
The
necessity of reflecting on one’s purposes in integrating technology into an
educational situation has been underscored by Croft, who states that the “value
of a computer for some given task derives from the value of the task itself,
and the computer’s effectiveness as a means when compared with other
[less-costly] tools at hand” (301). He
specifically points out that imagination can help us discover new possibilities
for the computer in education, but simultaneously warns that “education must
find creative uses for it [technology] in order to do its part in assuring that
the instrument continues to be used in ways that free human intelligence,
imagination, and industry to improve society” (303), because if not, “...we are
always in peril of the medium becoming an end in itself rather than serving as
a means” (303).
Of course,
many teachers, heads of teacher education and educational scholars agree with
this measured stand. For instance,
Blacker claims that technology is not
value-neutral and can only be considered educative in the Deweyan sense as it
provides for further growth of the person when it is “allowed to reveal” larger
and broader contexts, interrelationships, and horizons (190). As he states:
Proficiency with the instrument itself ought not to be the
primary focus (insofar as instruction
does this, it constitutes training).
Rather, one focuses on what comes into view, and then what comes into view
next, and so on. Technology is educative when it is allowed to promote this
enlargement or, as Dewey famously and repeatedly calls it, ‘growth.’ (original emphasis, 193)
This notion of technology as educative only in so far as it
stimulates continuous growth is also taken up by Bruce who sees the Web as
educative only when we stop considering it merely to find information, but
instead enter into a “dialectical” mode of reading with it:
For certain kinds of queries, my search is far from a
simple look-up. Instead, it appears to be part of the general process of
inquiry, which is tentative and fallible. There is no absolute starting point,
nor is there any sure way to reach the end, assuming such a point exists.....The
true value of the Web lies in the way it can open up our questions. We ask one
thing, but the Web leads us to ask more questions and to become aware that we
do not know....[T]he dialectical observer enters into a relationship with the
text in which there is an openness to new values and ways of making meaning.
The result is a process of accepting discomfort, examining alternatives, and
searching for new understandings. Thus meaning is not static, but constructed
out of the evolving activities of thinking and doing....[T]he dialectical mode
entails reading with a critical eye. This means engaging with the text in a way
that goes beyond seeing it as an information resource, and instead permits a
relationship with the text. That relationship can include reading what is not
said and even reading against the text.
(117-119)
To be
capable of being such an imaginative “dialectical” user of information
technology certainly is not something that a student can learn in some
pre-packaged, self-taught e-learning module. The higher levels of analysis,
reflection, and application to specific contexts, bolstered through exercising
the imagination, are skills and attitudes that are best transmitted through
close teacher-student relationships.
Similarly, Bramall points out that typical Web use “training” is not an
“educative” goal; instead we must help students be cognitively flexible and
open, “cognizant of the possibilities of, and adept at, changing for the better
their categories of understanding” (89). In trying to teach such abilities, he
maintains that
teachers [are] at centre stage.....The full realization of
the educational promise of the use and understanding of Web interfaces requires
specific forms of engagement and more importantly reflective understanding. The
initiation into productive modes of Internet engagement and stimulating of
appropriate reflection on the experience and its wider implications are
directed activities. They are unlikely to occur in the absence of teachers... (92)
On this
very point, another philosopher of Computer-Mediated Communication, Charles
Ess, stresses that distance educational programs may be effective in the early
stages of learning (learning rules and concepts), but in the higher levels of
learning (based on Dreyfus’ seven stages), which entail the use of judgment,
“students increasingly require the guidance and example of their teachers as embodied beings in real-world contexts
in order to progress through the remaining stages of [advanced] learning— (4)
proficiency, (5) expertise, (6) mastery, and (7) practical wisdom” (original
emphasis, 129).
Other
scholars have taken a more negative attitude toward the uncritical
implementation of technology in education. Of course, we have the now famous
diatribe of Tufte against PowerPoint presentation software which he sees as
blocking and falsifying true communication by simplifying and homogenizing
complex thought because it is “entirely presenter-orientated,
and not content-orientated, not audience-orientated” (4). Also, Shirley Turkle, who has been studying
the effects of computers on society for twenty years, reiterates Tufte’s
critique from the standpoint that “we shape our technologies and our
technologies shape our habits of mind....” (97). According to her, digital technology is
acting on human cognition and affective modes, and changing how students
organize their life experience (97), to the point where primary and secondary
teachers in the U.S. take books off of reading lists if they “don’t give good
PowerPoint” (101). In other words,
technology in becoming an end-in-itself, prevents the communication (and
learning) of real knowledge: a case of McLuhan’s medium becoming the message.
Even
recent issues of the British Journal of
Educational Technology (certainly no hotbed of Luddites) ponder what seems
to be the worrisome turn that the use of technology is taking for supposedly
educative purposes. Koper bemoans that
most e-learning is based on the retro idea that “learning is considered
synonymous with consuming knowledge in digestible and organised chunks prepared
in advance by a specialist in the field [and] the teacher’s task is to select
and arrange these chunks, to provide support and to test the progress of the
learners” (1). In other words, we have
the Freirian termed “banking” concept of education. As most of us recall, when
educational technology was first being presented twenty years ago, it was
hailed as the answer to individualize learning. But, as Rushby remarks, that
aspiration soon ran into the brick wall of development costs:
...we have seen a retreat towards simpler learning
sequences that can be constructed semi-automatically, using designers who
concentrate on the words and graphics, and on questions to test understanding.
The learning strategy is simplified into an essentially linear sequence, with
branching limited to the handling of incorrect answers to various forms of
multiple choice questions. The use of multiple paths has been put into the ‘too
difficult and too expensive’ basket.” (359)
He envisions a not very promising future in regard to
meeting specific learner needs and preferences. Nonetheless, higher education
in the U.K. and the U.S. “has embraced technology with virtual learning
environments (VLEs) whose content is largely linear sequences of subject notes
taken from lecture notes and put into hypertext with little thought of the
effect that a change in medium might bring” (360).
Even in a
field like foreign language education, one of the few humanistic disciplines
that has traditionally considered technology as a beneficial factor in
learning, Rafael Salaberry has reviewed all research published about technology
in language learning in The Modern
Language Journal since its founding in 1916 and stated that it is
definitely not conclusive that technologies have had a really positive impact
on language learning. And he agrees with
several experts, as we have noted previously, that
computer-mediated-communication in foreign language education “cannot convey
all the task-related as well as social information in as little time as
multichannel face-to-face communication” (Walther et al qtd. in Salaberry
49).
However,
there are presently others who are more virulent critics of the use of
technology in what they perceive as an ever-expanding commodification of higher
education. One of these, David Noble, follows Dewey in sharply differentiating
“training” from “education”:
...[T] raining involves the honing of a person’s mind so it
can be used for the purposes of someone other than that person. Training thus
typically entails a radical divorce between knowledge and the self. Here
knowledge is usually defined as a set of skills or a body of information
designed to be put to use, to become operational, only in a context determined
by someone other than a trained person; in this context the assertion of self
is not only counterproductive, it is subversive to the enterprise. Education is
the exact opposite of training in that it entails not the disassociation but
the utter integration of knowledge and self, in a word, self-knowledge. Here,
knowledge is defined by and, in turn, helps to define, the self. Knowledge and
the knowledgeable person are basically inseparable. (2)
He then concludes that a real education implies a low
student-teacher ratio with “significant interaction between the two parties,”
the exact opposite of which occurs when considering education as possible
mass-oriented mercantile on-line products that disintegrate and distill “the
educational experience into discrete, reified, and ultimately saleable
things....[;] the end of education has become not self-knowledge but the making
of money...” (3). One view might argue
that here technology is not an end-in-itself, but rather is used “imaginatively”
for profit-making by the institution or hardware and software creators. This
would be a perversion of the use of human imagination, as we have described it
previously, for learning purposes. In the end, one must recognize the
non-neutrality of technology and one must judge—using imagination to delve
beneath the bells and whistles---the incorporation of technology into X program
for what may be its real educative purposes, in the present and the future.
Reasoning Imaginatively about Technology
Our
intention in this paper has been to examine the relationship of rationality,
imagination, and technology, especially pertaining to the field of
education. Based on the previous
analysis of imagination and education, we now briefly regard the issue of a
complete practical rationality of educational technology in terms of what was
mentioned at the outset of the paper. It was there asserted, that fulfillment
of the practical rationality of a given technology hinged on its being, in
turn, equally complete with reference to its epistemic, instrumental and
teleological rationalities, as these were defined. Of course, it should be
expected that each technology in question will lead to particular ways of
conceiving those rationalities in a specific context. A large emphasis was
placed as well on the apparent paradoxical role of humanistic imagination in
seeking rationally complete technologies to improve the “quality of life”,
according to cultural and ethical values.
As the
cases that we mentioned should make plain, there is still an enormous gap between
the way educational technology is now thought over, developed and implemented,
and the requirements of a rationally complete technology fully informed by
humanistic considerations. For the most part, questions related to instrumental
rationality are highlighted at the expense of accounting for epistemic and
teleological rationalities. This neglect of a truly rationally complete and
imaginative outlook on technological issues on education may be prompted by
pervasive ideological, psychological, economical, and socio-political forces
yet difficult to ascertain and overcome. However, granted the current
complexities and individual and social transcendental implications of the
educational tasks at all levels, we are called upon to steer a sensible course
in our handling of the technological issues therein involved. What is here at
stake is no less than the seeding of a more humane prospect at the very roots
of societies, consonant with contemporary times.
But, it is
not the case of unwarrantedly rejecting all technology in education beforehand
nor of accepting it blindly just because it is out there marketed to be gotten.
We hold that our views and actions should stem from a firm belief in our
manifold human capacities—rational, emotional, and imaginative, as embodied in
the humanities, science, technology, and the arts—to foster insistently the
material and spiritual conditions for a full human existence.
For us, it
is impossible to be “reasonable” or “sensible” without being
“imaginative.” So we cannot have a
reasoned use of technology without imagination.
With full use of imagination, we can perceive the true origin of a
particular technology, its consequences if implemented (educative, social, and
financial), the effect it would have on both users and institutions, and also
if there would be better alternatives.
In the particular case of education, we would imaginatively uncover
beneath the bright, shiny surfaces of technological hardware and software what
they really are capable of (or not) to support us in our teaching with students
in promoting their continual growth and
in becoming aware of and discovering new horizons, connections,
complexities, and relationships. As was stated earlier, imagination cannot
thrive in dogma; so it is impossible to demonize technology. It is certainly not neutral, but must be
evaluated through imagination for its purposes.
And we as teachers can employ our imagination to posit future learning
experiences that would “imaginatively” foster growth for our students and how a
particular technology could “tool” those activities. It is obvious that teachers and institutions
must have a clear idea of what it means to educate, and not to just train (no
small task!) before implementing any technology into a curriculum. A rational, imaginative approach to
technology in education would be along the lines of Pope and Golub who
emphasize that teachers (and institutions) as well as students
need to be critical consumers of technology, to be
thoughtful users who question, reflect, and refract...on the best times and
ways to integrate technology....[to] systemically pose questions, examine when
it is appropriate and useful to integrate technology and when it is not, and
follow through with the implementation and evaluation of the technology
use. (93)
Notes (see at end of
document)
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