Over the last half century, despite the influx of technology, the methods and manner of education has not changed appreciably. If you walk the halls of higher education today, you will see a lecturer at the front of the room, speaking at and with a room full of students. Although technology may have been a "disruptive innovation" in other domains of endeavor, it has not had an appreciable impact on education, or at least the delivery of education. Power point has replaced the overhead projector. The internet has made it easier to import the occasional video. Yet the fully on-line course merely imports the physical space of the classroom into a virtual classroom, and has not changed the basic dynamic of a lecturer speaking at and with a room full of students. Despite the discussions of "multiple intelligences" and the suggestion that some students may be more visual (even kinetic) learners, the principle means of representing our reality, such as it is, remains language. A strong case could be made for mathematics, but mathematics must be taught through language, and so it is not surprising to see the lecturer talking at and with students, even in the mathematics course. Having said that, however, a strong case can be made for mathematics as the secondary means, after language, of representing reality in a complex symbolic system. Students who are not "symbolic analysts," to use Robert Reich's term -- students who cannot follow or make complex, nuanced arguments in one or another or preferably both of the principle symbolic systems -- will find themselves increasing marginalized as they progress within the education system. No amount of video can be a substitute for the Critique of Pure Reason, or even the Philosophical Investigations, nor can it substitute for the Calculus, or the statistical logic that parses a large and amorphous data set into a relevant pop-up ad on a Facebook page.
Although technology has not appreciably changed the classroom, it has upped the ante for students. Frank Levy of MIT in a recent paper, "How Technology Changes Demands for Human Skills" answers the question implicit in his title by suggesting that "a technology rich workplace requires foundations skills including numeracy, literacy and reading ability, an advanced problem-solving skill I will call Expert Thinking and an advanced communication skill I will call Complex Communication." Historically, of course, the need for an educated citizenry could be met with the first items on Levy's list, numeracy and basic mathematics, and literacy and reading ability, and with few exceptions it was and still is a goal universally attainable. The list, however, has been extended. Because it is difficult to imagine a workplace that has not become "technology rich," the expert in expert thinking and the complex in complex thinking point at an elevation in what might be called entry level competencies. I won't replicate Levy's full argument here, but it seems clear enough that the up-front programming and logic skills, and the rhetorical skills necessary to the ubiquitous pop up ad, if it is to successful, places demands on students at a level hitherto not considered. The expert and complex skills necessary to and well remunerated within the modern economy are not easily attained, and if attained, must be constantly refreshed. That many students lack the cognitive capacity for "life-long learning" at this level is not lost on many educators. That many students can retrieve a video from the cloud of unknowing does not make them technologically savvy, at least not in a way that will be remunerated. Ultimately, it only opens them to exploitation.
What has changed, in other words, is the degree of education necessary to full participation in the modern economy, within the modern civil society that matters economically and politically. We can wring our hands, bemoan the fact that we are "failing by degrees," that even in a collegiate setting most students are "Academically Adrift," and make various policy recommendations to turn the battle star, but if Murray is correct, if cognitive capacity is heritable and that education at best allows people to reach their full potential but does not change that potential appreciably, then we have some cause for pessimism. Despite the expectation that most students will graduate from high school and go on to some form of post-secondary education, a significant percentage does not. Of those that do, a significant percentage drift away from college, and for those that persist to the baccalaureate, a significant number pursue degrees of avoidance -- what a local politician called, much to the embarrassed outrage of my colleagues, "degrees to nowhere" -- degrees that allow students to avoid expert thinking, particularly in mathematics, and demand little or no complex communication, only the most fatuous forms of self-reflexive communication. If the number of students who are encouraged into college are not only "under-prepared" for what they should find there, but simply do not have the native capacity to engage with and benefit from what they should find there, the question then becomes, "if not college, what then to do with them?"
To be continued.
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