Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Marx. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Marx. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Marx (1818-1883) – Education as class war…

Although Karl Marx wrote little on educational theory, his influence on learning theory and practice has been profound. It was Marxism that underpinned the entire communist world’s view of learning in the 20th century, especially through Marxist theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser. In Soviet Russia and its satellite states, education was remoulded around political aims and when the Cultural Revolution in China between 1949 and 1966 was unleashed, it had devastating consequences. To this day Marxism, to a degree, persists in educational and learning theory, most notably in the social constructivism of Vygotsky, Luria and Leontyev.

Education the result of economic structures

As Marx believed that our very consciousness, as well as our theorising and institutions, were the result of basic economic structures, education is seen as the result of existing class structures. In practice, this means that the ruling class controls and determines educational theory, policy and institutional development.
For Marx, in The Communist Manifesto (jointly authored with Engels), education has a ‘social’ context, which is both direct and indirect, ‘And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society’. The solution to the dominance of the ruling class was, first to abolish child labour, then introduce free, state-funded education. The ‘combination of education and industrial production’ is also promoted, what we’d call vocational training. Unfortunately, ‘dialectical materialism’ was the manifestation of struggles between these groups within society and led to the identification of educated people and groups as enemies of the state.

Gramsci and Althusser

It was left to later Marxists to expand Marx’s social theory of education into working models that relate to knowledge, intellectual development and education. Antonio Gramsci developed these ideas further through ideas such as ‘ideological hegemony’ where the ruling class determines what passes as knowledge or truth. Louis Althusser developed this further, exploring the way in which education, state, church, media and other institutions become the ideological state apparatus. Class structures determine knowledge and the means by which knowledge is transmitted, distributed and taught. Freire gave us a critical pedagogy for the oppressed, where education is always seen as political. These ideas were to literally shape education for a large part of the twentieth century, across entire continents and in some last vestiges, notably North Korea, the idea persists.

Technology and education

With remarkable foresight Marx also predicted the massive impact technology would have on the division of labour. His vision of a classless society would make such divisions disappear, with education as the driver. The breakdown of traditional academic and vocational should also break down, “free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labour impresses upon every individual”. Individuals will have several careers and through ‘education… pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations’. This, of course, proved hard to implement, even in hard-lined Communist countries.

Fragment on Technology

As technology takes over the role of ‘production, the new form of production is ‘information’. The economy then becomes a matter of control, not over labour, but knowledge. The nature of that control is social and he invokes the idea of a ‘general intellect’. Negri regards this as a radical shift in Marx’s thought into ‘info-capitalism’ or ‘cognitive capitalism’. Other commentators have picked up on this theme, such as Dyer-Witherford in Cyber-Marx and Bastani in Fully Automated Luxury Communism, where he takes Marx and bends it towards a contemporary vision of technological utopia. It is a thought experiment, where technology solves critical problems such as climate change, energy shortage and, above all, poverty. Capitalism does what it always does, automate, minimise and eliminate labour. Productivity goes through the roof and we can then sustain a population of 9 billion comfortably on the proceeds of this productivity. Capitalism, far from being a destructive force, produces abundance, a flourishing world of equality and happiness. 

Influence

Marxism has produced a useful critique of education as the vehicle for the implementation of power, whether by the state, capitalism or religion. But its darker side has been its prohibitions, dogma and sometime murderous consequences.
Marxism was put forward as a scientific theory, although it proved to be far from having the evidential and predictive power that science requires. This led to its core assumptions, notably dialectical materialism, being used, not only to shape psychological end learning theory but also, at times, the elimination of certain groups deemed to be class enemies, often the educated and educators. Its more benign influence has been in seeing education as always having a political dimension.

Bibliography

Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1983) The Portable Karl Marx, ed. by Eugene Kamenka, Viking
Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1992) Early Writings, tr. by Rodney Livingstone, Penguin
Karl Marx, (1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, tr. by Ben Fowkes Penguin.
Terry Eagleton, (1999) Marx Routledge
Francis Wheen, (1999) Karl Marx Fourth Estate

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Marx (1818-1883) – education for all but the educated became the enemy


Although Karl Marx wrote little on educational theory, his influence on learning theory and practice has been profound. It was Marxism that underpinned the entire communist world’s view of learning in the 20th century, especially through Marxist theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser. In Soviet Russia and its satellite states education was remoulded around political aims and when the Cultural Revolution in China between 1949 and 1966 was unleashed, it had devastating consequences. To this day Marxism, to a degree, persists in educational and learning theory, most notably in the social constructivism of Vygotsky, Luria and Leontyev.
Education the result of economic structures
As Marx believed that our very consciousness, as well as our theorising and institutions, were the result of basic economic structures, education is seen as the result of existing class structures. In practice, this means that the ruling class controls and determines educational theory, policy and institutional development. In The Communist manifesto (jointly authored with Engels)
For Marx, education has a ‘social’ context, which is both direct and indirect, ‘And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society’. The solution to the dominance of the ruling class was, first to abolish of child labour, then introduce free, state-funded education. The ‘combination of education and industrial production’ is also promoted, what we’d call vocational training. Unfortunately, ‘dialectical materialism’ was the manifestation of struggles between these groups within society and led to the identification of educated people and groups as enemies of the state.
Gramsci and Althusser
It was left to later Marxists to expand Marx’s social theory of education into working models that relate to knowledge, intellectual development and education. Antonio Gramsci developed these ideas further through ideas such as "ideological hegemony". The ruling class determines what passes as knowledge or truth. Louis Althusser developed this further exploring the way in which education, state, church, media and other institutions become the ideological state apparatus. Class structures determine knowledge and the means by which knowledge is transmitted, distributed and taught. These ideas were to literally shape education for a large part of the twentieth century across entire continents and in some outliers, notably North Korea and Cuba, the idea persists.
Social constructivism
Marx is still having a profound influence on educational theory today through social constructivist theory. The resurrection of Vygotsky has led to strong beliefs and practices around the role of the teachers and collaborative learning and the belief that social context lies at the heart of educational problems. Here, it is clear that Marxist ‘class consciousness’ is replaced by ‘social consciousness’. We no longer have Marxist ideology shaping education, but we do have the ideas dressed up in sociology and social psychology.
Technology and education
With remarkable foresight Marx also predicted the massive impact technology would have on the division of labour. His vision of a classless society would lead to such divisions disappear, with education as the driver. The breakdown of traditional academic and vocational should break down, ‘free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labour impresses upon every individual’. Individuals will have several careers and through ‘education… pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations’. This proved hard, if not impossible to implement, even in hard-lined Communist countries.
Disastrous legacy
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ said Marx. And change it they did, mostly for the worse. The 20th century saw the dogmatism of Lysenko in Soviet Russia, political indoctrination in schools and dialectical materialism interpreted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, into an intellectual pogrom. The results in Cambodia, speak for themselves, with the virtual elimination of education and the educated. With that and the collapse of the Soviet Union came the end of the utopian dream.
Conclusion
We are still living with a hangover of Marxist theory in education, especially through social constructivist theories. Marxism is far from dead and the Marxist idea that everything becomes commoditised, including knowledge and education, is useful in combating the excesses of education and training aimed merely at increasing productivity. On the positive side, the Victorian democratisation of education, that arose from the industrial revolution, was transformed by Marxist and socialist ideas into a movement that pushed for free, state-funded education as a right for every citizen. This struggle is still raging as attempts are made to widen access to education and higher education across all socio-economic groups. In addition, the relationship between the state and education remains problematic is worth examination, and Marxist theorists have much to say that is useful in relation to the idea that education reflects and props up class differences, by filtering people, not on ability, but social background. Inequalities still exist and political interference through ideological, rather than evidence-based policies, are still the norm. Few, for example, would see even current education systems as truly meritocratic.
Bibliography
Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1983) The Portable Karl Marx, ed. by Eugene Kamenka, Viking
Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1992) Early Writings, tr. by Rodney Livingstone, Penguin
Karl Marx, (1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, tr. by Ben Fowkes Penguin.
Terry Eagleton, (1999) Marx Routledge
Francis Wheen, (1999) Karl Marx Fourth Estate

Thursday, November 21, 2013

10 reasons why I am NOT a Social Constructivist

Educators nod sagely at the mention of ‘social constructivism’ confirming the current orthodoxy in learning theory. To be honest, I’m not even sure that social constructivism is an actual theory, in the sense that it is verified, studied, understood and used as a deep, theoretical platform for action. For most, I sense, it is a simple belief that learning is, well, ‘social’ and ‘constructed’. As collaborative learning is a la mode, the social bit is accepted without much reflection, despite its obvious flaws. Constructivism is trickier but appeals to those with a learner-centric disposition, who have a mental picture of ideas being built in the mind.
Let me say that I am not, and never have been, a social constructivist. My disbelief in social constructivism comes from an examination of the theoretical roots of the social portion of the theory, in Rousseau, Marx, and Marxists such as Gramsci and Althusser, as well as critiques of learning theorists Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner. More specifically, I believe it is inefficient, socially inhibiting, harmful to some types of learners and blocks better theory and practice. Finally, I’ve seen it result in some catastrophically utopian failures, namely Sugata Mitra’s ‘hole-in-the-wall’ project and Negroponte’s Ethiopian farrago.
1. I don’t buy Rousseau (see Rousseau)
With Rousseau, we had the rebalancing of learning theory towards the learner, which was good but it may have led to an extreme reliance on naturalism and intrinsic motivation that is hard to apply in the real world. David Hume wrote, He is plainly mad, after having long been maddish”, and although Rousseau's legacy has been profound, it is problematic. Having encouraged the idea of romantic naturalism and the idea of the noble and good child, that merely needs to be nurtured in the right way through discovery learning, he perhaps paints an over-romantic picture of education as natural development. The Rousseau legacy is the idea that all of our educational ills come from the domineering effect of society and its institutional approach to educational development. If we are allowed to develop naturally, he claims, all will be well. This may be an over-optimistic view of human nature and development, and although not without truth, lacks psychological depth. Emile, as Althusser claimed, now reads like a fictional utopia.
2. I don’t buy Marxism (see Marx, Gramsci, Althusser)
Although Karl Marx wrote little on educational theory, his influence on learning theory and practice has been profound. In The Communist manifesto Marx states that education has a ‘social’ context, which is both direct and indirect, ‘And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society’. It was this idea that underpinned the entire communist world’s view of learning in the 20th century, especially through Marxist theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser. In Soviet Russia and its satellite states education was remoulded around political aims and when the Cultural Revolution in China between 1949 and 1966 was unleashed, it had devastating consequences, the nadir coming with Pol Pot and the complete eradication of teachers and schools. Interestingly, when it came to re-education, Marxists states reverted to direct, didactic instruction. To this day Marxism, to a degree, persists in educational and learning theory, most notably in Gramsci, Althusser and the ‘social’ constructivism of Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner.
3. I don’t buy Piaget (see Piaget)
Jean Piaget claimed that cognitive development proceeds in four genetically determined stages, and that they always follow the same order. This theory of child development, he called ‘genetic epistemology’, and it saw the minds of children as very different from those of adults. Importantly, this perception must be taken into account in teaching and learning. Big problem – he got it mostly wrong. His famous four ‘ages and stages’ developmental model has been fairly well demolished. How did he get it so wrong? Well, like Freud, he was no scientist. First, he used his own three children (or others from wealthy, professional families) and not objective or multiple observers to eliminate observational bias. Second, he often repeated a statement if the child’s answer did not conform to his experimental expectation. Third, the data and analysis lacked rigour, making most of his supposed studies next to useless. So, he led children towards the answers he wanted, didn’t isolate the tested variables, used his own children, and was extremely vague on his concepts. What's worrying is the fact that this Piagean view of child development, based on 'ages and stages' is still widely believed, despite being wrong. This leads to misguided teaching methods. Education and training is still soaked in this dated theory. However, on the whole, his sensitivity to age and cognitive development did lead to a more measured and appropriate use of educational techniques that matched the true cognitive capabilities of children.
4. Above all, I don’t buy Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist, was as influential as any living educational psychologist. In 'Thought and Language' and 'Mind in Society', along with several other texts, he presents a psychology rooted in Marxist social theory and dialectical materialism. Development is a result two phenomena and their interaction, the ‘natural’ and the ‘social’, a sort of early nature and nurture theory.
Ultimately the strength of Vygotsky’s learning theory stands or falls on his social constructivism, the idea that learning is fundamentally a socially mediated and constructed activity. This is a detailed recasting of Marxist theory of social consciousness applied to education. Psychology becomes sociology as all psychological phenomena are seen as social constructs. Mediation is the cardinal idea in his psychology of education, that knowledge is constructed through mediation, yet it is not entirely clear what mediation entails and what he means by the ‘tools’ that we use in mediation. In many contexts, it simply seems like a synonym for discussion between teacher and learner. However he does focus on being aware of the learner’s needs, so that they can ‘construct’ their own learning experience and changes the focus of teaching towards guidance and facilitation, as learners are not so much ‘educated’ by teachers as helped to construct their own learning.
In particular, it was his focus on the role of language, and the way it shapes our learning and thought, that defined his social psychology and learning theory. Behaviour is shaped by the context of a culture and schools reflect that culture. He goes further driving social influence right down to the level of interpersonal interactions. Then even further, as these interpersonal interactions mediate the development of children’s higher mental functions, such as thinking, reasoning, problem solving, memory, and language. Here he took larger dialectical themes and applied them to interpersonal communication and learning.
However, Vygotsky has a pre-Chomsky view of language, where language is acquired entirely from others in a social context. We now know that this is wrong, and that we are, to a degree, hard-wired for the acquisition of language. Much of his observations on how language is acquired and shapes thought is therefore out of date. The role, for example, of ‘inner speech’ in language and thought development is of little real relevance in modern psycholinguistics.
He prescribes a method of instruction that keeps the learner in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), an idea that was neither original to him nor even fully developed in his work. The ZPD is the difference between what the learner knows and what the learner is capable of knowing or doing with mediated assistance. To progress, one must interact with peers who are ahead of the game through social interaction, a dialectical process between learner and peer. Bruner though the concept was contradictory in that you don’t know what don’t yet know. And if it simply means not pushing learners too far through complexity or cognitive overload, then the observation, or concept, seems rather obvious. One could even conclude that Vygotsky’s conclusion about mediation through teaching is false. Teaching, or peer mediation, is not a necessary condition for learning. A great deal is made of social performance being ahead of individual performance in the ZPD but there is no real evidence that this is the case. Bruner, as stated, was to point out the weakness of this idea and replace it with the concept of ‘scaffolding’.
The oft-quoted, rarely read Vygotsky appeals to those who see instruction, and teaching, as a necessary condition for learning and sociologists who see social phenomena as the primary determinant factor in learning. As a pre-Chomsky linguist, his theories of language are dated and much of his thought is rooted in now discredited dialectical materialism. For Vygotsky, psychology becomes sociology as all psychological phenomena are seen as social constructs, so he is firmly in the Marxist tradition of learning theory. One could conclude by saying that Vygostsky has become ‘fashionable’ but not as relevant as his reputation would suggest.
The resurrection of Vygotsky has led to strong beliefs and practices around the role of the teachers and collaborative learning and the belief that social context lies at the heart of educational problems. Here, it is clear that Marxist ‘class consciousness’ is replaced by ‘social consciousness’. We no longer have Marxist ideology shaping education, but we do have the ideas dressed up in sociology and social psychology.
5. Massively inefficient
Critics of social constructivism are rarely heard but the most damning criticism, evidenced by Merill (1997) and many others since, criticise social negotiation as a form of learning, as it quite simply wastes huge amounts of time to achieve collaborative and consensual understanding of what is taken by many to be right in the first place. This leads to massive inefficiencies in learning. Many, if not most, subjects have a body of agreed knowledge and practice that needs to be taught without the inefficiencies of social negotiation. This is not incompatible with an epistemology that sees all knowledge as corrigible, just a recognition, that in education, you need to know things in order to critically appraise them or move towards higher orders of learning and understanding. In addition, social constructivism largely ignores objective measures, such as genetically determined facets of personality, it is often destructive for introverts, as they don’t relish the social pressure. Similarly, for extroverts, who perhaps relish the social contact too much, social learning can disrupt progress for not only for themselves but others.
6. Damages the less privileged
Constructivist theory, even if correct, accelerates learning in the privileged and decelerates learning in the less privileged. Those with good digital literacy, literacy, numeracy and other skills will have the social support, especially at home, to progress in more self-organised environments. Those with less sophisticated social contexts will not have that social support and be abandoned to their fate. This, I believe, is not uncommon in schools. The truth is that much learning, especially in young people, needs to be directed and supported. Deliberate practice, for example, is something well researched but rarely put into practice in our schools and Universities. In fact it is studiously ignored.
7. Ignores power of solitary learning
Much of what we learn in life we learn on our own. At school, I enjoyed homework more than lessons, as I could write essays and study on my own terms. At University I learned almost everything in the quiet of my own room and the library. In corporate life, I relished the opportunity to learn on trains and planes, havens of forced isolation, peace and quiet. To this day I blog a lot and enjoy periods of intense research, reading and writing. It is not that I’ve learned everything in these contexts, only that they go against the idea that all learning needs to be social.
8. Blocks evidence-based practice
Social constructivism, is what Popper would call a ‘universal theory’, in that no matter what criticisms you may throw at it, the response will be that even these criticisms and everything we say and do is a social construct. This is a serious philosophical position and can be defended but only at great cost, the rejection of many other well-established scientific and evidence-based theories. You literally throw the baby, bath water and the bath out, all at the same time. Out goes a great deal of useful linguistic, psychological and learning theory. Out goes any sense of what may be sound knowledge and quick straightforward results. Direct instruction, drill and practice, reinforcement, deliberate practice, memory theory and many other theories and practices are all diminished in stature, even reviled.
9. Utopian constructivism
Sugata Mitra and Nicholas Negroponte have taken social constuctivism to such extremes that they simply parachute shiny objects into foreign cultures and rely on self-organised social behaviour to result in learning. It doesn’t. The hole-in-the-wall experiments did not work and Negroponte’s claims on his Ethiopian experiment are quite simply untruthful. The problem here is the slide from social constructivist beliefs to hopelessly utopian solutions. As Mark Warschauer reports “no studies have reported any measurable increase in student performance outcomes in reading, writing, language, science or math through participation in an OLPC program”.
10. Groupthink
I often ask what people who mention social contsructivism, what it emans to them, and almost universally get vague answers. I then ask for names, and often Vygotsky is mentioned. I then ask what Vygotsky texts they have read. At this point there's often a blank stare - they can rarely mention a title. My point is that social constructivism is itself a social construct, often just a phrase, certainly often a piece of groupthink, rarely thought through. It gets perpetuated in teacher training and many other contentxs as a universal truth - which it is not. It is a theory that on first hearing, flatters teachers as the primary 'mediators' in learning. In other words, it is a function of confirmation bias.
Conclusion

Why am I NOT a social constructivist – ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Marx and e-learning

What has Karl Marx to do with e-learning? Well, Marx showed, in the first chapter of Das Capital, that everything gets commoditised. What Marx understood was that commoditisation is not just about the depression of prices, it also has a profound political and social consequences. This is a relevant debate in education, training and e-learning.

Cheaper and faster
While I admire the efforts made by LINE Communications and Kineo to provide rapid development offers, we must be careful to see this as a useful service at the bottom end of the market and not the solution as a whole. It’s great that we can offer cheaper, faster content production by using smart tools, speedy processes and small teams. This is a very useful bottom layer in the market.

Tools not the real issue
However, a toolbox do
esn’t make you a builder, Word does not make a novelist, Excel doesn’t make an accountant, PowerPoint doesn’t make a presenter. Rapid Development Tools are not what makes Rapid development work, it’s having experienced people who can fast-track the writing, build and process. This is a state of mind.

Let’s push on with making the page-turning, basic stuff cheaper and faster, but let’s, at the same time, make sure we have quality content in the upper layers of the market with simulations, games and scenario-based learning.

Friday, November 15, 2019

Let's give Technology an -ology...

We see technology as a noun, not a discipline or subject. There is no -ology for techn-ology, stuck as it is somewhere between science and engineering. Yet this is an area of human endeavour that has shaped history, economics, sociology, psychology and philosophy.
The tendency is to see technology in mechanical, material terms, to be stuck in the old paradigm, much as in this vision of robot cleaners in 1899, when the artist tried to imagine the year 2000. What we actually got was an AI driven Roomba. We also see this in the many books about technology, such as Usler's The History of Mechanical Invention and Brian Arthur's The Nature of Technology, although the latter is far more sophisticated in seeing combinations of technology as the deep driver. The word technology comes from the Green Tekhne (art, craft) and logia (writings). We still see technology as ‘tech’ not ‘ology’.
Economics
In economics, from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and his earlier The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the role technology in economic development became obvious. For Smith, the division of labour accelerates technological innovation as processes and procedures are automated, resulting in lower levels of employment and higher profits. He warned us of the dangers, as “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” This is almost oracle-like and can be applied directly to tax evading and rapacious tech companies. What Smith uncovered was the simple fact that technological progress is inevitable but what we do with it is politically optional.
Jump a century and Marx gives us a deeper critique but still sees technology as an object that diminishes labour and allows the exploitation of production by capitalists. In a fascinating Fragment on Machines (from his notebooks, the Grundrisse) he prophesises a knowledge economy, where social knowledge becomes a commodity. This transcends classical Marxism and predicts what actually happened with the internet and now AI. His exact words on the effects of technology were “general social knowledge has become a force of production… under the control of the general intellect”. This idea is elaborated in Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism and has been described as ‘Marx beyond Marx’, a third form of capitalism, described by Antonio Negri’s followers as “cognitive capitalism”. What constitutes ‘value’ in this new economy has changed. It is no longer physical but psychological transactions, attention, eyeballs, knowledge, analysis, prediction, prescription, minds.
On the mechanics of technological change, a seminal text is Schumpter's Theories of Economic Development, bwhere cycles of economic development are seen as being driven by innovative technology as their cause.Carla Perez in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital expands on the idea to identify specific cycles of over-effusive investment, slumps, then a period of fruitful investment that results in significant improvements in productivity. In other words, we overestimate technology in the short-term, underestimate it in the long-term.
Sociology
Beyond the mechanics of economics, we have had a deep analysis of the sociology of technology by, among many others, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. McLuhan gave us the phrases ‘medium is the message’ and ‘global village’ which have so much resonance that they almost tip over into cliché. He was both an analyst of media and technology but also a visionary, predicted the web, invented the word ‘surfing’ for casual fragmentary media browsing and although he was dealing with the media a decade before the internet, his ideas, endure, through works like The Gutenburg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technolpoly, laid the ground work for subsequent analysis of the effects on technology on society. They saw the dialectic between technology and minds as having complex personal and social dimensions and consequences. Media and messages, tools shaping our minds, the dangers of amusing ourselves to death, with the advent of the web and AI, these issues have become even more complex, with even more profound consequences.
Psychology
At a deeper, and more detailed level, the psychology of technology has been studied  in works like The Media Equation by Nass and Reeves. The cognitive change from passive to active media is explored in Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and a slew of works on the cognitive interaction between technology and the mind. It is important that we continue to read the literature from cognitive science on the role technology can play in improving teaching and learning. Without this bedrock of science we will be forever stuck in the world of fads and bogus and outdated ideas, like learning styles, Myers-Briggs and IAT tests on unconscious bias.
Philosophy
At an abstract level, the philosophy of technology was also been addressed by Descartes, Leibniz and Hobbes, more recently by Turing and Searle, then Sartre in Being and Nothingness and Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology, where he questions the instrumental view of technology and searches for a deeper understanding of a relationship that has become much more problematic. This relationship between mind and machine was expanded in a seminal paper The Extended Mindby Clark and Chalmers in 1997, with the idea of extending mind and cognition into the technosphere. Thomas Malone in Superminds, also sees in technology the formation of a network of immense power. This idea of a single network has been tempered by Niall Fergusson in The Square and the Tower, a reinterpretation of history around the idea of networks, where horizontal agoras or squares have been build but also vertical, hierarchical networks of power that attempt to control these structures. He thinks that we need a balance between these types of networks. Daniel Dennett has taken an even more expansive view, in his synthesis of the mind, natural world and technology, within the context of evolution, in From Bacteria too Back and Back
On the back of this interest in the economic, sociology, psychology and philosophy of technology, moral philosophy (ethics) has come to the fore. Dennett sees technology as being ‘competent without comprehension’ and is more sanguine about the dangers than some others. Re-engineering Humanity by Frischmann and Selinger is one such text, a detailed analysis of the slippery-slope of technological creep that may undermine society without us even being aware of its influence. Stuart Russell, in Human Compatible, also sees the problem as one of control.
The reason I have attempted to uncover these lines of literature, is that those of us working in the field, I feel, need sometimes to take to the higher ground. Far too much debate takes place at the level of us versus them, ignoring the complexity and subtleties of the field. Too often we get simplistic futurism or contrarianism. I have only touched upon the rich seams of literature in each of these strands. If we weave them together we get a strong rope by which we can pull the subject up into a more respectable level and see techn-ology as an -ology in itself. 
This piece was inspired by Nigel Paine, who interviewed me on this very topic last week for Learning TV. Thanks Nigel.

Saturday, February 01, 2020

Habermas - Ideology in education

Habermas, building on the work of his teacher Adorno and Marx, critiqued capitalism and was firmly in favour of equality and democracy. We see here a neutered from of Marxism that looks for ideological causes of oppression in capitalism and a philosophy of action to bring about change, albeit in the context of social democracy. His influence on education has been considerable.

Ideology critique

A dominant ideology imposes power over disempowered groups. The disempowered may, or may not, be conscious of their position of weakness. Education must address this by making it clear what ideological forces are at work, then look at the causes that give rise to these power structures. As a philosophy of change he also recommends action.

Action research

This is a call for research by and within the educational system to counter ideological, political pressure and reduce inequalities. It relies on a theory of knowledge that owes much to Marx, namely the idea that all knowledge has a ‘social’ context or is socially constructed, so that all taught knowledge is inherently ideological and never neutral. Such research involves technical, practical and emancipatory goals. Technical education includes control through the scientific approach, practical the qualitative analysis of the social context and emancipatory is to free people from the chains of their ideological oppression.

What to do

Habermas and his followers are not short on suggested action. The direct effect of the Habermas theory is to change the curriculum towards inclusive activity that critiques ideology through cultural studies, political discussion, citizenship, media studies, humanities and subjects that reflect on the process of education itself. In practice, teaching needs to accommodate discussion, problem solving, collaboration, and community-related learning. Teachers need to become political agents.
However, while it is hard to defend teachers as political agents or the extremes of socially constructed knowledge, curriculum policy, design and content are certainly ideological, in the sense of being politicised. There is much to be gained by listening to calls for inclusion, student participation and the student voice in education. Education, for Habermas should not simply fill up the recipients with the current canon but promote participation.

Technology

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere he presents an analysis of  ‘representational’ communications beyond the control of the state starting in the 18th century with newspapers, coffee shops and so on. Then the capitalist ‘public sphere’ where he contends that mass, broadcast media destroyed this earlier dialogue-based culture, when audiences became more passive. To some extent, this analysis has been overtaken by events and public statements, by new participatory media, the internet and social media. One could claim that mass new media returns us to active participation and dialogue. This may also be true in education where we can escape the strictures of a culturally controlled canon. Although plenty argue that it has brought more aggressive economic forces to the fore, with surveillance and monopolistic capitalism.

Influence

Habermas has had a huge influence on educational theorising. We see in this form of social constructivism underlying, generalist claims about the social nature of all knowledge, that now seem both dated and impractical. On top of this, the fight against ideology suffers from appearing to be ideologically driven. Action research could be criticised for allowing a soft and woolly approach to educational research that has led to little or no change in the way Habermas and his followers had hoped.

Bibliography

Habermas J. (1971) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,transl. Shapiro  Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1971) Towards a Rationalist Society, transl. Shapiro, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1974) Theory and Practice transl.Viertel, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society transl. McCarthy, Heinemann.
Rasmussen D. M. (1990) Reading Habermas, Basil Blackwell
Murphy M. Fleming T (Editors) (2009) Habermas, Critical Theory and Education, Routledge

Friday, March 30, 2012

Habermas (1929- ): ideology, action but lost on new media


Habermas, building on the work of his teacher Adorno and Marx, critiqued capitalism and was firmly in favour of equality and democracy. We see here a neutered from of Marxism that looks for ideological causes of oppression in capitalism and a philosophy of action to bring about change, albeit in the context of social democracy. His influence on education has been considerable.
Ideology critique
A dominant ideology imposes power over disempowered groups. The disempowered may, or may not, be conscious of their position of weakness. Education must address this by making it clear what ideological forces are at work, then a look at the causes that give rise to these power structures. As a philosophy of change he also recommends action
Action research
This is a call for research by and within the educational system to counter ideological, political pressure and reduce inequalities. It relies on a theory of knowledge that owes much to Marx, namely the idea that all knowledge has a ‘social’ context or is socially constructed, so that all taught knowledge is inherently ideological and never neutral. Such research involves technical, practical and emancipatory goals. Technical includes control through the scientific approach, practical the qualitative analysis of the social context and emancipatory is to free people from the chains of their ideological oppression.
What to do
Habermas and his followers are not short on suggested action. The direct effect of the Habermas theory is to change the curriculum towards inclusive activity that critiques ideology through cultural studies, political discussion, citizenship, media studies, humanities and subjects that reflect on the process of education itself. In practice, teaching needs to accommodate discussion, problem solving, collaboration, and community-related learning. Teachers need to become political agents.
However, while it is hard to defend teachers as political agents or the extremes of socially constructed knowledge; curriculum policy, design and content are certainly ideological, in the sense of being politicised. There is much to be gained by listening to calls for inclusion, student participation and the student voice in education. Education, for Habermas should not simply fill up the recipients with the current canon but promote participation.
Technology
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is an analysis of  ‘representational’ communications beyond the control of the state starting in the 18th century with newspapers, coffee shops and so on . Then the capitalist ‘public sphere’ where he contends that mass, broadcast media destroyed this earlier dialogue-based culture, when audiences became passive. To be frank he’s been overtaken by events and public statements show he neither understands new media nor its consequences. This is surprising, as it is mass new media that resturns us to active participation and dialogue. This may also be true in education where ew can escape the strictures of a culturally controlled canon.
Conclusion
Habermas has had a huge influence on educational theorising. We see in this form of social constructivism underlying, generalist claims about the social nature of all knowledge, that now seem both dated and impractical. On top of this, the fight against ideology suffers from appearing to be ideologically driven. Action research could be criticised for allowing a soft and woolly approach to educational research that has led to little or no change in the way Habermas and his followers had hoped. But, above all, he is misinformed and misguided on the role of technology.
Bibliography
Habermas J. (1971) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,transl. Shapiro  Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1971) Towards a Rationalist Society, transl. Shapiro, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1974) Theory and Practice transl.Viertel, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society transl. McCarthy, Heinemann.
Rasmussen D. M. (1990) Reading Habermas, Basil Blackwell
Murphy M. Fleming T (Editors) (2009) Habermas, Critical Theory and Education, Routledge

Monday, April 25, 2022

Is the Ukraine Russia's Vietnam?

Many moons ago, Gil and I went to Vietnam on a whim. It wasn’t long after the end of the Vietnam war. We saw people cooking pho in GI helmets on the street, purple hearts were on sale in junk shops, crashed helicopters in gardens, the signs and wreckage of war were everywhere. Some images from Ukraine reminded me of this. The folly of thinking that full armoured divisions and helicopters will defeat a more determined army.

The Ukraine is, indeed, starting to look like Russia’s Vietnam. As the war continues, a highly motivated, agile, local army continues to out-think and ambush the invader at every opportunity, not with heavy armour but local support and surprise. The body bags keep piling up, angering folk back home and an increasing use of conscripts is being used as casualties (circa 20,000) continue to rise. This is a much faster casualty rate than either Vietnam for the Americans or Afghanistan for the Russians. It will take its toll.

Putin is even starting to look like Nixon, lost in his own peculiar Alice in Wonderland fantasy world of uber-long tables, sitting in big Baroque chairs (dictators adore these) in big white rooms, having Mad Hatter tea parties with expressionless guys in big brown and red military hats and epaulets. What worries me is the possibility that he turns into Kurtz, who takes that Marxist historicist, dialectical materialist BS and turns his thesis and anti-thesis, into the final nuclear synthesis. Historicism has a bad habit of becoming deterministic, driven by what he, and Marx, perceived as destiny. I thought that shit had died in 1975 with Pol Pot. It hadn't, the flame still kept alive by mad dictators and hapless academics.

For the present, however, despite his delusional bombast, Russia lost the Battle of Kiev, lost their flagship Naval vessel, a week later they have made no progress on their new fronts, are fighting clearly subversive fires on Russian territory and, unbelievably, Mariupal is still not completely conquered. Like the US in Vietnam, they have responded by simply bombing the hell out of the place. That’s desperate, it’s also morally despicable.

In truth, like the US, they had lost the war the minute they invaded, as the damage they inflicted in trying to win was sure to destroy most of the country. The means had become worse than the end. Their troops are most likely exhausted, demotivated, poorly supplied and want this to end as quickly as possible, just like the GIs at the time. 

The sad truth is that this whole exercise, like Vietnam, seems ‘doomed to succeed’ in that Putin, once he had started, couldn’t back down, even though he has unleashed forces - militarily, economic and political - way beyond his expectations. They’re now stuck in a global quagmire, having made more enemies than friends. The US had the economic clout to pay for Vietnam and recover, Putin may, single-handedly, have created a second Soviet Union collapse, similar to that of the 90s. Lloyd Austin said as much yesterday “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. It has already lost a lot of military capability… we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

The similarity doesn’t end there. Within two years Kennedy was dead (we tend to forget that it was a very popular President Kennedy, who escalated that war but that’s another story), LBJ rumbled on and Nixon was eventually kicked out as the country turned against him. War does funny things to so-called leaders - both good and bad.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Wikipedia’s bot army - shows us the way in governance of AI

Wikipedia is, for me, the digital wonder of the world. A free, user generated repository of knowledge, open to edits, across many languages, increasing in both breadth and depth. It is truly astonishing. But it has recently become a victim of its own success. As it scaled, it became difficult to manage. Human editorial processes have not been able to cope with the sheer number of additions, deletions, vandalism, rights violations, resizing of graphics, dead links, updating lists, blocking proxies, syntax fixing, tagging and so on. 
So would it surprise you to learn that an army of bots is, as we sleep, working on all of these tasks and many more? I was.
There are nearly 3000 bot tasks identified for use in Wikipedia. So many that there is a Bots Approval Group (BAG) with a Bot Policy that covers all of these, whether fully or partially automated, helping humans with editorial tasks. 
The policy rules are interesting. Your bot must be harmless, useful, does not consume resources unnecessarily, performs only tasks for which there is consensus, carefully adheres to relevant policies and guidelines and uses informative messages, appropriately worded, in any edit summaries or messages left for users. 
So far so good but the danger is that some bots malfunction and cause chaos. This is why their bot governance is strict and strong. What is fascinating here, is the glimpse we have into the future of online entities, where large amounts of dynamic data have to be protected, while being allowed to be used for human good. The Open Educational Resources people don’t like to mention Wikipedia. It is far too populist for their liking but it remains the largest, most useful knowledge base we’ve ever seen. So what can we learn from Wikipedia and bots?
AI and Wikipedia
Wikipedia, as a computer based system, is way superior to humans and even print, as it has perfect recall, unlimited storage and 24/7 performance. On the other hand it hits ceilings, such as the ability of human editors to handle the traffic. This is where well defined tasks can be automated – as previously mentioned. It is exactly how AI is best used, as solving very specific, well defined, repetitive tasks that occur 24/7 on scale. This leaves the editors free to do their job. Note that these bots are not machine learning AI, they are pieces of software that filter and execute tasks but the lessons for AI are clear.
At WildFire, we use AI to select content related to supplement learning experiences. This is a worthy aim, and there is no real editorial problem, as it is still, entirely under human control, as we can check, edit and change any problems. Let me give you an example. Our system automatically creates links to Wikipedia but as AI is not conscious or cognitive in any sense, it makes the occasional mistake. So in a medical programme, where the nurse had to ask the young patient to ‘blow’, while a lancet was being used to puncture his skin repeatedly in an allergy test, the AI automatically created a link to the page for cocaine. Ooops! Easily edited out but you get the idea. In the vast majority of cases it is accurate. You just need a QA system that catches the false positives.
Governance
Wikipedia has to handle this sort of ambiguity all the time. This is not easy for software. The Winograd Challenge offers $25000 for software that can handle its awkward sentences with 90% accuracy – the nearest anyone has got is 58%. Roger Schank used Groucho Marx jokes! Software and data are brittle, they don’t bend they break, which is why it still needs a ton of human checking, advising and oversight.
This is a model worth copying. Governance on the use of AI (let’s just call it autonomous software). Wikipedia, with its Bot Approval Group and Bot Policy, offers a good example within an open source context of good governance over data. It draws the line between bots and humans but keeps humans in control.
Conclusion
The important lesson here is that the practitioners themselves know what has to be done. They are good people doing good things to keep the integrity of Wikipedia intact, as well as keeping it efficient. AI is like the God Shiva, it both creates and destroys. The problem with the dozens of ethics groups springing up, is that all they see is the destruction. AI can be a force for good but not if it is automatically seen as an ideological and deficit model. It seems, at times, as though there’s more folk on ethics groups than actually doing anything on AI. Wikipedia shows us the way here – a steady, realistic system of governance, that quietly does its work, while allowing the system to grow and retain its efficiencies, with humans in control.

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Is handwriting better than typing for note taking? Surprisingly, it's not!

Karl Marx wrote a short summary of every book he read and many scholars and successful people refer to note taking as the secret of their success. I once shared a platform with Richard Branson, where he put his entire business success down to his lifetime habit of taking notes. Apart from being dyslectic, he made the simple point that we forget most of the good ideas we come up with, so taking notes prevents forgetting. He attributed almost all of his business ideas and successes to note taking.

I am also an obsessive note taker and have dozens of black notebooks which have helped me learn and plan over the years. I am often astonished, when speaking to large audiences of learning professionals, how few take notes, when the forgetting curve has been established, since Ebbinghaus in 1885, as one of best known and researched pieces of learning science.

Of course, note taking has always been a staple for learners, especially in Higher Education and the research is clear on their efficacy. Generative note taking and the use of such notes significantly enhances learning. Yet, as technology has become more ubiquitous in learning, the ways in which learners can take notes have expanded. In a study of 577 college students, Morehead (2019), it was found that notes were almost always taken, in notebooks and laptops. Smartphones are also increasingly used to grab images of whole slides, useful when graphs and diagrams are presented but also for the main test points. Students often chose different and combined methods for different courses and contexts. Unfortunately, they don’t always know how and when to optimise their note taking.

That brings me to one of the great myths in learning theory, the idea that it has been proven, without doubt, that hand written notes result in greater learning outcomes than typing.

It is an often deeply held belief among educators that, for learners, handwriting is better than typing. You can see why it is so enthusiastically embraced by those who don't really like this pesky new technology, and that good old fashioned pens and pencils trump the computer. But there’s a problem - it’s not true.

The study that got everyone in such a traditional tizz, by Mueller and Oppenheimer, came out in 2014, with the grand title of ‘The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking’. This eye catching title got tons of publicity and a willing audience of believers. It is strange how a study is enthusiastically taken up and remembered when it confirms one biases.

Most note-taking literature pre-dates computers, so the study hypothesised that typing led to shallower processing and that typing tended to encourage more verbatim note-taking. In three studies, it compared learners who watched the same TED videos:

  1. Laptop versus longhand performance.

  2. Laptop versus longhand performance (students instructed to avoid verbatim not taking)

  3. Laptop versus longhand performance (study of notes was included before testing)


In all three cases they noted the superior performance on conceptual questions by longhand note takers

But…

Few picked up on the replication study in 2019. In this study, researchers replicated and expanded the earlier work by using the same videos but adding a group that took notes on an eWriter and a group that took no notes. The researchers also tested students on the content of the videos two days after watching to examine the effect of different note-taking styles on retention. In one version of the experiment, they allowed participants to study their notes before the test to imitate more closely how students use class notes to study for assessments.

When it came to conceptual questions, longhand did not outperform typing. Indeed, in one test, the laptop, eWriter and no notes groups actually outperformed the handwriting group on conceptual questions. In general, when learners were allowed to study their notes, all advantages just disappeared for the retention test.

In truth, this study does not prove it either way, as the results seemed to reverse. But the idea that there is a significant difference is not proven.

Then Voyer et al. 2022, a meta-anaylsis that explored the effect of longhand and digital note taking on performance, showed no effect of method of note taking on performance under controlled conditions. It considered 77 effect sizes from 39 samples in 36 articles, showing no effect on note taking approach.

It would seem that writing notes in your own words, and studying your notes, matter more than the methods used to write your notes. This makes sense, as the cognitive effort involved in studying are likely to outweigh the initial method of capture. It is not note taking that matters but effortful learning.

Digital note taking has the clear advantage of being capable of being edited, formatted, stored, printed, searched and transmitted anywhere across the internet and devices. This blog piece is a good example. It also allows tools such as spellcheck and grammar checks to be applied, citations automatically formatted, images and video imported. Not much text is written in longhand these days.

This debate focuses on one issue, the method of note talking but the more important issue is to move beyond note taking to actual learning. Here we know that underlining, highlighting and rereading are not efficient learning strategies. One needs to move towards effortful, generative learning, deliberate, retrieval and spaced practice. Note taking is not an end in itself, merely the start of a learning journey. It is an important bridge to more effortful learning.

Bibliography

Voyer, D., Ronis, S.T. and Byers, N., 2022. The effect of notetaking method on academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 68, p.102025.

Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Blasiman, R. and Hollis, R.B., 2019. Note-taking habits of 21st century college students: implications for student learning, memory, and achievement. Memory, 27(6), pp.807-819.

Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J. and Rawson, K.A., 2019. How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31(3), pp.753-780.

Mueller, P.A. and Oppenheimer, D.M., 2014. The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), pp.1159-1168.