a creative universe
MASTERS OF THEIR UNIVERSE
RICHARD SMITH takes a journey through the 21st Century media and education landscape and emerges battle weary. It would appear that there are many dark forces trying to colonise your mind and the space it plays in! So when does the student become the Master?
Darth Vader: “I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master." (1)
Guru, master, maestro, sensei, or ‘just plain teacher’ - the role played by educators in a variety cultures throughout time, is revered. From disciples to their messiah, devotees to their guru, student to teacher, and child to parent; the idea of revering and emulating an elder in order to succeed them in the future is a universal one.
Whether it is for spiritual piety, or to attain higher skills, to gain knowledge for self-improvement, or simply to emulate the lifestyles of so-called celebrities, the myriad forms of guru/devotee relationships have common rituals and practices tying the teacher/student relationship together.
The master is generally someone who has highly developed techniques, and has mastered all components of theory and praxis. He or she has made notable achievements and accumulated specific knowledge. But it is not merely retaining information, and communicating knowledge about the subject that makes a Master, but the ability to implement knowledge in practice, through some form of physical action. It is more than just theoretical – it has to be done on the fly!
Given the proliferation of entertainment media available, and the economy of broadcasting in general, an interesting question would be whether or not the recognition of ‘mastery’ can ever be made objectively. There is a lot of trick photography going on after all. ‘Mastery’ has become in some instances (for example Gwyneth Paltrow, with her new age lifestyle portal Goop, or model turned talk show host and media mogul Tyra Banks) merely creating the impression of this mastery, that can lead to the deification of relative amateurs - the new media induced gurus of today’s pop culture. I mean, given what Madonna gets up to on stage, should she really be ALLOWED to write children’s books?
Well of course we can’t stop her, but back in the classroom, via either their thirst for knowledge or by just fulfilling statutory obligations – learners navigate through a continuum of choice and duty, subjective creative ideation and indoctrination, between original thinking and rigid dogma that ultimately come to define knowledge. We simply have to have a bit of both for real learning to occur.
The traditional approach to education is one of formal tutorship under a teacher or teachers within a separately constituted environment or place, i.e. schools or universities. But as reported in FINWEEK’s SA SURVEY OF TERTIARY EDUCATION “STABLE CRISIS” [2] and mirrored in many educational institutions across the world, personality problems and political interference, or just plain managerial ineptitude, counteract the very outcomes that these institutions are subsidized and legislated to achieve. Notwithstanding the current global recession, there is clearly a crisis in education in South Africa in general, and globally too, where both public and private money is running out. The model simply isn’t working – only a super-elite get access to the best, and the employment opportunities that result from these networks.
But fortunately, in today’s computer mediated society, new learner-teacher relationships are emerging. With the advent of interactive technologies, roles, relationships, and learning experiences are becoming more flexible and demand oriented, often blurring the role of learner and teacher. The very nature of what constitutes “education” has taken on self-regulating features, that have become familiar in other spheres of the 21st century milieu such as the entertainment industry. Aristotle on demand, if you will.
One of the traditional requisites of being educated was that one needed to be in close physical proximity with your educator. With the explosion of broadband, internet chat and broadcast media have flourished to the point of genuine interactivity across vast distances. For example, the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University – the world’s largest distance learning institution – have developed software that can facilitate real-time lectures where students can engage with their tutor via text messaging or video, and the lectures plus all the student generated data is saved on a server for future playback at any time. The cost of housing and the cost of transportation are being overcome. Yes, one day, access to the best could really be for all.
But not only is communication over vast distances possible, it also need NOT happen in real-time, which frees both the educator and the student to engage in the tasks of teaching and learning at their leisure. Gone is being late for a lecture whilst one was looking for parking! The days of professors teaching what they WANT to teach, to students who actually WANT to learn are coming.
What is most critical in the shift to media rich learning however, is that knowledge can be recorded in a variety of formats that augment and illuminate the written word, thereby giving students a better chance at grasping concepts and practical applications. The explosion of information and communication technologies (ICT), especially via cellular/mobile communications, means that access to a much larger number of people is now possible, almost anywhere. Have a cell-phone, and you have access to a school, a university or indeed the whole world’s information database - thanks to Google, Wikipedia and a host of websites that are actively accumulating information.
And of course it’s a bi-lateral means of content generation and appreciation too, i.e. there is no “top”. The advent of broadband has democratized the information generation and appreciation ‘business’, i.e. news, entertainment and even state intelligence. NEWSWEEK [3] has recently reported that the CIA relies more on privately generated and accumulated information via businesses simply posting information to the web, and the average Joe’s blogg than via traditional espionage.
Ideology aside, the widely accepted cultural norm is that certain qualifications are needed in order to be a true guru, master or teacher. These include - officially accredited certification, recognition by a formally constituted body that monitors a particular sphere of activity [professional guilds for engineers, architects etc], a level of experience or having achieved a minimum number of years in practice, recognition by peers and other groups of notable achievements or contribution to society and culture. This norm is being challenged by a variety of broadcast media.
What seems more important nowadays is the ability to communicate to and command an audience, to receive the recognition [whether deserved or otherwise] and to gather up a loyal and paying following – usually by instructing the audience on how to be a “success” and live a completely “fulfilled” and holistic life in the world today. This is both a challenge and a benefit. It means that “unpopular” or irrelevant courses and skills will wither, and popular ones will thrive, however this trend must be tempered by some understanding of the common good.
A recent example of educators being “surprised” at the high demand for pole dancing lessons at a UK high school by fifteen-year-olds is a case in point. Given the choice of pole-dancing or chemistry, which would you have chosen as a horny teen? Clearly, not everything that needs to be taught is going to be popular and vice versa. We simply DO need to teach mathematics and sciences, whether the kids like it or not, the trick is in making these subjects more accessible.
General television programming doesn’t help either. Messianic figures from Martha Stewart to Gordon Ramsay declare new found techniques which are actually utterly banal, and we see a myriad of self-help, DIY and “life-skills” coaches peddling their wares on TV and the internet. These “shows” and products are usually “one-way” types of communication that are instructive at best, but hardly the breeding ground of new discourse.
A more interesting phenomenon in the relationship between the teacher and student traditionally, and in virtual means of instruction too, is when the learner becomes motivated to supersede the master. Often the relationship becomes fraught with conflict as the student questions the techniques of the teacher, and begins to realise his or her own potential to bring creativity to the party, or to question ‘other’ ways of thinking and doing – or simply to show him or her up. This would seem closer to a more genuine, Socratic experience of education where the knowledge of knowledge forges ahead through a myriad of possibilities, open-ended and generative. This type of knowledge system is well suited to the ICT and websites such as Pythagoras-tv.com
On the other hand websites such as London’s http://www.theschoolofeverthing.com offer a ‘Yellow Pages’-type portal to connect people with something to teach, to people who want to learn something. The polar opposite of Pythagoras-tv, the School of Everything is all about the hooking-up of guitar instructors to their progeny, and not really about the generation of intellectual content or schools of thought. Be that as it may, the success of the School of Everything, and many other websites offering teaching is encouraging.
The question and challenge regarding on-line instruction remains though, and that is, who needs to take ownership of the quality of content and outcomes? How is accreditation achieved if not via some throwback to existing entrenched institutions such as Oxford or Harvard? [4] How is what is offered genuinely up-to-date and suitable for the higher purposes of man, as opposed to dumbed-down nonsense?
Education has long been a tug-of-war between private and public interests, and the race to claim the internet as the new frontier has begun. The fact that you are reading this on PY-TV is a case in point, and the debate as to who is more qualified to evaluate and review new ideas, techniques and intellectual property than whom, is not one that is going to die down any time soon.
From formal settings to informal, and the explosion of mediated experiences in today’s society, one is exposed to a range of influences and learning experiences both by choice and accident, and they are all ‘learning’ experiences. But as Daft Punk noted on their debut album, which featured the track "Teachers" paying homage to a list of seminal and influential electronic musicians and djs –in essence a list of electronic music gurus - it all also comes down to “Homework”.
Students need to embrace their destiny by designing their own education from the ground up, with as many resources at their disposal as possible. The problem of course, is that what you don’t know, you don’t know. It can be daunting to design a career, and not everyone has that luxury, however I think it is safe to say, that in the 21st Century, one simply cannot afford to stop one’s learning.
Editing and additional words by Don Albert
Bibliography
1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/ - Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977
2 FINWEEK: “STABLE CRISIS” SA SURVEY OF TERTIARY EDUCATION 26 Feb 2009.
3 NEWSWEEK: “THERE’S A WORLD OF TROUBLE OUT THERE” – 9 March 2009.
4 http://pythagoras-tv.ning.com/profiles/blogs/option-apathy
Pictures:.
http://andylikesmovies.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/killbill-paimei.jpg
http://images3.wikia.com/starwars/images/d/d7/Obiwanvaderanhduel.jpg
http://luzernemusic.org/Louis%20&%20Senior%20Student%202007.jpg
http://pro.corbis.com/images/U1398850.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B51530860-9718-4742-B1E8-2D8017D2C5E8%7D
http://srichinmoyphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/chinmoy-and-student.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Coachella-Daft-Punk-2006.jpg
http://www.china-hiking.com/tibet/F0575.jpe
http://www.dubuque.k12.ia.us/maestroandme/MaestroWEB/MaestroEp2/Maestro3Shot.jpg
http://www.sense-datum.org/tim/images/kill_bill.jpg
Darth Vader: “I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master." (1)
Guru, master, maestro, sensei, or ‘just plain teacher’ - the role played by educators in a variety cultures throughout time, is revered. From disciples to their messiah, devotees to their guru, student to teacher, and child to parent; the idea of revering and emulating an elder in order to succeed them in the future is a universal one.
Whether it is for spiritual piety, or to attain higher skills, to gain knowledge for self-improvement, or simply to emulate the lifestyles of so-called celebrities, the myriad forms of guru/devotee relationships have common rituals and practices tying the teacher/student relationship together.
The master is generally someone who has highly developed techniques, and has mastered all components of theory and praxis. He or she has made notable achievements and accumulated specific knowledge. But it is not merely retaining information, and communicating knowledge about the subject that makes a Master, but the ability to implement knowledge in practice, through some form of physical action. It is more than just theoretical – it has to be done on the fly!
Given the proliferation of entertainment media available, and the economy of broadcasting in general, an interesting question would be whether or not the recognition of ‘mastery’ can ever be made objectively. There is a lot of trick photography going on after all. ‘Mastery’ has become in some instances (for example Gwyneth Paltrow, with her new age lifestyle portal Goop, or model turned talk show host and media mogul Tyra Banks) merely creating the impression of this mastery, that can lead to the deification of relative amateurs - the new media induced gurus of today’s pop culture. I mean, given what Madonna gets up to on stage, should she really be ALLOWED to write children’s books?
Well of course we can’t stop her, but back in the classroom, via either their thirst for knowledge or by just fulfilling statutory obligations – learners navigate through a continuum of choice and duty, subjective creative ideation and indoctrination, between original thinking and rigid dogma that ultimately come to define knowledge. We simply have to have a bit of both for real learning to occur.
The traditional approach to education is one of formal tutorship under a teacher or teachers within a separately constituted environment or place, i.e. schools or universities. But as reported in FINWEEK’s SA SURVEY OF TERTIARY EDUCATION “STABLE CRISIS” [2] and mirrored in many educational institutions across the world, personality problems and political interference, or just plain managerial ineptitude, counteract the very outcomes that these institutions are subsidized and legislated to achieve. Notwithstanding the current global recession, there is clearly a crisis in education in South Africa in general, and globally too, where both public and private money is running out. The model simply isn’t working – only a super-elite get access to the best, and the employment opportunities that result from these networks.
But fortunately, in today’s computer mediated society, new learner-teacher relationships are emerging. With the advent of interactive technologies, roles, relationships, and learning experiences are becoming more flexible and demand oriented, often blurring the role of learner and teacher. The very nature of what constitutes “education” has taken on self-regulating features, that have become familiar in other spheres of the 21st century milieu such as the entertainment industry. Aristotle on demand, if you will.
One of the traditional requisites of being educated was that one needed to be in close physical proximity with your educator. With the explosion of broadband, internet chat and broadcast media have flourished to the point of genuine interactivity across vast distances. For example, the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University – the world’s largest distance learning institution – have developed software that can facilitate real-time lectures where students can engage with their tutor via text messaging or video, and the lectures plus all the student generated data is saved on a server for future playback at any time. The cost of housing and the cost of transportation are being overcome. Yes, one day, access to the best could really be for all.
But not only is communication over vast distances possible, it also need NOT happen in real-time, which frees both the educator and the student to engage in the tasks of teaching and learning at their leisure. Gone is being late for a lecture whilst one was looking for parking! The days of professors teaching what they WANT to teach, to students who actually WANT to learn are coming.
What is most critical in the shift to media rich learning however, is that knowledge can be recorded in a variety of formats that augment and illuminate the written word, thereby giving students a better chance at grasping concepts and practical applications. The explosion of information and communication technologies (ICT), especially via cellular/mobile communications, means that access to a much larger number of people is now possible, almost anywhere. Have a cell-phone, and you have access to a school, a university or indeed the whole world’s information database - thanks to Google, Wikipedia and a host of websites that are actively accumulating information.
And of course it’s a bi-lateral means of content generation and appreciation too, i.e. there is no “top”. The advent of broadband has democratized the information generation and appreciation ‘business’, i.e. news, entertainment and even state intelligence. NEWSWEEK [3] has recently reported that the CIA relies more on privately generated and accumulated information via businesses simply posting information to the web, and the average Joe’s blogg than via traditional espionage.
Ideology aside, the widely accepted cultural norm is that certain qualifications are needed in order to be a true guru, master or teacher. These include - officially accredited certification, recognition by a formally constituted body that monitors a particular sphere of activity [professional guilds for engineers, architects etc], a level of experience or having achieved a minimum number of years in practice, recognition by peers and other groups of notable achievements or contribution to society and culture. This norm is being challenged by a variety of broadcast media.
What seems more important nowadays is the ability to communicate to and command an audience, to receive the recognition [whether deserved or otherwise] and to gather up a loyal and paying following – usually by instructing the audience on how to be a “success” and live a completely “fulfilled” and holistic life in the world today. This is both a challenge and a benefit. It means that “unpopular” or irrelevant courses and skills will wither, and popular ones will thrive, however this trend must be tempered by some understanding of the common good.
A recent example of educators being “surprised” at the high demand for pole dancing lessons at a UK high school by fifteen-year-olds is a case in point. Given the choice of pole-dancing or chemistry, which would you have chosen as a horny teen? Clearly, not everything that needs to be taught is going to be popular and vice versa. We simply DO need to teach mathematics and sciences, whether the kids like it or not, the trick is in making these subjects more accessible.
General television programming doesn’t help either. Messianic figures from Martha Stewart to Gordon Ramsay declare new found techniques which are actually utterly banal, and we see a myriad of self-help, DIY and “life-skills” coaches peddling their wares on TV and the internet. These “shows” and products are usually “one-way” types of communication that are instructive at best, but hardly the breeding ground of new discourse.
A more interesting phenomenon in the relationship between the teacher and student traditionally, and in virtual means of instruction too, is when the learner becomes motivated to supersede the master. Often the relationship becomes fraught with conflict as the student questions the techniques of the teacher, and begins to realise his or her own potential to bring creativity to the party, or to question ‘other’ ways of thinking and doing – or simply to show him or her up. This would seem closer to a more genuine, Socratic experience of education where the knowledge of knowledge forges ahead through a myriad of possibilities, open-ended and generative. This type of knowledge system is well suited to the ICT and websites such as Pythagoras-tv.com
On the other hand websites such as London’s http://www.theschoolofeverthing.com offer a ‘Yellow Pages’-type portal to connect people with something to teach, to people who want to learn something. The polar opposite of Pythagoras-tv, the School of Everything is all about the hooking-up of guitar instructors to their progeny, and not really about the generation of intellectual content or schools of thought. Be that as it may, the success of the School of Everything, and many other websites offering teaching is encouraging.
The question and challenge regarding on-line instruction remains though, and that is, who needs to take ownership of the quality of content and outcomes? How is accreditation achieved if not via some throwback to existing entrenched institutions such as Oxford or Harvard? [4] How is what is offered genuinely up-to-date and suitable for the higher purposes of man, as opposed to dumbed-down nonsense?
Education has long been a tug-of-war between private and public interests, and the race to claim the internet as the new frontier has begun. The fact that you are reading this on PY-TV is a case in point, and the debate as to who is more qualified to evaluate and review new ideas, techniques and intellectual property than whom, is not one that is going to die down any time soon.
From formal settings to informal, and the explosion of mediated experiences in today’s society, one is exposed to a range of influences and learning experiences both by choice and accident, and they are all ‘learning’ experiences. But as Daft Punk noted on their debut album, which featured the track "Teachers" paying homage to a list of seminal and influential electronic musicians and djs –in essence a list of electronic music gurus - it all also comes down to “Homework”.
Students need to embrace their destiny by designing their own education from the ground up, with as many resources at their disposal as possible. The problem of course, is that what you don’t know, you don’t know. It can be daunting to design a career, and not everyone has that luxury, however I think it is safe to say, that in the 21st Century, one simply cannot afford to stop one’s learning.
Editing and additional words by Don Albert
Bibliography
1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/ - Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977
2 FINWEEK: “STABLE CRISIS” SA SURVEY OF TERTIARY EDUCATION 26 Feb 2009.
3 NEWSWEEK: “THERE’S A WORLD OF TROUBLE OUT THERE” – 9 March 2009.
4 http://pythagoras-tv.ning.com/profiles/blogs/option-apathy
Pictures:.
http://andylikesmovies.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/killbill-paimei.jpg
http://images3.wikia.com/starwars/images/d/d7/Obiwanvaderanhduel.jpg
http://luzernemusic.org/Louis%20&%20Senior%20Student%202007.jpg
http://pro.corbis.com/images/U1398850.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B51530860-9718-4742-B1E8-2D8017D2C5E8%7D
http://srichinmoyphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/chinmoy-and-student.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Coachella-Daft-Punk-2006.jpg
http://www.china-hiking.com/tibet/F0575.jpe
http://www.dubuque.k12.ia.us/maestroandme/MaestroWEB/MaestroEp2/Maestro3Shot.jpg
http://www.sense-datum.org/tim/images/kill_bill.jpg
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