[talk at the XVth. Congress of Montessori Europe in Lund, October 12, 2014]
I've divided this talk into three parts.
In Part I I will say something about what the ubiquitous digitalization of our societies can mean, specifically in an educational context.
In Part II I will take a brief look at the varying impact of different media on learning, and offer some thoughts on why this might be important.
In Part III I will reflect on how some basic stances within Montessori education may be relevant and adequate to purely human concerns in this strange new world of ours.
I.
We surf the web, use e-mail, chat on Facebook. We use word processors and digital spreadsheets. We watch YouTube videos.
Some of us post our thoughts in blog posts or on Twitter, or upload photos to Instagram.
We carry around smartphones in our pockets or purses wherever we are, and are more afraid to lose them than our wallet. They may even become our wallet in the future.
Money itself is already largely digital anyway, except for small amounts of cash for everyday use.
We hardly ever write longer pieces by hand.
More and more people don't use a landline phone anymore.
We seldom, if ever, write physical letters.
And more and more of this goes on in classrooms as well.
In Sweden in recent years there has been a rush to introduce digital technologies in schools, often on a so-called one-to-one basis (one computer for every pupil or student), at all levels, sometimes including pre-school. If we think more generally about this virtual invasion of digital technologies into our lives, what do we find?
This is very hard to summarize. The messages that reach us are at cross purposes, and it may take quite a lot of study, trial and error, and reflection to get one's bearings. But today I will make it as simple as I can without falsifying things too much.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate our situation briefly is to watch a couple of videos giving two different takes on the way of things, specifically regarding education. The important thing here, in a brief talk, is not facts and figures, but our emotional reactions. These will give us some clues and these are what we can reflect upon and compare with certain studies of the facts involved.
II
The first video, a commercial from Cisco, relates to what is known as ”The Internet of Things”.
Note how it places the students as human beings in a technologically saturated context.
”Students are becoming hyperconnected” it says.
It emphasises ”new capabilities, novel experiences, economic opportunities.”
”The evolution of technology will increase the access, impact and quality of education for everyone.”
”The net will allow students to connect with a world of experts.”
”Process connections will become more relevant.”
And there can be instant feedback on performance.
The other video, made by a company called Epipheo, feels like it's almost diametrically opposed to the Cisco standpoint. It humorously articulates the view of author and critic Nicholas Carr, who once asked, in a famous article in The Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". This video presupposes and promotes a quite different view of human beings.
”The Internet is an incredibly information rich environment.”
It tends to promote a kind of compulsive behavior.
We're living in a perpetual state of distraction.
That crowds out more contemplative, calmer modes of thinking.
”And focused calm thinking is actually how we learn.”
”If we lose control of our attention, or are constantly dividing our attention” we can't consolidate the information we're getting.
The implication is that if so, we actually don't learn anything of value.
I'm not certain that that implication is completely true, because I think that we actually learn quite a lot in that state, but what we learn is how to be a node in a process consisting of vast human/machine networks. The crux of the matter is that as members of this rapidly accelerating global hi-tech society, we should aim at becoming conscious, knowledgeable and responsible agents in such networks. We should not allow ourselves to be reduced to being just functional relays of information that's never put to any worthwhile use outside the digital realm. That's why I think it's important to become very much aware indeed of how we're affected by the media of learning themselves, and which media are useful for what ends. So let's have a brief look at that topic.
The simplest and most basic comparison to make in an educational context is between laptops or iPads connected to the Internet, on the one hand, and literally printed books on the other. I've stopped counting the times I've heard the opinion that any text format is as good as any other text format. It doesn't matter whether you read on a screen or in a physical book, they say. It's a generational matter, they say. Young people are accustomed to screen reading. You're old; you're not.
That, I'm convinced, is just an unreflective and basically ignorant opinion.
It's also very probably untrue, at least in some important respects, as more and more research shows.
Cognitive neuroscientists warn that people ”seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.” That was a quote from a feature article in Washington Post earlier this year.
For example, Andrew Dillon, professor of psychology in the School of Information at the University of Texas, has found in his studies that reading online impacts people's ability to comprehend texts on paper.
If further corroborated this is an alarming finding.
In an interview in The Daily Texan Dillon says: “We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that, when [you] sit down with a novel, your daily [habit] of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you. We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.” Furthermore: “Studies have shown that there’s a comprehension gap between reading digitally and reading on paper, and, funnily enough, people don’t see it themselves”.
Other studies have been and are being done that tend to show the same thing. My opinion, or feeling, is that it's not necessarily the medium itself, by itself, that has these distracting consequences. The crucial variable is rather our individual awareness of what we're doing, and how what we're doing affects us. Note Dillon's comment that ”people don't see it themselves”.
If that's more or less on the mark the real issue then becomes: How do we promote and cultivate conscious attention and concentration? This means that we, as human beings, should more than anything else aim at becoming capable of making informed judgments, to use conscious discretion. What are the prerequisites, the preconditions, for that?
In real life we have to find and use ways of really making the necessary judgements. That's what life's challenges are about, whatever the circumstances. Otherwise, deeming from the relentless technological developments and their ideological promoters, machines will increasingly make those judgments for us. I'm not exaggerating. They already do that in many contexts. Personally, I don't think they should be allowed to do that in all contexts.
One obvious question to ask ourselves, then, is in whose, or even in whats, interest a certain viewpoint regarding education is promoted. More and more we're actually adapting ourselves, our behavior, so that machines will be able to understand us. (Sorry, no time to go into that, but it's a fact too few realize.) My standpoint is that we currently will have to become very aware indeed, of what we think concerning the most basic questions of all:
What is a human being?
And also the even more disconcerting and controversial question:
What should a human being be?
What kind of human being do we want to promote and cultivate when educating our children?
If we go along with the technology companies we will perhaps not strive towards educating self-aware, self-reflective, knowledgeable human beings, able to concentrate, to assess hyperbole, to think critically, to be self-motivated for the common good, to be creative, etc. We would, rather, foster human bengs unable to live and learn without access to a smartphhone, a laptop, or an iPad.
But should we?
And this question, at last, brings me to the particular characteristics and principles of Montessori education.
III.
I'm not a Montessori teacher. I have no formal education in Montessori matters. My interest in and knowledge of Montessori stems from the fact that my three children, who are now responsible and creative adults, spent their pre-school years and their first six school years in a Montessori school.
Only much later did I realize that all three have developed certain common characteristics and habits when it comes to learning things, despite being very different persons.
Perhaps their Montessori experience had something to do with it?
Actually, they say so themselves. And, intriguingly for me personally, they are quite capable of simply and completely ignoring the Internet for hours at a time, something that cannot be said of many middle aged people I know.
And now, when I think about it, I can actually relate their experience and behaviour, and my interpretation of it, to the basic Montessori principles. Furthermore, and more interestingly, these principles are highly relevant to what I'm trying to convey with this talk, namely, the necessity of fostering our human capability of making wise judgments in real life.
I'm not saying that Montessori methods and ideas are a panacea in this regard. There aren't any panaceas for anything. But I'm convinced that the basic Montessori principles go a long way towards providing a very proper grounding. I'll mention here the six basic principles outlined at the web page of Svenska Montessoriförbundet, The Swedish Montessori Association. You, being Montessori educators, are of course familiar with the principles, perhaps expressed in somewhat different words, so I won't bother to explain them. I restrict myself to briefly commenting on them in regard to what I've said in this talk.
1. A prepared environment
As you know, in Montessori schools this among other things includes special materials. Of course, the abstract principle as such could be said to be applied in any classroom whatsoever, whether in a Montessori school or not. What could be important is that this space, or some important often used space, remains free of computers.
2. Freedom and responsibility
This requires no special comment. But I note that my children emphasise the responsibility they learned by being asked to themselves freely plan their course work, one week at a time. This has been crucial to their own development.
3. Individualisation and cooperation
This emphasises a necessary balance. Being capable of tackling and discovering things on your own means that you will have more to bring to any cooperative interaction. Here I think that access to the Internet and social media can actually strengthen the Montessori aims, if done with sufficient discretion. This will put some new demands on teachers, to be sure.
4. Help for pupils/students to help themselves
As with the preceding principle this puts new demands on teachers, if Internet access is provided, especially if each pupil has her own computer in school.
5. Physical concreteness and motor activity
This is a very important principle, even more so today when so many children and youth spend too much time sitting still in front of screens, and too often not interacting with a rich variety of physical and natural objects.
6. Wholeness and peace
Regarding this last principle or aim, I'd like to end this talk with a quote from my friend Anthony McCann, who's an Irish musician, ethnographer and philosopher. He has thought a lot about the real, experiential preconditions for peaceful and rewarding interactions between people. He uses the Irish term garaíocht to get to the essence of what really matters to us, as human beings. In a recent talk at an international health care conference in Toronto, Anthony, with customary subtlety and deceptive ordinariness, zooms in on what it's all about:
"Imagine we’re having a cup of tea and a chat, just you and me in a kitchen. We’ve munched through a few biscuits, or cookies if you prefer, and the tea in my cup has gone a little cold. I don’t like cold tea. If pushed, I can struggle through, but you’re sitting beside the tea pot, and chances are there’s still a drop of hot tea left in the pot. You’re beside the teapot. I’m not. From my perspective, you’re in an active position to be helpful on account of your possibilities of proximity. You are here, you are now, you are with, and you are near, and in a position to help, and likely to help, I would hope.
You are in a place of garaíocht."
Here and now, in our actual meetings, is where everything of real importance is really happening.
Every teacher worth her salt, in her classroom, knows that.
/Per
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