Postman: The End of Education

Lorraine Sherry

Part I.

Four false gods and five narratives.

The necessity of gods

Postman is not concerned with the means by which our children are educated, but the end for which they are educated - namely, that public schooling should create a public - a public which is made up of people with diverse traditions, languages, and religions, but which believe in and honor America's history, its future, and its promise of freedom for all. Recognizing the diversity of our population, multiculturalism should (but doesn't!) reveal America to be a melting pot of composite cultures from which none are excluded; tell stories about immigrants without condemning the ideals of democracy; and show that there is substance and richness in each tribal tale.

Postman discusses Gods in the usual sense - the Gods of the scriptures - and then goes on to replace god with the idea of narrative, as in the epics, scriptures, and sacred symbols that are common to religions, the American Creed, and science. Moreover, since man created his image of god in his own image and likeness (my idea), these gods (including technology) should serve and inspire man, not the other way around. Public education depends on these shared narratives, not those which lead to alienation and divisiveness.

Some gods that fail

The old gods were destroyed by Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein. Communism, Nazism, and fascism died on their own. They were replaced by America's better god - a belief in a market economy. But America is imperfect, wounded by immoral wars like Vietnam, and its melting pot still disenfranchises African Americans and other minorities. Its sacred symbols are now profaned, civic participation is down, homelessness is up, and hard work no longer pays off. Deconstruction and indeterminacy are the watchwords of Academia. We are still looking for new gods of justice and compassion, that can give us a transcendent identity and ideals.

In education we have replaced reasons for learning with methods for teaching. If there are reasons, they are flawed, because we are worshipping false gods. One such god is economic utility - stay in school, do your homework, score well in tests, and you will get a good job. You are what you do for a living. Goodness is found in productivity, efficiency, and organization. But where are the stimulating, well-paying new jobs?? Well educated people will find good jobs. Economic utility is a product of a good education, not its raison d'etre!

Another popular god is consumerism - whoever dies with the most toys wins. You are what you accumulate. It is a "metaphysical imperative". Though all major religions reject consumership, advertising plays upon it, saying that if you buy what the commercial is selling you will achieve ecstasy, slimness, financial security, etc. etc.

Some new gods that fail

There is yet another false god - the god of technology - that is worshipped and adored by many, including prominent educators, with some pretty weird ideas! Postman doesn't think that virtual experiences can cure student boredom (I disagree! It is not what the technology is, but how it is used.) We realized technology is a mixed blessing; it magnifies inequities in acquiring hardware, it presents biased information, it spews out information overload, etc. etc. Technology will certainly get information to children in school and out, but that's not what school is all about! Schools need to make technology itself an object of inquiry (I agree with Don Norman) so that children learn not to be used or abused by it.

One thing that schools teach children is group work, group cohesion. Technology cannot teach them that. Kids need to be in an environment that emphasizes collaboration, as well as sensitivity and responsibility for others. (We did that in our paper! CSCL does that!) Schools need to respond to the forces of poverty, alienation, and family disintegration.

Still another false god is multiculturalism. Here, we do not mean cultural pluralism (acknowledging the validity of other people's tribal cultures and beliefs and how they fit into American culture as a whole). Postman takes it to mean emphasizing the ugly parts of white, Eurocentric history and the oppression of minorities. In other words, white narratives must be overthrown. Moreover, any humane parts of the Eurocentric narrative have their origins in non-white cultures. He is in favor of cultural pluralism, which means that children of all races can find a dignified place for themselves in the American story, and that history is not rewritten to hide the blemishes but rather tho show that human nature can triumph in these struggles. The alternative is the balkanization of the public schools, or an argument for privatizing them.

Gods that may serve

Postman says that we may run schools efficiently, but if we can't answer the question of what the schools are for, then what does it matter? He says schools should mirror society in all its complexity. He presents five narratives that he claims offer moral guidance, a sense of continuity, explanations of the past, clarity to the present, and hope for the future. These should provide an end - a purpose - for schooling.

Part II.

Using these narratives as an alternative to the standard curriculum.

The Spaceship Earth

First, get rid of school. Here, Postman tries to take a global view of the world, in the fable of New York City. He's combined the idea of a multidisciplinary thematic unit (save your city) with service learning (use the energy of the young to do constructive things for the community, rather than destroy it). They learn responsibility, they learn how to work, how to preserve their world.

Another idea is to keep schooling in school, but concentrate on archaeology, anthropology, and astronomy. Those who do not learn the lessons of the past civilizations are doomed to repeat it. And in dealing with evolution, there should be a distinction between religious and scientific narratives, not just one at the exclusion of the other. Anthropology teaches understanding and respect for the views of other civilizations. Astronomy is supposed to cultivate a sense of awe, interdependence, and global responsibility. Mostly, we see how people make mistakes as they build knowledge, and how they correct them.

The Fallen Angel

Next, get rid of the textbooks. As Aristotle said, all they can present is fixed facts, trivial learning, and dogmatism; and you can't argue back with the person who wrote them! Knowledge is presented as a subject to acquire, not as a human struggle to understand, to overcome error, and to seek the truth. Everyone makes errors; errors are reducible; and errors are chiefly embodied in talk (not necessarily in mental models, but how we attempt to represent them to others). Also, facts and truths change, depending upon the circumstances in which the facts were described and the truths formulated. The narrative here is to see how the great men made errors, and how they corrected them as they built knowledge in their respective fields.

Help students to identify and verbalize tacit errors, then guide them to seek the truth or construct meaning. We learn a lot by trial and error, by making mistakes and then correcting them. The idea is not to make students more smart, but to make students less dumb. The concepts behind this are active learning, inquiry learning, and progressive discourse. Computers fit into here too - Papert says that students move toward the right answer by making mistakes and correcting them; the computer does not humiliate them for being wrong, but encourages them to try again. (like the Nederland 4th graders.)

The American Experiment

Postman decries the way that patriotism has been left out of the list of values to which educators would like their students to aspire, especially since they are getting their education for free. As far as what to teach in order to inculcate this value, Postman suggests first of all to have students ask and debate some key questions, starting with freedom of expression. That should be backed up by studying the most important American documents, which he enumerates (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, etc.), and arguments dealing with that question.

As students progress through school, the arguments must increase in complexity, and the documents containing them should become more varied. Students should know that these arguments are not finished, and should be able to write opinions about them (pornography and freedom of the press, religion and school prayer, first amendment issues, etc., as they are doing on the Internet in Mr. Michener's and Mr. Cassutto's classes right now). They should also know about the other amendments, including owning weapons, fifth amendment, etc., especially where they are covered in big trials on TV.

The next big question deals with the melting pot culture. Arguments continue to this day. Are some groups really better? (e.g. new study on grades being dependent on ethnic group.) On what basis do we make distinctions? And then, "is is possible to provide a free public education for all citizens?" Should there be vouchers for private schools, or Channel 1 TV? And finally, "is it possible to preserve the best of American traditions and social institutions while allowing uncontrolled technological development?", which includes the idea of medium-is-message, advantages/disadvantages of TV, and so forth.

The Law of Diversity

Postman's idea of how to teach multiculturalism (as distinct from ethnic divisiveness) encompasses four ideas:
  • language: everyone should be bilingual, or at least study the origins of the English language and the roots of common words that are derived from other cultures;
  • religion: not to get into a church/state battle, but to teach comparative religion just as they do in college - because Bruner says that any discipline can be taught sensibly at any age. Such studies would promote no particular religion but would aim at illuminating the mataphors, literature, art, and ritual of religious expression itself;
  • custom: in the course of studying other cultures, as in anthropology or sociology, students may discover that there are striking similarities in how differnet cultures justify what at first seem to be unjustifiable customs (as dictated by environment, etc.);
  • art and artifacts: their subject matter offers the best evidence we have of the unity and continuity of human experience (painting predates written language by milennia.) The study of museums, too, lead students in various directions, including music. Students are well tuned to respond to pop art and music, but not to traditional or classical forms of art.

    The Word Weavers/The World Makers

    Here he deals with the structure of language: definitions (which sometimes seem to students to be fixed in stone), questions (inquiry learning), and metaphor (which seems only to be learned in poetry). Through metaphors we see the world as one thing or another, and can relate new knowledge to old. Another important part of knowing is abstracting: the continuous activity of selecting, omitting, and organizing details of the world we perceive so we experience it as patterned and coherent, and we can make generalizations about its structure. Naming, too, is important (as in Native American cultures), because to name an object we create a vivid and more or less permanent map of what the world is like - a world of concepts.

    Next, he talks about symbols and semantics. Symbols become part of ourselves; they are removed from the world itself, and are internalized. Thus, people live in two worlds: the world of things and the world of wordswhich describe and represent things. (cf. Allen & Otto.) And each language constructs reality different from all the others. Thus, for each subject, students should be taught the structure of discourse that defines that subject - not merely what are the questions, definitions and metaphors of the subject, but how they are formed - including truth/falsehood, and what is meant by a theory, a fact, an inference, an assumption, a judgment, a generalization.

    He also would like to see technology education - not just how to use technology, but what technology helps us to do and what it hinders us from doing (a la Don Norman.) Then he gives ten principles, starting with every technological change is a Faustian bargain, with its advantages and disadvantages. It leads to equity imbalance, new philosophies, and ecological changes. He'd like to see students study pre-twentieth century techolology, and indicate what were the main intellectual, social, political, and economic advantages/disadvantages of at least one type of technology - then extend this to computer technology.

    He ends the book with saying that the public school will endure, because nobody has thought of a better way to introduce the young to the world of learning.

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    Lorraine Sherry
    lsherry@carbon.cudenver.edu
    Updated September 15, 1996