Life Intervenes

More attention seems to be focused on the fact that people allow themselves to be distracted by mobile devices. I am glad to hear this!

Distraction is a choice. Most of mobile devices are made to take messages, to pause, to stop, to turn off. There is no need for them to interrupt more important things in your life. And I am talking about things like:  paying attention to bodily needs and functions, being with your children, your elderly, your friends and significant others, engaging in solitary thought or mutual conversation, experiencing quiet or rest.

Distraction is a choice.

Many people have become obsessed with their distractions. Perhaps too many people have.

The question I would ask is this: are you fully alive when you are experiencing your technology, or is your technological conversation being made at the expense of other life aspects that may be more necessary, more engaging, more fulfilling and more healthy? What are you shutting yourself away from, when you choose distraction?

I know that there is a via media with regard to electronic media. I also know that people have been trained to purchase all the latest gadgetry, without being trained to socially conscious and respectful ways of using the apps and features, without training on how to discover -- or even that it is necessary to find -- a via media for their electronic usage.

People talk and talk and talk. It's a free country; you can talk if you want to. Blah, blah, blah. People talk about privacy, but they constantly give it up in public places. I hear about the infidelities and peccadilloes of many people I do not know (many I would not want to know, after hearing some of the stories) while I am with my family or even alone. Where do I hear these things? At the grocery store, the farmers market, the bank, the post office, the library, coffee shops, restaurants. The conversations are all one-sided, that is, I hear what the person is saying into the phone, but I can't hear the replies. I am glad of this. I don't want to know! I don't want to hear private information of others. It is not as if I am eavesdropping; no one can help overhearing the indiscreet commentary of others. When people talk face to face, voices modulate to make discretion possible. When people talk on cell phones, they battle with dropped signals and various levels of sound quality--this is seldom a recipe for discretion. Indiscreet behavior is modeled to children and other adults constantly.

And this is the point. Discretion. People have forgotten what that is. People have forgotten that even though thoughts run through your head, you don't have to speak all those words. People have forgotten that private conversations are really only those that are discreet, and by that I mean unheard by the public. People have forgotten that discretion is a useful social tool, perhaps more useful than all the electronic devices we have to "be connected" with.

But this is not the only problem. Our communication becomes evermore opaque and indirect.

Do we tend to leave messages, rather than speak to someone face to face?

Do we have email conferences, rather than speak to a primary person over the phone and disseminate a formulated plan for approval? I have to say, it is exhausting to deal with 30 to 50 emails, just to find out if 5 people can meet to discuss something.

Do we use public information forums as a place to rant our impotent rage against the things that irritate us or make us afraid? Does this solve our problem, or does it merely become a pathology?

Do we use our electronic tools as firewalls toward avoidance?

I am asking these questions because I want to know.

I live in what is laughingly referred to as the first-world, and it becomes less civilized, less willing to engage in true discourse, less democratic as the days increase.

If there is one thing I know, it is this:  life intervenes. Your socioeconomic status and the amount or quality of electronic equipment you own doesn't mean a hill of beans when that happens. Your distractions will likely have no say, hold no sway when life intervenes, though they might be of some nominal assistance, if used correctly.

Are you ready? Is any of us ready?

Trust me: your phone, your computer and your peripherals will all be waiting for you when you return from the intervention.

Education Electronic, Like the Dissolution of Monasteries

There is much discussion about how to “save” education costs by making more classes and degrees available online. Advocates, such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, have been aggressively pushing this notion. One claim is that it is cheaper and more interesting for students to learn online, than to have to drag into a lecture hall and listen to some stodgy professor drone on. Students would have more access to education in an online setting, and it the education would be of a higher quality.

How interesting.

The US Department of Education even released a study claiming that higher education students studied online “performed better” than students who physically attend classes. Never mind that the Community College Research Center later found the analysis to be flawed, due to an improper selection of student populations used in the assessment, the USDE study is cited all over the place as evidence that online education is better. The CCRC study did not find in the USDE study any evidence to support the notion that students learn better in an online environment. In fact, the CCRC study found that students were more likely to withdraw from an online course than from one offered in a  traditional classroom setting.

How interesting.

In Britain, meanwhile, Lord Browne et al put out a report, last October, with the windy title “Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.” Stefan Collini reviewed this document for the London Review of Books November 2010 edition. Collini is disturbed by many assertions in this so-called independent review. I quote from the article:

Essentially, Browne is contending that we should no longer think of higher education as a provision of the public good… Instead, we should think of it as a lightly regulated market in which consumer demand, in the form of student choice, is sovereign in determining what is offered by service providers (i.e., universities)… Britain’s universities, it is proposed, should henceforth be operated in accordance with the tenets of perfect competition theory.”

How interesting.

There is a lot to be said about all of the above. There are many pages to read of reports. But here is what I will say, in short, on all of this:

The gutting of higher education is underway. The rhetoric is hot and furious, and coming mostly from people who either benefited from publicly funded education or who are independently wealthy or who are capitalists on the prowl for the next drill down site.

Education costs money. Does it cost less money to attend class online? Well, that depends on whether you are getting the class through a for-profit “university” or a state funded institution. University of Phoenix has probably set the bar in for-profit education, and we are now seeing the idea spread like an infection.

Do you have a computer? Do you have internet access? All of these things cost money. When I attended university, I did not have a computer. I read books; I listened to lectures; I wrote papers. Amazingly, none of this happened with a computer! I paid for music lessons, books, paper, pens and pencils, as well as student and course fees. Today, you cannot even attend college classes without a computer. Why is that? Because it is “so much easier to do the work with computer access.” Well, that is as may be, but I have a friend who is a college professor; she spends most of her office time battling with her own computer set-up because the network is constantly down. If it is a time saver, it is an expensive one, not to mention a troubleshooting time suck.

Choice, do you like choice? Do you know what you want? If you are an 18 year old college bound youth, do you have any idea what you want to do with your life? HA! "Consumer driven education" has got to be the wackiest capitalist myth ever! The brains of most undergraduates have not fully developed to the point where critical thinking is possible, and most people need to be taught how to think critically through a course in the Philosophy or Psychology Departments.

Quality education, how is it to be determined or regulated? Can one teach Socratic Dialogue by email? Biology Labs from home? Does one learn better without benefit of group discussion or even the barest human contact?

The gutting of higher education could be compared to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, which, under the cover of Reformation, slid a great deal of wealth into a relatively small number of undeserving pockets, but did not benefit the average person one whit.

Look for more noise about choices in education. Expect fees to skyrocket. Expect your education "service provider" to be raking in a lot of money, but don't expect that you will be able closely examine who might be teaching your internet courses or that you will be able to "critically assess" whether your class is doing to do you any good. 

This feigned concern about how best to "deliver" education is not about providing a lasting cultural gift or benefiting society; this is about greed and it is about money. Once the universities (indeed, all bastions of public education) are dismantled, and once the unions are broken, drill down begins and the great divide continues. Those who can afford to will pay, because there will be no other choice. As for the rest of us…

Well, now, that should be interesting.

//

http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/04/critical-thinking-and-mastery-of-child_2194.html

http://www.independent.gov.uk/browne-report

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/17/pawlenty

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/16/online

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble

At Storm Eye

Whirling winds, like loud voices,

writhe in circular emotions;

seemingly at war with one another,

they call and draw forth clouds
from far off lakes and oceans.

Rushing waves, ringing, raging,

roar in circular courses,

overtaking what lies in the way,

from here to the far horizon,
flooding with its forces.

Sacred storm blows and flows, 

driving madness round about the way,

but your wave and mine can meet;

joining within the calm storm eye may,

challenge violence to stand down.

Joining hands in friendship,

once rogue waves form a unity;
together stronger than any storm,
our choice forms a harmonious purity

that must drive stormy madness away.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen