The author then summarizes these four questions into one
key issue: "Is the broadcast lesson an efficient medium of education?"
The example he gives is a similar challenge in the current
era: "The broadcast music lesson...can bring into the classroom a
national symphony orchestra, which the ordinary class music lesson can
never do. On the other hand, the daily vocal exercises may well be conducted
more efficiently by personal contact with pupils."
Communicating Society
We have had telephones available in the community for
over a century. It is still a rare school that gives open access to each
classroom to a telephone. One of the selling points for Internet and World
Wide Web is that our classrooms can contact and collaborate with peers
the world over. That has been possible for a very long time, through the
classroom use of the phone. Teachers are beginning to carry mobiles - their
own - on yard duty now, but the reasons are safety and security ones -
not necessarily educational. The cost has been an inhibiting factor in
the use of new technology in schools, and one can only wonder at the end
result of radio access and speakers in every classroom starting at the
height of the "Great Depression". A similar scenario has been
evident with the newer learning technologies through the recession "we
had to have" and the economically rational era. New computers were
$3000 in the early eighties. They are still about that - but you need to
hang a few bells and whistles off them if you want the full value. Another
$500 for a modem, $300 for the right sort of sound card, and of course,
$500 a year for the rest of your life for Internet and e-mail access.
The author of the 1937 document sees what others have
said as valuable in understanding the direction the technology is taking
and its impact on learning. He agrees that "the radio has firmly established
itself as an educational instrument" and "broadcast lessons are
an important and valuable auxiliary to the ordinary work of schools."
He quotes some other interested researchers as singing
the praises of the technology.
"Radio programs expand immensely the pupilsí
interest in people and things and events. It brought about the fuller reading
of newspapers and magazines, of investigations into books and encyclopedias.
It brought about discussions with other members of the family, in the home,
and even a sufficient interest to induce other members of the family to
"listen in" in their own home during the radio hour".
The conclusions of the study, which involved a traditional
"control" group and "experimental" group, and followed
traditional computational comparisons, were quite revealing. Teachers in
charge of particular classes, where they felt unhappy about what was occurring
in the testing phase, were invited to offer suggestions as to what was
happening. In each case, teachers, despite what they saw in the results
of the testing, believed that control groups always had better learning
than the experimental groups. The teachers reckon the new stuff is not
up to scratch!
In general, the testing offered "conflicting and
indeterminate" results.
As at the end of 1937, society was none the wiser regarding
the effectiveness of radio lessons. I can also report that in country Victoria
in the 1950ís, the radio was used regularly for lessons - particularly
music, as the teachers used the expertise of the professionals over the
radio, rather than rely on their own knowledge. As a child in that era,
I can also report that those lessons were looked forward to with great
enthusiasm, and that the same technology was employed as soon as possible
at home for evening entertainment. The outcome, is that, while I am not
a member of a symphony orchestra, I can, however, play the radio.
Technological prospects for literacy and personal power
Radio continues to play an important cultural and educational
role in the lives of people the world over and immerses listeners in a
language-rich environment. Today, a range of technologies based on the
microcomputer can also be used for literacy and learning purposes. Literacy
is a central aspect of the democratic liberal ideal to which generations
throughout the modern era have aspired. To be literate is a prerequisite
for the informed participation in the scientific, cultural, political and
economic life of the community, the basis on which reasoned action for
improvement can be taken.
As a concept, literacy can be narrow or broad, ranging
from the acquisition of technical skills for reading and writing, to that
which according to The National Consultative Council for International
Literacy Year (MacLeod, 1993) involves the capacity of people ë...to
think, create and question, which helps them become aware of the world
and empowers them to participate more effectively in society.í
The possibility of achieving a fully literate community
as the basis of social participation, regardless of class, creed, or economic
circumstance, has proven itself elusive and is unlikely. However, the Brazilian
educator and activist, Paulo Freire (1974) has shown how it is possible
to develop the literacy of peasants by beginning with key ideas and words
that are significant to their daily lives, the creation of visual expressions
of such ideas, group discussion of the images and concepts and finally,
a new and critical codification that transform the learner from passive
object to active subject. The approach of Freire sees illiteracy as oppressive
and education therefore, as liberation.
Noone and Cartwright (1997) describe a ëcritical
pedagogy, that is, a way of engaging in the teaching/ learning process
which questions taken-for-granted understandings, whether these understandings
occur within the studentsí own tacit knowledge, or within some part
of the canon.í
They also suggest that a ëcritical literacy pedagogyí
encourages students to develop approaches that enable a ëcritical
view of society and culture.í Critical literacy is therefore clearly
demarcated from a functional literacy that confines consideration of language
to its technical basis and does not locate meaning within a social and
political context.
Over recent years, attention has been drawn to the impact
that information and communication technologies are having on the processes
of reading. Spender (1995a) has noted that rather than reading from left
to right and from top to bottom of a page, ë..the screen reader must
have eyes that dart around and make sense of a multitude of moving images.í
Here it is being claimed that literacy is undergoing a fundamental change
as occurred in other times and that the advent of the microcomputer means
that ënewer skills, not fewer skillsí are required.
The nature and extent of literacy amongst the young continues
to be debated. A recent summary report in Australia (Ainley, 1997), indicated
that for junior secondary school students ë..there has been little
change in reading ability between 1975 and 1995í with about seventy
percent achieving competency. Again, Spender (1995b) comments on difficulties
with definition and assessment of literacy and the tendency of commentators
to discuss discrepancies and statistics and not ëthe entire reading
enterprise.í For example, given that millions of children and adults
around the world now have daily access to microcomputer technologies in
communities that are both advantaged and disadvantaged and that this will
increasingly be the case, the influence that such techniques are having
on literacy cannot be ignored. It may be that computer-based technological
change will offer the best opportunities for critical literacy that have
yet been available or conceived.
Technology for human benefit
In common usage, technology is often referred to as the
application of scientific knowledge for human purpose. However, this technical
understanding of process denies thinking about doing and the moral questions
associated with human action. Heidegger (1977) for example, comments that
ëTechnology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing.
It is the realm of revealing, that is, of truth.í
Technology can be considered as a way of knowing, in the
same way that a person can investigate the world in a variety of mathematical,
artistic, or linguistic manners. Dewey (see Hickman, 1992) also had an
epistemological view of technology seeing the tools and methods of the
scientific era as important adjuncts in the process of understanding through
personal experimentation and enquiry.
In the early 1980ís, Papert (1980) suggested that
the microcomputer need not support a skill-based or technical approach
to education and that his Logo program encouraged children to become active
problem solvers and researchers. Although important, the historic contribution
of Logo was not whether it embodied an open-ended approach to mathematics
and indeed, to thinking itself, but whether it demonstrated that the products
of technology generally speaking, need not be technical in character. Papert
(1985) emphasised that if schools were to change for the better, to be
student-centred and less instrumental, then it was necessary to concentrate
on the broad culture of the school rather than the technology itself
In discussing how children learn informally with computers,
often in collaboration with adults, often taking a leading position and
more often than not enthusiastically jumping into the intellectual unknown,
Papert (1995) astounds by describing such engagements as representing,
..the biggest steps for childhood since the transition from oral to literate
cultures.í Consequently, he advocates that there is a need to revise
ë..concepts of childhood shaped in bygone epoch.í This analysis
of modern life firmly locks technological change with literacy and of course,
critical literacy, for adults and children alike.
Information technology and critical literacy
In a review of computer application for educational and
literacy use, Derewianka (1994) comments on how the new technologies support
a ënon-linearí approach to reading, writing and thinking. Like
Spender, she notes that the structure of texts on the screen will alter
as we integrate image and sound. However, this should not denigrate the
importance of print and books in their current form, it is more a case
of being familiar with different techniques for communication and information
gathering.
The range of computer application for critical literacy
is potentially wide, depending on the structure of the learning environment.
For example, computer games, multimedia, authoring programs, music, graphics,
robotic control, word processing, hypertext, virtual reality and expert
systems, all provide the opportunity for informal and creative learning
interactions.
Extensive diffusion of the Internet and electronic mail
across educational, business and community locations has already enabled
millions of people around the world to search for information and to communicate
with each other, thereby opening up new avenues for personal challenge
and learning. The prospect of artificial intelligence platforms of varying
degrees of sophistication, allowing for questioning, inference and unpredictability
in situations that closely resemble human relationships, will also help
establish the conditions for critical literacy and critique.
Development of a critical pedagogy and literacy demands
that learning begins with the life experiences of the participants, a genuine
respect for personal knowledge and the capacity of all people to learn,
grow and change. These conditions which support a ëpractice into theoryí
orientation, are required both in schools and in community structures so
that the learning being undertaken is part of the ongoing struggle for
social existence, not separate from it. Critical literacy is very much
a part of the philosophical ësearch for explanationí in which
all people engage throughout their lives and on which decisions regarding
personal and political questions will be made.
Perhaps the major difference between the pursuit of functional
literacy or critical literacy, is the role of the human actors involved.
In the former case, the relationship is essentially instructional and technical,
while in the latter, the relationship is essentially constructional and
moral. Critical literacy must emerge from environments that are democratic,
collaborative, experiential and social, if human meaning is to make sense
in relation to the cultural milieu in which it is based. Upon this understanding,
the incorporation of information and communication technologies should
enable critical literacy and cultural action to be intimately linked and
substantially enhanced.
Knowledge Ownership
There is a new dimension, however, to the technology in
schools dilemma.
Further to M.E.Thomasí questions should be added
Michael Singhís questions related to power and knowledge:
