Neil Postman has long been a great thinker in the education, media and culture arenas. He is well known for his cultural critiques in books like Amusing Ourselves to Death, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, and The Disappearance of Childhood, and Teaching as a Subversive Activity. He even refers to himself as a “reformed McLuhanite”, building on the work and ideas of Marshall McLuhan. He sadly died of lung cancer in 1993 and I don’t think we have had a critical thinker like him since. If you have not read these books, I highly encourage you to do so, as the voice that he brought to thinking deeply about our current trajectories is quickly becoming silent in education arenas.
If you don’t see it as important to read deeply about the great thinkers like Postman, then below is a terribly adapted (by me) interview from 1996 that will give you the sound bytes you might be looking for to brush him aside. It will only take 3 minutes of your time. One thing Postman grieved a great deal was how evolving forms of new media may be contributing to our focus on the trivial, the sensational, and the brief; how in an era of information wealth we might be becoming knowledge poor, wisdom deficient, and spiritually depleted.
Now, if you are going to take the time to watch the entire interview (and I sincerely hope that you do), I think you’ll find that there is a great deal to think about in the twenty-five minutes that it will take. Postman brings up issues that are not only getting talked about less and less at the “reform” tables, but they are not even being considered. To take it even further, I’d hedge to bet that many sitting at these tables have not even read many of the works of the great thinkers like Postman. What Postman feared a great deal was that our culture would become so distracted and hurried and entertained that it would cease to even be aware of the great thinkers of our time; that democracy itself will be compromised. This is an interesting visual juxtaposition of the ideas of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell by cartoonist Stuart McMillan that is interestingly titled “Amusing Ourselves to Death” after one of Postman’s books. Although Postman’s writings largely fell on the side of Huxley, there are elements of Orwell that also ring true. Postman is well-known for his idea of the “faustian bargain” that advancements in technology bring… that every new solution also brings with it new problems… and that we, as a society, are becoming less and less interested in considering the potential problems that such new solutions bring with them. I think this is quite true in the education arenas today.
Here is that 25 minute interview. Watch it. Think about it. Perhaps even make a goal of reading one or more of his books. Don’t just stop at what Wikipedia has to say about him or the smattering of videos that are available online. I really think that it is so important – imperative – to read deeply, think deeply, and discuss deeply the issues that Postman and others have presented to us.
I’m not going to deconstruct this video here. Please leave your thoughts/ideas in the comments area below. I’d love to hear them and discuss them further with you.
I do think that Postman could have had a slightly different view of technology had he lived long enough to see the development of Web 2.0 technologies that allow us to communicate and connect in ways not seen before. That being said, I also think he would have most certainly had some thoughts on how such technologies have added to our distractedness, our entertainment, or triviality, and our proclivity for the “sound byte” and other “snackable content” that allows us to feel informed, yet only scratch the surface of big ideas and thinkers of our time. You can see his commentary here as well on his insights on things like online communities. His words back in 2000 continue to ring true today when he says that online communities are where people are looking for people who share the same interests and largely agree with them (echo chamber, anyone?). He compares this to the (older?) meaning of community where we didn’t necessarily all have the same interests or beliefs but yet had to live together and get along together – negotiate our differences… “a working out of differences in the interest of social solidarity” – democracy.
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So, I’d like to take this moment to exhort all of you to listen for and respond to this type of shout-out request. They happen often and it can be so easy to tire of them and stop responding. Let me use this post to encourage you in the fact that your response can really make an impact… a difference as educators new to Twitter and other types of social learning tools and spaces struggle to see why it is worth there time and energy to learn yet one more tool for learning – especially when they are fighting all of the misconceptions and one-sided media messages that they have stored since Twitter’s inception.





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