🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print itself is the content of the telegraph.”

~ Marshall McLuhan

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Greetings, dear newsletter subscribers,

I just realized that...while I had prepared last week's newsletter to go out...somehow...it did not end up getting sent(?!) Please forgive me!

I was about to send out this week's newsletter...but now realize that I should send this one first(!)

There is a new video (which you can watch here), or if you'd like to wait until next week, I will send it along with the newsletter next Thursday.

So...here's the latest installment of our study of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death...

In chapter Ten of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Teaching As an Amusing Activity” Postman looks closely at the relationship between television and education:

“We now know that ‘Sesame Street’ encourages children to love school only if school is like ‘Sesame Street.’ Which is to say, we now know that Sesame Street undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents. Whereas a classroom is a place of social interaction, the space in front of a television set is a private preserve. Whereas in a classroom, one may ask a teacher questions, one can ask nothing of a television screen.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 143

I have referenced the Myth of Progress before and here, again, we see its continuing influence. Somehow, despite decades of educational research showing that television and computer technology do not aid, but rather detract from, the learning process, our educational institutions continue to move forward with digital solutions (screens have largely replaced books in most of American education). Even though the science has shown that digital screens are a problem, the American dedication to the Myth of Progress continues to influence educators to adopt new technologies.

Of course, one might respond that computers and televisions are very different things; computers have the virtue of being interactive. The problem, however, is a kind of category error. And this is so in a number of ways:

1) Yes, one can read on a screen. Study after study has shown, however, that memory and retention are better when a student reads a physical book. If one is going to read on a screen, why not just read a physical book instead? As Postman explains, “[S]o far as many reputable studies are concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning, is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order, inferential thinking.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 152

2) Yes, there is a certain amount of interaction that one can have with digital technology. However, this interaction is very different than the real world interaction that one has in real world social settings. Students already spend too much time in front of screens being largely antisocial, one of the opportunities that school should offer students is the opportunity to learn healthy social interaction in a safe environment.

3) What Postman wrote in Chapter Eight about television and religion also applies to education: “[T]he television screen itself has a strong bias toward a psychology of secularism. The screen is so saturated with our memories of profane events, so deeply associated with the commercial and entertainment worlds that it is difficult for it to be recreated as a frame for sacred events. Among other things, the viewer is at all times aware that a flick of the switch will produce a different and secular event on the screen….” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 119-120

Even if well-meaning teachers try to keep students focused on the particular topic at hand, their efforts will be necessarily undermined by the countless hours students spend in front of screens outside of school. The very presence of a screen sends a subconscious message to students that the activity that they’re involved in is not serious and does not (and should not) require much effort on their part.

“[T]he most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do. Television educates by teaching children to do what television-viewing requires of them. And that is as precisely remote from what a classroom requires of them as reading a book is from watching a stage show.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 144

What Is True Education?

The most basic question that all educators should be asking themselves is: What does true education look like? It would seem that this should be an easy question to answer, but given our education system, it appears that the answer is anything but clear. During the Typographic Age the answer was quite clear, education was meant to build the virtues espoused by the Typographic Age:

1) Logic, analytical thinking: education as a slow reflective process

2) Discipline and patience: education through sustained attention

3) Intellectual curiosity and independence: education through solitary intellectual development

4) Focus on an academic canon, and an attempt at objectivity: education through the appreciation and assimilation of previous generations and institutions

5) Focus on precision and clarity: education through writing, sustained thought, and deep exposition

6) Focus on long-term learning goals: education as an on-going, ever-deepening life project requiring patience and slow mastery

In the Visual Age however, these virtues appear to have been replaced by:

1) Rapid processing, skimming: education as a surface-level process looking for the most obvious connections

2) Switching of focus, multi-tasking: education through fragmented attention

3) Public visibility, performance, instant feedback: education through social rewards and in social spaces

4) Immediacy, subjective experience: education through one’s feelings about the current situation and what one’s current “tribe” thinks about something, popularity

5) Brevity, emotional impact, share-ability: education through sound bites and tweets

6) Instant access, on-demand knowledge: education in real-time, as-needed, mediated through search engines and the smartphone and favoring instant gratification

It would appear that the modern educational system is a confused hybrid of these two epistemological understandings of knowledge and knowledge acquisition. The problem, of course, is that since these two approaches are so clearly at odds, the ideal model for education can be either one or the other of these two, but not both. What happens in practice is that the educational virtues and goals of the Typographic Age are actively undermined by the new technologies adopted by modern educators.

How did this situation arise? As Postman points out in this chapter, what often happens is that educators are more focused on finding a way to use a particular piece of technology (and particularly in hopes of finding less expensive and easier ways to educate) than on finding ways to actually educate their students. Again, the Myth of Progress tempts them to believe that the solution to the “problem” of education is a technological one.

Education As A Historical Endeavor

“Education philosophers have assumed that becoming acculturated is difficult because it necessarily involves the imposition of restraints. They have argued that there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories. Indeed, Cicero remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present, which cannot be pleasurable for those, like the young, who are struggling hard to do the opposite—that is, accommodate themselves to the present. Television offers a delicious and, as I have said, original alternative to all of this.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 146-147

Perhaps the Myth of Progress is not a myth at all, but a fact, and perhaps modern educators have truly discovered new and better ways to educate students. Most educational research has suggested the opposite however. One can only hope that the results of this mass experiment will become increasingly clear and that a course correction can be realized.

“[T]elevision's principal contribution to educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and entertainment are inseparable. This entirely original conception is to be found nowhere in educational discourses, from Confucius to Plato to Cicero to Locke to John Dewey.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 146

Thanks for joining us for this look at Chapter Ten of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. We will look at Chapter Eleven next week. As always, please share with a friend who you think might find this of interest...and join the conversation on my Substack page.

Warmly,

Herman

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