Henry Jenkins of MIT’s Comparative Media Lab discusses how many of our students today are being de-skilled as they enter schools where the digital tools they are using outside of the school environment are invalidated. Not only are many critical online resources blocked by crude filters but “[teachers] tell kids again and again that what they learn outside of school doesn’t belong in the school. And teachers have to remember every time they do that they’re also saying what you are learning in school has no relationship to all those other things you’re doing outside.” He reminds us that there is a new relationship forming between teachers and students, and that strong communities can be formed through intergenerational collaboration. What is needed is a space where people can do this but unfortunately many of our schools are failing to do so. A move in the right direction would be for schools to move away from the emphasis on autonomous learning. I’m reminded of Marshall McLuhan comparing specialization and role-playing in the electric age,
“An artist is always at play because he uses all of his faculties. He is always at leisure. When a man is only using a few of his faculties like adding up his income tax he’s specializing, he’s not playing, and he’s not at leisure. But the artist or the playful creative person is using all of his faculties simultaneously, he is at leisure, he is playing, and he is in role. Now when a person is in role, they don’t have a job, they have many jobs…This calls for great flexibility, and great diversity, and great tolerance, and great flexibility of spirit. And the role player therefore is a very rich person…so role-playing…is a world in which you have a vast repertory of parts to perform simultaneously.”
Jenkins notes a series of skills he believes to be crucial for learners in the new media landscape. Among them are play and performance and the ability to work together and collaborate in meaningful ways. These new skills call for allowing students to shift from narrow specialization to being able to use all of their faculties, as can be facilitated greatly by thoughtfully incorporating new media into our curricula and by validating their use in and out of school.
Anyone familiar with remix culture knows how incredible the outcome of this can be. People tapping the great cultural reservoir, as Jenkins puts it, to showcase their creativity. Though often amazing it’s unfortunate as Jenkins and Lawrence Lessig point out that our laws are at odds with our norms, causing incredible tension and a definite need to rethink copyright. Perhaps with reform (not only in copyright, but in education) we will begin to see students as artists who engage the world with all of their faculties rather than as specialists (or at worst, as criminals).
via Participatory Learning vs. De-schooling, De-skilling, and De-valuing | Ecology of Education.
Tagged: education, jenkins, learning, McLuhan, media, technology