Educ 1101: Education In Modern Society From Provenzo’s Chapter One

The intent of this course is to engage in the process of questioning: the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in U.S. culture; the significance of postmodernism in shaping what it means to teach and be taught in our schools; the relationship between our schools and the larger social, cultural, and economic forces at work in our society.

This course will introduce students interested in U.S. schools to the forces at work within the education system. This approach is interdisciplinary: drawing on historical, philosophical, anthropological, and sociological— reflecting sources from popular culture.

Paideia: Education as reflecting the ways of a culture. Major theme of our study. What goes on in schools—the values and knowledge children bring to the classroom and content included in textbooks and the curriculum—ultimately reflects the values and beliefs of the society of which they are part.

Ironically, according to physicist Albert Einstein, “The fish are the last creatures to consider the water that surrounds them”.

Educating=shaping consciousness Schools are still important institutions for learning, yet they are not the only means by which we educate people in U.S. culture. Schools are only one of many institutions— including family, churches, museums, and newspapers—that shape the consciousness of our children.

Every family, church, synagogue, library, museum, scout troop, radio station, television station, has a curriculum. Radical educator Ivan Illich on education: Family life, health care, professions, media play an important part in the institutional manipulation of one’s world vision, language, and demands. School touches us so deeply that none of us can expect to be liberated from it by something else.

Our goal: attempting to understand how these things combine to shape us, students, education, and society. Our process: inquiry—or exploring—a social, ecological approach to investigating traditional and nontraditional modes of education and schooling. Our emphasis of our inquiry: a postmodern perspective.

Postmodern (Henry Giroux): Entry into a new period of historical time characterized by a crisis of power, patriarchy, authority, identity, and ethics. It is a form of cultural criticism regarding an emerging set of social, cultural, and economic conditions that have come to characterize the age of global capitalism and industrialism. It radically questions the logic of foundations that have become the epistemological cornerstone of modernism.

Postmodern impact on education: Profound social, political, technological, and cultural changes that have taken place in the U.S. will certainly affect your work—as educators. Schools and the educational system have profoundly redefined by this in recent years. We have entered into a new phase of our culture, and in doing so, the nature of schooling has changed as well. The conditions of schooling reflect profound changes in society. In turn, the possibilities of schooling the role of the teacher, the needs of the curricula are all affected by the emergence of postmodern phenomena.

Postmodernism means: Decentralized forms of labor processes and work organization, greater emphasis on choice and product differentiation, targeting consumers by lifestyle, taste, and culture rather than by categories of social class, the rise of the service industry, feminization of the work force, and economy dominated by the multinationals, greater autonomy from nation-state control, and the globalization of the new financial markets. These phenomena are indications of the emergence of a new culture and society in the U.S.

Re: Technology Technologically, a great deal of the technology emerging in a time of postmodernism has served us well. Yet, some of these tech applications have not served us well, and others have changed our world in ways that are not yet clear (9).

Reflecting the ways of a culture What goes on in schools—the values and knowledge students bring to the classroom and the content in included in textbooks and the curriculum—ultimately reflects the values and beliefs of the society in which they are a part. This idea is not new, but ancient: paideia. Peideia: Education as reflecting the ways of a culture Major theme of our study. What goes on in schools— the values and knowledge children bring to the classroom and content included in textbooks and the curriculum—ultimately reflects the values and beliefs of the society of which they are part (10).

In Conclusion —as stated in introduction: Ironically, according to physicist Albert Einstein, “The fish are the last creatures to consider the water that surrounds them” (9). Intent of this course is to engage students in the process of questioning the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in U.S. culture; the significance of postmodernism in shaping what it means to teach and be taught in our schools; and the relationship between our schools and the larger social, cultural, and economic forces at work in our society (11). This course will introduce students interested in U.S. schools to the forces at work within the education system. This approach is interdisciplinary: drawing on historical, philosophical, anthropological, and sociological—reflecting sources from popular culture (10).

Discussion questions: 1.Given that schools are not as important in the education of children today as they were in the past, why are they still important? 2.What have been the issues and forces in your own experience that have been the most influential in determining what you know and how you view the world (family school, religion, peer groups, television, etcetera)? The choices you made earlier in class regarding your survival tools on a deserted island may get you started here. 3.What are some of the issues facing schools and contemporary children that did not exist a generation ago? 4.Can you describe some phenomena that are distinctly modern? Can you describe some that are postmodern? How are they different? 5.How would your life and experience have been different if you had lived fifty years ago?