Intellectual Cosmopolitanism

Posted on by Brian Hughes
A suggestive graphic by http://www.flickr.com/photos/acolavecchio/

I’m getting excited for the upcoming New York Times’ Schools for Tomorrow conference, and working on my presentation. I’ll be on the “Tools Available (college-level)” panel, and I’d like to convey some ideas about the future balance between tradition and timeliness in the academy. It’s hard to articulate an interesting position in the 5-10 minutes that I’ll likely have. So here’s one idea . . .

Without prognosticating, I’ll sketch out a view of the growing necessity of intellectual cosmopolitanism at the K-12 level—the idea that curriculum must continue to diversify around cultures and cultural practices.[1] Why? Well, as people around the world are increasingly connected, it’ll be harder to maintain a narrow worldview—and related mental habits. Right? (Hey, I’m not suggesting this will happen overnight.) In other words: more tech = more appreciation of diversity.

The import for college-level learning is that students will already have formed a two-pronged approach to education: increasingly relying on personal and non-school tools (more appreciation of diversity = a greater economic incentive to learn) for rote and “professional” learning (including deep expertise in academic subjects) while engaging community-focused and group-based learning in the classroom.

On this view (and let’s say 10-20 years away, just to push the limits of non-prognostication), civics emerges as a dominant theme of secondary formal education, while higher education increasingly becomes grounded in problem-solving (now more fashionably called “design”). Traditional modes of liberal learning (reading, writing, discussing) will not disappear so much as take place outside of formal education (fingers-crossed?). Instead of lamenting this retreat, educators must to pursue ways to connect group work to liberal learning—to make it count, so to speak.

Sound familiar? The more things change . . .

OK, so this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but I think this perspective allows me to speak to several interesting points:

  • Group work will be standard practice. And it needs to get much better. Mainstream collaboration tools like Google Docs have improved communication and information sharing (full disclosure: I haven’t yet checked for evidence here), but there is room for improvement and specialization. Today, there are dozens of collaborative writing tools for different purposes. We can expect to see these options across all disciplines and modes of knowledge-sharing. Goodbye lectures.
  • Certification will happen outside of school. Yep, that’s right: no more “high stakes” tests in college, at least. Probably K-12 too. Students will still have to take them for a variety of reasons, but they’ll be created and offered by national (international!) consortiums (of one sort or another) and proctored by a handful private companies (want to take the SAT at a Google facility, anyone?).
  • Open data standards don’t matter. Students of all ages will want access to their own data. And they should get it from small companies and large educational organizations alike by virtue of market pressure. But that doesn’t mean companies have to adopt complex systems (like Raymond’s data backpack). I know this is speaking heresy, but this is good news for small companies who would otherwise be squeezed out of the education space but tech giants—a scenario that would be reminiscent of publishing giants dictating curriculum through textbook production.

Thoughts? I still have plenty of time to sharpen my thinking!

[1] I’m not sure if the term “intellectual cosmopolitanism” has been used elsewhere, but I think it poetically captures the force that technologies are exerting on curriculums and teaching practices.

Philosophy as History

Posted on by Brian Hughes

This afternoon I had the honor of working with Art Education students in Teachers College’s Instep program – thinking about John Dewey’s legacy and impact on art education. As preparation for the lecture and group activity (collaboratively writing philosophies of art education), we read:

  • Ursula Niklas’ “On the Philosophy of Teaching Philosophy of Art” to reflect on how philosophical methods can be used in different ways within the context of art education.
  • The Encyclopedia of Aesthetic Philosophy’s “John Dewey: Survey of Thought” entry on John Dewey for a historical look at the impact Dewey had on discussion of art, education, and philosophy.
  • Three chapters from John Dewey’s “Art as Experience” to better understand his philosophical views and context (at the very least read the “The Live Creature” passage from 525-540).
  • The Wikipedia entry on Richard Shusterman (a contemporary aesthetic philosopher) to see how Dewey’s philosophy continues to serve as a philosophical touchstone (especially the “Definitions of art” section): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shusterman (Actually, they didn’t get the Shusterman reading in time, but I spoke about it in my short lecture.)

It was a tough session to plan for, as I wanted to provide a broad view of Dewey’s relevance to art education, but also engage the class in thinking about the use and purpose of philosophy in their own teaching practices. Still, in good hermeneutic fashion, I tried to allow for both.

I asked everyone in the class to say a bit about their background in grappling with a teaching philosophy, and perhaps it was no surprise that people had a wide range of experiences – with respect to geography, philosophy, and education.

During the course of my talk, some interesting questions arose – about the use of wikipedia for doing philosophy, about my description of the “essence” of hermeneutics, and about whether or not teaching experience is necessary for philosophers who grapple with truth(s) of art and education. This latter question was one I did not have a chance to respond to in class, so I’ll respond here: this is a well-worn question across many philosophical disciplines, and there is no easy answer. On some accounts teaching experience is a hindrance, but on most it is an asset. Essential? Let’s not go that far. Valuable? YOU BET.

I’m not sure the philosophy-as-history angle was a useful hermeneutic, but it did allow for an important central argument: that philosophy is a tradition with which art educators must grapple. I hope it was interesting enough for these students to latch onto, and hope for feedback in the future. I’d like to keep working on this set of ideas, and a short lecture is an interesting (if challenging) format.

The students appeared to have engaging discussions about four elements of a “Deweyan Philosophy of Education” I put forward: Context, Definition, Interpretation, and Excellence. I hope they are able to continue to speak back to these four deeply philsophical themes in the future.

Thanks to the students for their energy!

Masterclass and the Importance of Mentoring Across Disciplines

Posted on by Brian Hughes

I’m excited about EdLab’s role on this project — creating online tools to support teachers and students. We’ll be implementing another instance of Pressible with special features to support the discussions that unfold in the classroom. Have any ideas for us? Comment below or swing by EdLab and chat with us.

Publishing with Libraries

Posted on by Brian Hughes

Last week I attended the annual Association of College & Research Libraries conference in Philadelphia. Julia and I presented a poster on Pressible, and how our library is using it to expand the publishing possibilities available to our community.

Fig. 1: a flattering tweet about our poster session

I attended panel and paper sessions on “embedded librarianship, “building lean and mean web project teams,” and “connecting to the campus through creativity.” And Julia and I went to the great keynote on “declaring interdependence” by Raj Patel, the author of several books about food, economics, and democracy. Overall, it was a great day to think about libraries, information, and related educational issues.

I came away from the conference with a lot of different ideas. Instead of trying to make sense of it all (from project ideas to criticism), I’m just going to list a few:

  • Co-blogging. Librarians can support student writing projects by helping to host, edit, and collaborate around public blogging.
  • Augmenting reality. It would be cool to have an augmented reality mobile app for “seeing” alternative social perspectives. This app could make new kinds of choices possible by making them visible (e.g., choosing where to eat, shop, and hang out). But how could the data be generated, and by whom?
  • Reader advocacy. How can books better, and more directly, promote social action?
  • Cultivate a constituency. To strengthen democracy, all educational institutions need to cultivate student activism and civic-mindedness.
  • Pressible TV. What if made a short video of the daily headlines on Pressible? Could it better serve an audience that wants to read less but still be up to date about the community? If we had this stream of content, what else could we do with it (besides featuring it on the network site)?

Looking back at my notes, I see the theme of scholarly publishing emerging. Most of the sessions I attended touched on opportunities and problems around publishing—from the perspective of either a librarian, student, or scholar. I think these ideas stand out to me because there are so many opportunities around publishing at colleges and universities, not only “scholarly” publishing per se, but “educational” publishing more broadly.

The theme of our Pressible poster reflects this: our idea of “small ‘p’ publishing” is about creating new opportunities for students, researchers, teachers, and professionals to learn from and with each other. New technology and a lot of old-fashioned hard work is making it possible. And now that it’s possible, and on the rise, it only remains to be seen if these new avenues of publishing can have a positive impact on learning, and even a transformative impact on the education sector.

Overall, Thursday’s program was a very interesting and dense (sadly it was the only day I was able to attend the conference). I was appreciative of the conference organizers who clearly follow the “less is more” maxim when scheduling paper and panel sessions—the sessions I went to were attended by hundreds of seemingly attentive, inquisitive conference-goers. This alone left me with a positive feeling about the future of libraries.

Lastly, some quotes from Raj:

  • On the Dustbowl: “It isn’t an example of the ‘tragedy of the commons‘ because people were forced to enact the counterproductive behavior.”
  • On democracy: “Apparently the voting public thought Obama would be the pizza delivery dude of change.”
  • On hedge fund managers: “Luck [of class, education, and ability] isn’t the thing that should entitle you to that kind of money.”

Hey, I’ll be the first to admit, these were not ideas I expected to come from a library-related conference.

A Paywall for the New York Times

Posted on by Brian Hughes

A nice summary by Pamela of the NYTimes paywall debate. I am very interested in how this will play out—to see if the current price point will work for the Times, if they’ll ride this into the ground (laying off staff, etc.), or relent as Ruaridh imagines (see first comment). Either way, it will be a glimpse into the future of journalism. Oh, and while we’re here… let me add that I hope they kill off the ridiculously classist Real Estate and Fashion “reporting” first.