On The Response To The Internet In Curricular Materials

Education pedagogy is a complicated subject, to say the least, but there are still foundational approaches that can act as pillars in these rapidly changing times. Particularly, a focus on the cognitive processes themselves- which have been overlooked and not discussed as much in the broad discourse as identity, civics, and the gamut of changing social, economic, and cultural shifts have occurred.

There is an issue of "over-correction" that seems to occur consistently in our approaches to change and improvement: the pendulum swings one way, and then it swings another. There was a movement toward standardized testing, and then, as it overwhelmed and obfuscated the core of educational purpose and decisions, the pendulum swung the other way. Currently, the over-correction in the humanities is with regards to current topics, especially as regards the internet and media coverage. Just about everyone is adapting to the effect of the internet on our society, and those effects are continuing to play-out: current issues of disinformation, of cohesive social goals, of exposure or overexposure to information can be overwhelming to process, let alone to consider the implications for students and attempts to adapt education appropriately. There has been a substantial increase in the number of current events being covered in humanities classes- seemingly and often within weeks of being a major focus in social media and news outlets. There has been a rapid rise in social justice teaching in urban school districts, and conservative values in rural districts. In response to our current climate, education has also become hyper-politicized.

We used to anchor education to the demands of the economy- to prepare students for the workforce. Now, while there are still a number of certainties- especially with regards to STEM fields- it is unclear exactly what skills will generally be necessary to be successful in the economy: we talk about "grit" and "adaptability" and "continually learning new skills," but these don't translate perfectly to instruction. While there are ways to measure and reward someone's perseverance, it is much more unclear how to design the system to develop perseverance. Some of them are even at odds with our system.

In low-income, minority-majority urban schools, there is an "over-correction" that occurs, and to the detriment of students' psyche. In every humanities class (two to three per day), there are consistent lessons about slavery and oppression, narratives of being at a disadvantage, the reasons for the disadvantage, and what is necessary to overcome that disadvantage. On the one hand, yes, this is certainly important to acknowledge as a teacher and to use to guide instruction to some degree; but when all of your teachers are telling you that you are oppressed, worse off than most people, and need to do x,y, and z just to be able to compete with these "phantom" students who are getting good educations and are going to get good jobs, etc., you're embedding an inferiority complex into these students. An average classroom in the U.S. will give lessons in slavery and the civil rights movement, etc, but it won't be the dominant narrative of the class.

Similarly, these days there has been a radical swing in classrooms toward teaching politicized, current events nearly everyday, at least two to three times a day. While these events can be used to improve how students think, students should not be being indoctrinated; otherwise, we are not educating students- they are learning to listen to an authoritative figure (the teacher) and to think what they think, rather than to develop critical, independent thinking skills. Within this highly-politicized landscape, the importance of being able to assemble facts, to do research, and to find sources has been under-utilized in many classrooms, and to the detriment of students. The pendulum of reform has swung so far out that it has forgotten to teach the skills that made it able to swing in the first place, and there is a danger that subjugated thinking (or, non-thinking) is being taught with "reform" as the content.

Teachers are attempting to prepare students and help them adapt to what they will encounter or are encountering on the internet. The focus should not be on preparing them to understand and deal with specific content, but rather to build their mental capacity with the 21st century in mind. It's not that there is not place for helping students to process the information they are or will be exposed to, but that it should not dominate the instructional design.

Submitted June 04, 2020 at 07:02PM by HairspringFlux https://ift.tt/2XZTOfC