Larry Sanger Blog » A short manifesto for schools: time to focus on knowledge. Ever since I was an elementary school student myself, I have been chronically disappointed with the American education establishment.
Don’t get me wrong–I get along fine with most of the educators I encounter, who are good people and full of all sorts of good ideas and real competence. But I also believe a sickness pervades the entire American system of education, the sickness of anti-intellectualism. I read plenty of blogs, tweets, and articles on education and ed tech, as well as the occasional book, from all sorts of cutting-edge teachers, administrators, and education theorists. They are all abuzz about the latest online educational resources, which I love and use (and develop) too. But whenever the subject of learning facts or substantially increasing levels of subject knowledge, and–especially–tests of such things comes up, I seem to hear nothing but boos and hisses.
Reading about the study inspired a few thoughts. Larry Sanger Blog » Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism? Is there a new anti-intellectualism? I mean one that is advocated by Internet geeks and some of the digerati. I think so: more and more mavens of the Internet are coming out firmly against academic knowledge in all its forms.
This might sound outrageous to say, but it is sadly true. Let’s review the evidence. 1. Programmers have been saying for years that it’s unnecessary to get a college degree in order to be a great coder–and this has always been easy to concede. In 2001, along came Wikipedia, which gave everyone equal rights to record knowledge. Around the same time, some people began to criticize books as such, as an outmoded medium, and not merely because they are traditionally paper and not digital. But nascent geek anti-intellectualism really began to come into focus around three years ago with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, when Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google making us stupid?”
In 2010, Edge took up the question, “Is the Internet changing the way you think?” 2. 1. 2. 3. 4. Content as curriculum? Larry Sanger Blog » An example of educational anti-intellectualism. I’ve got to stop blogging quite so much, but I couldn’t let this pass without comment.
One would expect Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor of learning technology at Plymouth University in England, to be plugged into and more or less represent the latest academic trends in education technology. If so, I’m a bit scared. I came across Prof. Wheeler’s blog post from yesterday, “Content as curriculum?” If I had wanted to create a parody of both kinds of anti-intellectualism I’ve mentioned recently–among geeks and among educationists–I couldn’t have invented anything better. Wheeler’s post is so interesting and provocative, I’m going to go through line-by-line.