Everything is Miscellaneous
I’ve been waiting to get my hands on David Weinberger’s latest book Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, but unfortunately it arrived from Amazon the afternoon I left for my four day trip to Illinois. (Btw, anyone see where I was yesterday???) Being the impatient type that I am, I picked up a copy in a bookstore yesterday, and while I haven’t gotten too far into it, I’m glad I did. (Plane ride home tonight…)
Anyway, I know it’s cheating, and on some level ironic, but the first thing I did was check out the decidedly un-miscellaneous index to see what he had written about education. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, the answer was not much. And I have no doubt that as I read through this, there will be all sorts of connections to our own issues and struggles with the changing structure of knowledge and information. But anyway, here’s a taste.
At one point, Weinberger discusses “Social Knowers,” and he describes the typical Massachusetts classroom at the end of the year where students are taking standardized tests.
The implicit lesson is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals. It is something that happens inside of your brain. The mark of knowing is being able to fill in a paper with the right answers. Knowledge could not get any less social. In fact, in those circumstances when knowledge is social we call it cheating.
Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning. In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net. Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources on the Web, chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four or five instant messaging sessions open as he or she does homework. They have their friends with them as they learn…
One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades down.
I hope he’s right…
One last observation. Yesterday in a workshop with some independent school teachers, we were talking about IM, and someone said that she had a student tell her that IM is where the drama in her life plays out. It struck me how powerful that tool can be and how different that is even for me.
Anyway, more on the book as I plow through it…