Adapting Technology Learning towards Social Inclusion - Essay Example

Adapting Technology Learning towards “Social Inclusion” A human stuffed with unused knowledge is an unfulfilled, tentative kind of being – somewhat like a perpetually pregnant organism that never gives a birth. A society loaded with knowledge that is not used is similarly vulnerable; it is a society in paralysis, drifting towards extinction. History describes many initially vigorous societies and cultures fading into oblivion. We have a new buzzword, conveniently pilfered from the inevitable degradation, without constant inputs of energy, of the organized system towards a state of inert uniformity. Many technological solutions to crucial problems of deprived children are known, but few are accepted and applied because of misunderstanding, distrust and political fear. Bridging the gap between “technologists” and “sociologists” is an imperative policy if the present paralysis is using ‘learning’ is to be overcome. The energy/entropy combination is a simple and a compelling concept. Simple and compelling enough, in fact, to subsidize a best seller or two. But the learning explosion of the past century has vastly complicated the equation. The energy inputs needed to sustain society – the knowledge nutrients (or learning environment) required for societal metabolism and behaviour – have become bewilderingly rich and complex, offering gastronomic choices that can kill as well as cure. Science and technology furnish the bulk of shelf items in today’s burgeoning knowledge supermarket. As the industrial revolution added complexity to our Western World, it also intensified the need for more and more specialized learning for all “nutrients” to sustain. Since mid-century, the dependency of industrial society doses of essential learning became disturbingly apparent as its increasing inability to receive and act on crucial information led to visible and often shocking deterioration. It would take hundreds of pages today’s societal pathology, but just a few well-known symptoms suggest its status: environmental pollution, affluent waste, proliferation in crime, dissolution of family structure and loyalties, economic paralysis in major cities, san almost rhapsodic diversion of public monies into monumental piles of military hardware, increasing dependency on debilitating narcotics, and so on. The list seems endless. But here in this paper we consider in learning environment all children have right to education, whether they are disabled, living roughly, underprivileged, gypsies, and children in the care system. Contemporary education systems suggest one way to deal with societal pathology. Exemplary policy applied right from the start, they suggest, probably would have prevented this alarming condition. But now that we are really and truly sick and don’t quite know why, surely we have something in our therapeutic black bag, this technological box of tricks, to treat the symptoms. Alvin Weinberg appropriately calls a sick society’s need for doses of emergency learning its need for a “technological fix”. Somewhere in our scientific arsenal, he suggests, exist information and technique for treating and subduing the symptoms. But certainly the thoughtful Dr. Weinberg will admit there is always the danger that, like methadone of addicts, the cure could yield results worse than the disease. Quite clearly the emergency use of technological “learning for all” requires unusual foresight and considerable sensitivity in application. Here we come to the crux of our education problem: the condition of decision-making paralysis on socially useful technology learning that apparently afflicts our society. For in our free and pluralists system there are many who perceive the danger of the “quick fix”, who inherently shudders at applying “the hair of the dog that bit us”. They distrust technology and fail to see how it can cure the problems it obviously seems to have caused. They raise articulate, well-meaning voices, compelling enough to move lawmakers and executives towards restrictive covenants and paralyzing inaction. They are the liberally educated, the social activists who have sprung up, of necessity, in our industrial system to oppose the rampant force of zealous technology that is usually coupled, they believe, with human greed. Liberal education and humanist philosophy predate technological society by many centuries, so the social activists were there, ready to be vocal just as soon as the societal symptoms inducing protest appeared. But despite ominous signs of its gathering effect, for at least a hundred years after the start of industrial revolution the social activists were curiously ineffective. The power and pervasiveness of new scientific learning and its outset in technology were overwhelming. Despite small understanding, it was enthusiastically accepted by our governing institutions, ultimately invading our schools to create the dual-track educational pathway so lamented by C.P. Snow in his book Two Cultures. Today, with social activists led by scientifically informed Ralph Naders and socially informed “UN Rights of the Child”, the “Salamanca Declaration”, and the “Dakar Framework”, science and technology’s influence on our educational institutions has seriously eroded. And in the new balance of influence, with scientific knowledge now contested by politics and law, something unforeseen has emerged – a paralyzing division of Western society’s leadership into two mutually distrustful camps: those conditioned by education and culture to be enthusiastic advocates of technology, and those similarly conditioned to be innately distrustful of technology. Let us call them, for convenience, the “technologists” and the “sociologists”. Richard Critchfield reflects on how the “two cultures” conflict affects international development and how indisputable social concern by the “assessors” often backfires by preventing the “doers” from furnishing desirable technology and associated benefits to poor and deprived children. Jay Forrester, the superb technologist who did the computer models for Limits to Growth and hence is a sort of reverse image of Critchfield, adds another twist to the picture when he points out that when social scientists do relax and approve technology massively to meet such educational needs, the results are usually what he termed “counterintuitive”. In other words, the solution, such as high-rise public housing for the poor or federally subsidised nursing homes, sometimes create more problems in the long run than the original problem itself (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 205). Let me briefly cite a few of my own observations on knowledge-use paralysis – situations where knowledge exists to meet crucial educational requirements of such children but where its use being withheld or delayed by cultural conflict. First, consider the field of health care. Its escalating cost places it beyond the reach of increasing millions, yet the technology is known and available to alleviate this problem. At the heart of the solution is the computer, a remarkable tool for juggling, at ridiculously low cost, limitless bits of health information. Sick people could communicate cheaply and pleasantly with a computer that would offer them programmed solace, a status report, and treatment advice. But the notion is abhorrent to those who honestly believe (or cynically maintain) that such technology will “dehumanize” medicine. Everyone observed such children in U.K. absolutely charmed and delighted when “talking” with a medical computer. After all, they ask, what is a “doctor”? Another example here of learning caught in cultural conflict involves the question of “appropriate technology”. The concept of furnishing technology suited to the economic system, infrastructure, and capabilities of local people certainly seem both logical and humane. But the recipients of such apparently well-intended assistance, upward-bound Third Worlders, have to view appropriate technology as either the unpalatable fruit of an uneasy honeymoon between sociologists and engineers or a con job by the Westerners. “Should we be stuck with nineteenth-century technology”, they say, “on the premise that it is labour-intensive and suited to the limited skills of our people? Is this the way we are supposed to close the gap? There is no such thing as appropriate technology for us; there is only the best technology”. To these feisty Third Worlders (and I’m included to agree with them), the appropriate technology concept is another classic example of Western do-gooders being far off target when deciding what is best for people in other cultures. What, then, is the answer to this knowledge-use conflict, this often paralyzing cultural dichotomy that seems to have sprung full blown in Western society since the middle of the century? I’ll conclude with a few thoughts, neither profoundly researched nor even modestly tested, which may suggest a way to proceed. First, I’ll propose a new motto for use with technology knowledge that may be acceptable to both cultures, to both technologists and sociologists – namely, “Let the Means Justify the Ends”. This contemporary version of a well-known dialectic might just take the monkey off the back of both parties. Rather than make the means subservient to the ends and hence forgive ruthless application, it implies that technology must be assessed before use, for both immediate and long-range social impact. It suggests a hopeful, more creative role for technology knowledge. My next, equally blithe proposition is to have the Academy of Independent Scholars commission a few of its senior semanticist members to develop a new, mutually accepted lexicon or jargon for social technology. A good deal of the cultural conflict between technologists and sociologist is surely due to the fact that they speak two separate languages. As a socially concerned technologist, I know how put off I am when reading a proposal couched in the indecipherable jargon of the social sciences. But I’m certain that there is a reverse reaction when a sociologist is requires wading through a typical engineering report. Perhaps a new language for collaboration is not necessary, but in preparation for work in social technology an old copy of Rudolph Flesch’s The Art of Clear Writing might be required reading. A more tangible suggestion for a short-term approach to the problem would be a special training effort or program, perhaps carried out as an exercise on many campuses, to create instant, hybrid social-technologists by a process of intellectual osmosis. How we can decompartmentalize our present system to yield to such person, how we can build a new, creative synthesis between the sciences and humanities in the educative process – I’ll leave these questions to the experts. That such a change must take place soon, before our society ultimately drowns in a sea of unspent and misapplied knowledge, I believe is self-evident. References: Snow, C.P. 1963. “The Two Cultures”. Cambridge University Press Richardson, Darrell. 2006. "Brilliant Scientist" Dies at 91. The Oak Ridger. Critchfield, Richard. 1978. An Egyptian. Forward, NY: Syracuse University Press. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, pp. 205 Read More