Welcome to Educ 1101

							         Educ 1101:

Education In Modern Society
From Provenzo’s Chapter One
     The intent of this course is to
• engage in the process of questioning:
• the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in
  U.S. culture;
• the significance of postmodernism in shaping what
  it means to teach and be taught in our schools;
• the relationship between our schools and the larger
  social, cultural, and economic forces at work in our
  society.
            This course will
• introduce students interested in U.S. schools
  to the forces at work within the education
  system.
• This approach is interdisciplinary: drawing
  on historical, philosophical,
  anthropological, and sociological—
  reflecting sources from popular culture.
                 Paideia:
• Education as reflecting the ways of a culture.
• Major theme of our study. What goes on in
  schools—the values and knowledge children
  bring to the classroom and content included in
  textbooks and the curriculum—ultimately
  reflects the values and beliefs of the society of
  which they are part.
                Ironically,
• according to physicist Albert Einstein, “The
  fish are the last creatures to consider the
  water that surrounds them” .
  Educating=shaping consciousness

• Schools are still important institutions for
  learning, yet they are not the only means by
  which we educate people in U.S. culture.
• Schools are only one of many institutions—
  including family, churches, museums, and
  newspapers—that shape the consciousness of
  our children.
• Every family, church, synagogue, library, museum,
  scout troop, radio station, television station, has a
  curriculum.
• Radical educator Ivan Illich on education: Family life,
  health care, professions, media play an important part in
  the institutional manipulation of one’s world vision,
  language, and demands. School touches us so deeply
  that none of us can expect to be liberated from it by
  something else.
• Our goal: attempting to understand how these
  things combine to shape us, students,
  education, and society.
• Our process: inquiry—or exploring—a social,
  ecological approach to investigating traditional
  and nontraditional modes of education and
  schooling.
• Our emphasis of our inquiry: a postmodern
  perspective.
    Postmodern (Henry Giroux):

• Entry into a new period of historical time
  characterized by a crisis of power, patriarchy,
  authority, identity, and ethics.
• It is a form of cultural criticism regarding an
  emerging set of social, cultural, and economic
  conditions that have come to characterize the age of
  global capitalism and industrialism.
• It radically questions the logic of foundations that
  have become the epistemological cornerstone of
  modernism.
    Postmodern impact on education:
• Profound social, political, technological, and cultural
  changes that have taken place in the U.S. will certainly
  affect your work—as educators. Schools and the
  educational system have profoundly redefined by this in
  recent years.
• We have entered into a new phase of our culture, and in
  doing so, the nature of schooling has changed as well.
  The conditions of schooling reflect profound changes in
  society. In turn, the possibilities of schooling the role of
  the teacher, the needs of the curricula are all affected by
  the emergence of postmodern phenomena.
        Postmodernism means:
• Decentralized forms of labor processes and work
  organization, greater emphasis on choice and
  product differentiation, targeting consumers by
  lifestyle, taste, and culture rather than by
  categories of social class, the rise of the service
  industry, feminization of the work force, and
  economy dominated by the multinationals, greater
  autonomy from nation-state control, and the
  globalization of the new financial markets.
• These phenomena are indications of the
  emergence of a new culture and society in the U.S.
             Re: Technology
• Technologically, a great deal of the technology
  emerging in a time of postmodernism has
  served us well.
• Yet, some of these tech applications have not
  served us well, and others have changed our
  world in ways that are not yet clear (9).
   Reflecting the ways of a culture
• What goes on in schools—the values and knowledge
  students bring to the classroom and the content in
  included in textbooks and the curriculum—ultimately
  reflects the values and beliefs of the society in which
  they are a part.
• This idea is not new, but ancient: paideia.
• Peideia: Education as reflecting the ways of a culture
  Major theme of our study. What goes on in schools—
  the values and knowledge children bring to the
  classroom and content included in textbooks and the
  curriculum—ultimately reflects the values and beliefs of
  the society of which they are part (10).
                 In Conclusion
                        —as stated in
                        introduction:
• Ironically, according to physicist Albert Einstein, “The fish
  are the last creatures to consider the water that surrounds
  them” (9).
• Intent of this course is to engage students in the process of
  questioning the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in
  U.S. culture; the significance of postmodernism in shaping
  what it means to teach and be taught in our schools; and the
  relationship between our schools and the larger social,
  cultural, and economic forces at work in our society (11).
• This course will introduce students interested in U.S. schools
  to the forces at work within the education system. This
  approach is interdisciplinary: drawing on historical,
  philosophical, anthropological, and sociological—reflecting
  sources from popular culture (10).
             Discussion questions:
1. Given that schools are not as important in the education of children today as
   they were in the past, why are they still important?
2. What have been the issues and forces in your own experience that have been
   the most influential in determining what you know and how you view the
   world (family school, religion, peer groups, television, etcetera)? The
   choices you made earlier in class regarding your survival tools on a deserted
   island may get you started here.
3. What are some of the issues facing schools and contemporary children that
   did not exist a generation ago?
4. Can you describe some phenomena that are distinctly modern? Can you
   describe some that are postmodern? How are they different?
5. How would your life and experience have been different if you had lived
   fifty years ago?