Untitled - witz cultural

313RECONFIGURINGLITERARYEDUCATIONeasily imagine the objections to the new technology and its associated practice,since those objections have not changed very much in the past seven centuries:"Students, ifleftto their own devices, will construe the texts incorrectly.Everyone knows that permitting them such control over their own educationbefore they are ready for it is not good for them. They don t yet know enoughto make such decisions. And besides, what is to become of us if they use thisinsidious technology by themselvesl What are we to do?" Similarly, whenbooks appeared, many faculty members feared these dangerous new teachingmachines, which clearly ceded much of the instructor's knowledge andpower to the student. The mass production and wide distribution made possibleby printing, which threatened to swamp ancient authority in a flood ofmodern mediocrity, also permitted people to teach themselves outside institutionalconfrol. Therefore, well into the eighteenth century undergraduatesin European universities had access to the library only a few hours per week.Hypertext systems, just like printed books, dramatically change the rolesof student, teacher, assignment, evaluation, reading list, relations amongindividual instructors, courses, departments, and disciplines. No wonder somany faculty find so many "reasons" not to look at hlpertext. Perhaps scariest of all for the teacher, hypertext answers teachers' sincere prayers foractive, independent-minded students who take more responsibility for theireducation and are not afraid to challenge and disagree. The problem withanswered prayers is that one may get that for which one asked, and then . . .What more terrifying for professors of English, who have for decades calledfor creativity, independent-mindedness, and all those other good things, toreceive them from their students! Complaining, hoping, even strugglingheroically, perhaps, to awaken their students, they have nonetheless accommodatedthemselves to present-day education and its institutions, whichinclude the rifuals of lecture, class discussions, and examinations throughwhich they themselves have passed and which (they are the evidence) havesome good effects on some students.What Chance Has Hypertextin Education)My experience of teaching with hypertext since 1987 convincesme that the Web materials currently available haveenormous potential to improve teaching and learning. Skepticalas I first was when I became involved with the Intermediahlpertext experiment, I discovered two years later tJlat the hypertext componentof my courses allowed me to accomplish far more with them thanever before possible. In the decade since I began to work with educationalhypermedia, I have observed increasingly computer-literate students either