a view informed by the problems of traditional literacy in a digital age

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Downloaded by [University of Gent] at 06:46 09 December 2011 RECONSTRUCTING LANGUAGE TEACHING technology. We hardly realise that even books can be considered as tools, as a kind of technology. The first thing we have to do is look back at the development of the printing press and redescribe the book as a tool or as a teaching machine (McLuhan, 1964). Indeed, the invention of the printing press confronted the public with similar questions and doubts we have today: could a book be an ideal tool for learning? Could students trained in silent reading measure up to the skills of the past: a period of orality, a period of slow reading? (McLuhan, 1964). We should realise that books and reading/writing created a particular ‘situated’ literacy, constructing at the same time modern academic scholarship and modern science. Schools, universities and libraries as we know them today were institutionalised. The invention and the development of books are also linked to the construction of nationalism, the appearances of national libraries and museums, literary canons, national histories, the ‘emergence’ of classes, capitalism, secularism, colonialism, individualism, copyright, etc. Democracy created mass literacy. The industrial revolution and printing shaped modernism in such a way that it looked like a ‘natural space’ we are living in. Changing these tools creates a feeling of nostalgia. And new tools create new emotions, new biases, new feelings of naturalness (Ong, 1982). There is a fatal attraction of nostalgia, and the usual suspect is technology. We have to move away from technophobia (certainly in the humanities, languages, social sciences) and try to become technophilic. One possible way to do that is to redefine the relation between technology – tools – and creativity, to redefine the borders between technology and art. From a traditional perspective, there is a gap between the two; from a postmodern perspective both can be connected. It is precisely in the digital world that the borders between art and technology have been blurred. Becoming an artist in the digital age implies very often some form of technological competence. Probably the separation between technological competence and any other expertise or discipline will become more and more vague. In our project we focused on two obsessions in education: the crisis in cultural literacy and the power of computers. Some conservative educationalists ignore computers; they consider modern technology to be the prime suspect in their complaints about the crisis in modern times (the literacy debates in the 1980s). Some progressive thinkers introduce the computer as a solution to this crisis. But we should also dissociate ourselves from utopian thoughts: ‘Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected on the future as a wish’ (Otterspeer, cited in Ignatieff, 1991, p. 43). Technology will not lead us to paradise but (hopefully) not to hell either. We would like to defend a common-sense thought: technology is not bad or good in itself, it is the way we use technology that determines the value. But we cannot escape technology, there is no happy ending, literacy cannot be completed ‘because there is nothing to complete, there is only a 127
Downloaded by [University of Gent] at 06:46 09 December 2011 Ronald Soetaert & Bart Bonamie web of relations to be rewoven, a web which time lengthens every day’ (Rorty, 1989, pp. 42–43). Media Literacy We are all confronted with the ubiquity of media in our society. Mass media create a window on the world; more and more we have to recognise that media also construct our image of this world. Education must meet the challenge of introducing students to a new kind of media literacy. This is one of the most serious challenges as we enter the twenty-first century. This ‘new kind’ of literacy should include visual and audio literacy. Inevitably, this implies a different kind of print or textual literacy. To broaden the concept of literacy implies – for some – a dilution of our skills in textual literacy. The plea for taking mass media seriously is about more than radio, television, film … the Internet (primarily via the World Wide Web) has changed the landscape of mass media. There is a major difference: the political pressure to take the technological revolution seriously in education is greater than ever, since it is prompted by the importance of this revolution for the economy. More and more communication and information is presented in a digital environment so we should be aware of the fact that citizens who cannot participate in cyberspace will be functionally illiterate. We are becoming aware that those who tend to lag behind in technology will be the have-nots of the future. Not having access to the Internet will create a gap. The network reorganises our power relationships (Castells, 1996; Castells et al, 1999). We have to make vision statements in which we envision a future culture and pedagogy. Apart from theorising, we also have to create ‘practice’. Teaching new skills will be a prerequisite. From the perspective of ‘knowledge’, we should stress the importance of understanding: o the role of information and communications technology (ICT) for society (production, control, reception of information); o the role of ICT for policy making and entertainment (the creation of a public sphere); o the role of ICT for different institutions (school, library, mass media ...) and disciplines (science, art, humanities ...); o the role of ICT for individuals (personal, professional). And all this implies a deep understanding of how individuals and institutions manipulate information, how new discourses and rhetoric emerge, how tools create information and of course we need to evaluate all these transformations. Looking at literacy more broadly implies taking into account the ‘knowledge work’ we have to perform. This kind of work implies a more 128
Page 1 and 2: This article was downloaded by: [Un
Page 3 and 4: Downloaded by [University of Gent]
Page 5: Downloaded by [University of Gent]

a view informed by the problems of traditional literacy in a digital age

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?