Summary and Themes of Ch. 4

While reading Ch. 4, I made lists of the virtues and vices that each narrative highlights.  The “Spaceship Earth” myth promotes the ideas of interdependence, solidarity between nations and people, global cooperation (alt. global consciousness), and subsequently it combats racism, waste, and indifference.  The “Fallen Angel” myth asserts the precarious nature of human knowledge contra absolute certainty; this epistemic claim should lead to “perspective, balance, and humility in learning” wherein science is construed as a method for correcting our mistakes.  As such, the “Fallen Angel” myth discredits forms of hubris, pride, and dogmatism.  The “American Experiment” myth once again promotes the notions of inclusivity, participation, and continuous argumentation over and against any sense of finality: In short, Postman prefers the question mark to any other end punctuation.  “The Law of Diversity” strings together numerous adjectives and verbs. Diversity, understood in physical terms, spawns vitality, creativity, growth/expansion, strength, enrichment; it asks individuals to identify with larger circles of humanity and, hence, runs counter to sameness, fixedness and impermeability, “the decay of organization,” falsifications, divisiveness, isolation, parochialism, and hostility.  Lastly, the “Word Weavers/World Makers” myth is an interpretive commitment to the role of language.  Properly understood, language transforms the world and, therefore, has moral, social, political, and aesthetic dimensions.  If “believing is seeing” and beliefs are writ in human language, than language shapes our realities for better, for worse.

I think, between the first four myths, there is much continuity: inclusiveness vs. exclusiveness; open-mindedness vs. closed-mindedness; cooperation vs. indifference; cosmopolitanism vs. regionalism/provincialism; ongoing processes/continuousness vs. finality; humility vs. certainty/dogmatism.  (The way the last myth is written differs greatly from the preceding, but I think it ultimately serves the same democratic and cosmopolitan virtues.)  In Democracy and Education, Dewey claims that the aim of education is more education, i.e. the continuous growth of the individual through social intercourse/communication.  In genuine communications, there is a very real expansion of selfhood, an incorporation of the other.  Postman reminded me of Dewey’s thinking.

Interestingly, here is how much attention Postman gives each myth in Part 2 (in terms of total page numbers, from greatest to least): The Law of Diversity (29 pgs) [Zo’s least favorite], Word Weavers/World Makers (22 pgs) [Zo’s favorite], Spaceship Earth (21 pgs), Fallen Angel (15 pgs), and lastly the American Experiment (14 pgs).

The New Narratives (Ch 4, I think)

Of the five narratives that Postman puts forward, by far my favorite is the final one: Word Weavers/ World Makers.  My least favorite is the narrative of Diversity, and my reason for that will come clear as I write about how I think he goes wrong with the Word/World narrative.

Postman is, it seems, under the influence of the Anglo-American Analytic strain of philosophy.  I can see this in the way that he deals with Heidegger and Wittgenstein.   The analytic strain of philosophy dismisses some of the great names of Continental philosophy because of their connection to Nazism, or to Heidegger who was a Nazi. (This witch hunt is often lead by Richard Wolin.)   This is polemics and philosophical politics and I am disappointed to see Postman fall into that.

What Heidegger can offer to the narrative that Postman proposes is, I think, invaluable.  It is something that Dewey, Pragmatism in general and even Secular Humanism are missing.  Heidegger offers a myth that has rich and mystifying language.  Heidegger talks of Being and being-there, of the house of Being and the event, of the shepherd of Being, etc.  His later works (works written after the fall of Nazism) are poetic and often deal with poetry as much as with philosophical texts. 

What his later philosophy boils down to is that the world is organized around Being and that Being is really only a word.  (Well, that is a simple way to sum it up.)  However, with that word comes a tradition one we cannot fully understand or shake off and one that we are not in control of.  Language is not of our creation in the sense that we can control or change it, or that we can even track down where it came from, or how it came to be the way that it is.  We can redefine words, even the word that is at the center of the network of meaning, but those words still carry with them a past.  That past, that tradition, is something that we need to be aware of and we need to constantly reckon with when we ‘weave’ words and ‘make’ worlds. 

When Postman talks about diversity he brings in entropy, which I think is a very good move.  However, I think he misses the biggest point that can (and should) be taken from that move: too many variables changing at once can make it difficult, if not impossible, to stave off entropy.  To connect this to words and to Heidegger, it could be said that changing a words meaning too radically at once (or changing too many words at once) damages the tie to tradition, the heritage that made the word what it is.  When you lose that connection the word can be lost completely, or in the case of many words (or a central word like Being) the whole system can shift out of order.  Heidegger talks of slow shifts, or twisting and turning, or tarrying.  These are the ways that words, worlds and cultures need to change if they are to fight off entropy—a loss of meaning in language, a disordered world or a culture that has no unity or order. 

I could say more (AJ, you know I could write all day on this) about Heidegger and tradition, but I will stop there.  I think I made my points.  Without a respect for the tradition (which we can pick up from Heidegger’s poetic and almost mythic writings on Being from his later period) we risk losing our foundations, which really are nothing but our past.

Ch. 3

Not much to say...

He wrote this book nearly twenty years ago, and most of his concerns remain quite valid.  The first half of Ch. 3 posits the god of Technology.  I enjoyed his description: “…people believe that technology works, that they rely on it, that it makes promises, that they are bereft when denied access to it, that they are delighted when they are in its presence, that for most people it works in mysterious ways…” (p. 38).  I may use this quotation, along with the notion that “technology uses us,” next year for my unit on Fahrenheit 451.  My students maintain “sleepwalking attitudes” with respect to technology.  I am bothered by the way hallways look after school; students huddled over their devices—not interacting with each other.  And when students bring devices to class, I know that even the good ones are texting friends and checking Facebook.

Can you imagine never being unplugged from social life?  Going home in the mid-90s, I savored my time away from school life.  Now young people are in contact with each other all the time.  (Unless, of course, their parents have the good sense to impose usage rules at home.)  I wonder if they get exhausted…

The second part of the chapter is an unforgiving critique of multiculturalism.  Not much to say here.

The End Of Education: Ch 1 and Part of 2: Quadrinity

Quotes followed by my ramblings take a shape: Quadrinity

“Without narrative, life has no meaning.  Without meaning, learning has no purpose.  Without purpose, schools are houses of detention, not attention.”  Loc 135

Camus says that we get into the habit of living before we learn to questions it.  I think that is mostly true.  Yet, he was talking about suicide and why we don’t kill our selves.  When it comes to education, we simply try to make it as easy as possible and look at it as some sort of purgatory that we have to survive so we can do something meaningful (or at least pleasurable) after.  People are in the habit of following a certain god and not questioning it.  For adults who have jobs, routines, families, bills, etc…  The running on the treadmill of life is a habit and they can’t think about the narrative in a critical way; they are caught up in it and they just live it.  (Here I want to drop in a Foucault quote: "Thought does exist, both beyond and before systems and edifices of discourse. It is something that is often hidden but always drives our everyday behaviors.... Criticism consists in uncovering that thought and trying to change it: showing that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To do criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy.")  Narratives give meaning and those narratives have to be engaging enough to capture the belief, hopes and imagination of the youth.  They can’t just be a narrative that someone is caught in and has no time or energy to find their way out of. We need to have gods that kids will buy into...  Let's see how Postman does when he proposes new gods.  

“Where as the science-god speaks to us of both understanding and power, the technology-god speaks only of power.” Loc. 164

I think he is wrong in this assessment and his assessment of the four major gods he talks about in this part of the book.  A saying I thought I coined and started throwing around several years ago (and then found a Rorty quote that is essentially the same) fits here: “Science is the handmaiden to technology.”  This of course echoes the saying from the Middle Ages: “Philosophy is the handmaiden to theology.” I think the science-god speaks to us only of understanding, of knowledge.  It serves the technology-god who speaks of manipulation.  The difference is that this makes them much more dependent on each other than Postman makes them.  Just as few people would have studied metaphysics in the Middle Ages unless they had an interest in theology, very few people today get into science for science’s sake.  Some research scientists do research just for the sake of knowledge and some science teachers teach just for the love of knowledge.  But I think these are few and far between.  Most people in the sciences have practical (meaning technological) goals: medicine, computers, etc.  And most research is funded by people that have practical/technological goals.  Without technology, I think science is relegated to a position similar to alchemy or mysticism. 

This brings me to the other two gods that Postman talks about in the early stages of the book: economic utility and consumerism.  I think he is right in pointing them out as major influences in our society, and that he is more than less right in his assessment of their lure and short comings.  I think these are as intertwined with each other as deeply as I think the gods of science and technology are.  In fact, I think these four make up the holy quadrinity that our contemporary American Society is based on.  But first about consumerism and economic utility. 

Economic utility is the idea that we need only learn or do what is of economic use to us.  (I really think that this is the “Father” of the quardrenity, the most powerful and originary of them.)  We need only learn or do what will help us later to make money.  What that means for many students is that they need to get good grades and learn practical things.  They will cram for a test to get a good grade (or simply cheat) and then forget the information if it is not seen as being of any use to them.  The aim of education and of their daily life is to make money.  But this on its own doesn't seem very convincing or inspiring. (Postman does a better job of pointing out the connection that I see here than he did with the other two heads of the quadrinity.)  Why do we need to make money?  Well that is where the lure of the god of economic utility needs the god of consumerism.  We need money to buy things!  (This I think is the Holy Spirit of the quadrinity.  It inspired and sustains us.) 

The god of consumerism also is tied in closely with the god of technology because it is technology that provides the means by which the consumer products are manufactured and then made obsolete so they have to be thrown out and replaced with the newest and latest.  (The god of technology is the Son of the quadrinity, who brings us the good news and saves us, shows us the way to heaven.  The god of science could be seen as the Mary, Mother-of-God, in the quadrinity.  She is the one that has given technology to the world.)

In the end, I think we need to take note of how closely intertwined these four gods are, this four part god-head.  If we change or challenge one, we will affect the others.  This is not a call to leave things as they are but a warning to tread carefully; most importantly to make sure that the weakening of one of these gods doesn’t result merely in the strengthening of another of them.  The point should be to take all three of these gods and demote them to demigods that serve the new ones.  

AJ and I are going to try and get the Cows back into the field to munch.

The book:

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

By Neil Postman 

You can take a look at it on Amazon here: 

The End of Education