Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Heritage of Open

Education Norm Friesen

February, 2009http://wikieducator.org/

Open_Education:_Precursors

Overview

• What is open education?• What is a precursor?• Precursor #1: Antonio Gramsci• Precursor #2: Walter Benjamin• Precursor #3: Paulo Freire• Lessons from the Past

What is Open Education?

three essential components to Open Education: 1.teaching and learning (educational) processes 2.technology and technological infrastructure 3.open or free access to these processes (entails a

political/policy stand) • The three are interrelated in complex ways; one

affects another• has a history that goes back much further than the

Internet and open (free) source software

What is relevant to Open Education?

Open PolicyAnti-copyright

DIY

Technology & Infrastructure

Teaching, Learning and Educational Processes

What is a Precursor?

• Can be a movement or a person• Person or movement combining

– technology, – education and – a political position

in a reaction against commercialization, to empower others

• Part of a heritage that is shared by many faculty members.

Antonio Gramsci: 1891 – 1937 • Founding member of Communist Party in Italy• Imprisoned by Mussolini; most famous writings

from prison (notebooks)• Keywords:

– Ideology– Hegemony– Organic Intellectuals

Ideology/Hegemony as spontaneous, cultural

• Culture: “exercise of thought, acquisition of general ideas, habit of connecting causes and effects” (Gramsci, 1985, 23)

• Hegemony & Ideology: "shared ideas or beliefs which serve to justify the interests of dominant groups" (A. Giddens 1997)

• "spontaneous consent" of the populace through intellectualleadership or authority

Knowledge & Culture as Central

• Intellectual matters, cultural representations as paramount

• This gives education, teaching and learning a central role

• “All…are intellectuals…” “just not …by function” or job description• "everyone at some time fries a couple of eggs or

sews up a tear in a jacket, we do not neces-sarily say that everyone is a cook or a tailor."

Organic intellectuals

• Everyone’s potential for intellectual/political engagement

Everyone: "carries on some form of intellectual activity … participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought"

Gramsci & Education

• The learner as “active and creative,” not "a passive and mechanical recipient".

• "to create a single type of formative school (primary-secondary) which would take the child up to the threshold of his choice of job, forming him during this time as a person capable of thinking, studying and ruling - or controlling those who rule" (Gramsci 1971 p40).

And today there is hardly a [person] …who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish --somewhere or other-- comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing.

As a result, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. […]

Walter Benjamin: 1892 - 1940

• associated with the FrankfurtSchool of critical theory

• sociological & cultural critic• “The Work of Art in the Age

of Mechanical Reproduciblity”• Keywords:

– Aura– Distraction

The Work of Art in the Ageof Mechanical Reproducibility

• Mechanical reproduction of art means that its “aura” “withers:” “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.”

• This is not bad, but good: "For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.“

• New forms in film of the late 1920’s and 1930’s: Bunuel, Riefenstahl, Eisenstein

• This kind of art is “received” in a state of “distraction”• Benjamin sees this distracted reception as enabling a

the “convergence of educational value and consumer value in a new kind of learning” (Eiland, 2005)

• “The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art [means that] new tasks have become soluble by apperception.” (W. Benjamin)

What is significant

• Aesthetic characteristics of new technical media can present both potential and challenges for learning

• This is politically relevant; not as direct emancipation from earlier constraints and limitations, but through the development of new modes of “reception;” new sensibilities

• Technology as cultural in its educational significance

Paulo Freire: 1921-1997

• Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy (politically engaged)

• Developed “cultural circles” for teaching reading and writing; imprisoned for this

• Literacy was a requirement for voting.• Key terms:

– Dialogical education– codification

Freire on Technology

“The answer does not lie in the rejection of the machine but in the humanization of man.”

I’m a “man of television” and “man of radio.”

"It is not the media themselves which I criticize, but the way they are used."

Slide courtesy of: Richard A. Kahn

Slide Projectors: 35,000• Slide projectors used to display “codified pictures”

at the centre of this instruction• Codified pictures: visual representations of

existential situations– “questions are implicit in the codifications”

• Present elements to be “decoded” by the participants

• Literacy ed. is combined “with lessons in self-reflection, cultural identity & political agency.” (Kahn & Kellner, 2007)

Freire on Technology

1960’s National Literacy Programme:

Buys 35,000 Polish slide projectors

In 1973, $13/unit est.

In 1981, $2.50/unit est.

Rate of dollar has now increased six-fold.

In 1962, Br. Real 4:1 rate of exchange.

= A LOT OF MONEY!!!

1990’s Sec. of Ed for Sao Paulo:

Established Central Laboratory for Educational Informatics

Invested in “televisions, video cassettes, sound machines, slide projectors, tape recorders, and 825 micro-computers.”

= A LOT OF MONEY!!!

90s he faced many children without schools altogether, terrible disrepair, he speaks of missing tens of thousands of desks and chairs. So his investment in technology in this context is significant.

Slide courtesy of: Richard A. Kahn

• “I don't accept [the claim] …that the ending of school is inevitable. For me, the challenge is not to end school, but to change it completely and radically and to help it to give birth from a body that doesn't correspond anymore to the technological truth of the world to a new being as actual as technology itself.”

– P. Freire: http://www.papert.org/articles/freire/freirePart2.html

“Education” is not a Function

• Is not a “neutral” set of techniques that are applied to facilitate learning on a given subject matter

• All of the precursors are clear about the politically-charged nature of “learning” and its rich interrelationship with technology

• This needs to be taken into account when understanding the relationship of open education and educational institutions

Technology is not about Function

• It is not mostly about what the technology can do: if it was, we would have been having these discussions in 1999, not 2009

• Just because technology can do it, doesn’t mean it will be done (right away)

• How long will it take for an open alternative (e.g. Linux) to overtake a dominant institution (e.g. Microsoft)?

Open Learning as a important “stream”

• Part of an ongoing “parallel reality” that has been ongoing and important for decades/centuries

• The relationship with dominant education may change, but will happen very slowly

• Strength to be gained by looking at connection of this the open content/education movement to ongoing tradition

Precursor – T. Friedman?

• globalization has leveled the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries

• historical and geographical divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant

• Inevitable; culture outside of human control• Technology as not humanized or humanizing

Lessons from the Past

• Developments occurring with technology are not pre-set

• Technology is not destiny; it is a scene of struggle

• Education is much more than the acquisition of “globally” competitive skills

• We should look to experts, not journalists, to understand global trends affecting education

• Nobel prize better than a Pulitzer!

SourcesBenjamin, W. (1936/1979). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Illuminations. New York: Schocken. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Gramsci, A. (1971). An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. D. Forgacs (Ed.). New York: Schocken.

Freire, P. (1973) Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.

New York: Farrar, Straus and GirouxKahn, R. (2005). Electronic Freire: Technology in the Struggle for Peace? Third

Annual CAFE Conference. Available at: http://richardkahn.org/writings/tep/electronicfreire.ppt Kahn, R. & Illich Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: technology, politics and the

reconstruction of education Policy Futures in Education 5(4) 431-448. http://richardkahn.org/writings/tep/freireillich.pdf