[iDC] A Modest Proposal: Let's get rid of the teachers

[Sean Cubitt]

All good stuff, but I can't help hearing the origins of the phrase "Modest
proposal" - Jonathan Swift's A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN
OF POOR PEOPLE IN IRELAND FROM BEING A BURDEN TO THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY,
AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE PUBLIC. The plan was to eat them.
Select quote
"I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for
landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to
have the best title to the children."

So claiming my Irish descent, and confessing to being a teacher:

The reason universities still have teachers is because when everything else
breaks down, people can always stand up and talk. This is worth remembering:
the age of unlimited bandwidth, unlimited servers, unlimited personal
computers/mobiles is pegged to finite resources. If we network everything,
what happens when the net goes down?

The other reason is because it is expensive to make distance learning
materials work. The Open University in the UK has committees of up to 40
people working on courses with an expected shelf-life of six years:
academics, educationalpsychologists, audiovisual producers . . . And that's
just the design phase. Unless you like multiple choice, assessment is always
going to need people.

The question then remains whether a teacher is better employed in a
clasroom, or will be more sevicable when efficiently redeployed in a
neoliberal economy as a " most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food,
whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will
equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout"


sean



On 19/02/09 11:17 AM, "davin heckman" <davinheckman at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Thanks for this, so well described. Just curious how you would imagine a
>> teacher doing all of these things as a "feed jockey"? It seems to me that so
>> much of what you describe below -- the "what I really do in class" -- can
>> only happen in an emergent, participatory, and yes (here I anticipate the
>> techno-utopians jumping down my throat) less-mediated, if not even embodied,
>> context.
>> 
> 
> That's a good point, Lucia.  And this is also why I think classrooms
> will continue to exist.  While there are many good "content delivery
> systems," they just kind of automate processes which are really
> peripheral to "university education."  Who needs to take a class in
> Photoshop when you can find plenty of tutorials that teach a
> particular set of techniques?  What an art or design student really
> needs is a community which can break the techniques down and
> reassemble them in some other way...  and that's primarily a social
> activity.  And, in my experience, the quickest, most efficient way to
> create the chaotic sort of environment where the routine ways of doing
> things can be broken down...  is to put a bunch of people in a room
> together.
> 
> Having said that...  aren't we all here having an "educational"
> experience talking to each other?  And this is just a bunch of smart,
> engaged people, lobbing ideas back and forth because just because we
> think it's stimulating.  So, maybe a link jockey is something like
> this (but with more links)?
> 
> Davin
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> 
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> 
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
> 
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
> 
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
> 
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref

Prof Sean Cubitt
scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
Director, Media and Communications Program
Faculty of Arts
Room 127 John Medley East
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3010
Australia

Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
M: 0448 304 004
Skype: seancubitt
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/seanc/
http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
http://del.icio.us/seancubitt

Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
http://leonardo.info