IN the 70s, there was a book that people lug around because it was “hip” and “cool” to do so. This book was called Future Shock and the reading public would have that or Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet or Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. While the last two books were about self-actualization and connection, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock touched on disconnection as caused by rapid changes in society.
Toffler in that book discussed about human societies moving from industrial society to post-industrial society. We have long ago passed that age; we are, in fact, now in the middle of the knowledge society—moving faster to a world that was never directly named. We are in a new society whose formation is caused by a virus. Where in ancient histories we had the B.C. and A.D. those period have shifted to an Age marked by an affliction. Are we in Covid-19 era or are we nearing post-Covid civilization?
The future that was expected to shock human societies is here and now.
Are we shocked with what is happening presently? It depends. If you are in higher learning, then you must have either heard or embraced already the new normal. The dominant discourse does not question the present situation; in fact, learning institutions can be appraised highly or lowly by the degree they have embraced or critiqued the new dispensation classified as the new normal. The post-Eden?
It is interesting how educational institutions noted for being one of the slowest institutions to adapt to the new environment are quick to migrate to the conditions offered or allowed in the new normal. For many, the adaptation is simplistic: deliver the lessons through the Internet, by way of computers, tablets or mobile phones.
Connection is the new mantra; the theology is interconnectivity. The sins available are committed through slow connection; the most mortal of afflictions is disconnection or unavailability of technologies to link up to a central Heaven. To have a unity of discourse, think of teachers as Angels and the hindrance to connectivity as the new Devil. Purgatory—that halfway house to redemption then but now ideated as learning—is for those who have flawed connectivity.
I can go on and on with these metaphors. I am even tempted to recalibrate now the meaning of the fall of man as the fall of learners. But I am getting carried away with my hopelessly human metaphors.
The fact is in this new enforced theology, there are gaps or fissures. There are those that, by destiny engendered by lack of wealth and resources, cannot be part of this new mode of learning—or salvation?
What about those that, by economics, cannot be integrated (evangelized?) into the new learning?
Allow me to be carried away by my technological/theological trope: in the distribution of material resources, there are those that cannot participate in salvation. They are not poor in spirit, but they are poor in resources. This is the sector of public education.
Look, where these public institutions are now. They are in the midst not in being part of the technologies but in separating from these tools. Wealth enters the picture: gold and other resources being not available, other peripheral (for they are not central) seats of learning and wisdom are harnessed.
Behold therefore teachers—some are crouched on the floor—arranging modules that are going to be introduced to their students. If you are bound to help schools preparing these learning modules, then you become part of the new redeemers. These are individuals ready to save the educational system of the island. “A-4” is the potent word that opens the Cave—that is the size of the paper on which modules or guides to lessons or learning are printed. See, redemption can be earthbound, a firm take on the old existentialism.
In the meantime, higher seats of learning or those academies that can charge more are gearing to creating a different approach to education. Gone is the Peripatos—the philosopher/teacher who roams or is peripatetic. Welcome to the new world where the pupil would not even know where the teacher is. The only assurance, if that is needed, is that teachers shall remain earthbound.
When Alvin Toffler released his book, people did not really feel the shock. Reading the book was “hip”. The ideas that floated out of that book were seen as dire predictions. Listen to what Toffler said: “By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education.” Toffler then quotes Herbert Gerjuoy, a psychologist: “The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction—how to teach himself. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.”
Are these claims still true, or have we been driven out of the Garden and now are insanely looking at the million prospects of saving ourselves from Knowledge?
Don’t we just miss the old classroom, and the classic excuse letter when we got sick? Or the urge to step out of the classroom because the professor was didactic and a dictator? I guess, this is what prophets called “outside the Garden.”
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Image credits: Jimbo Albano