PGCE PROCESS WORK Unit 1 Task 5 Curriculum in the Knowledge Age
I agree that the world is a continually evolving place and that education must keep abreast of these changes and adapt in order to ensure each generation is equipped, as far as possible, with the knowledge needed to assist them in fulfilling their potential. Trilling and Hood, however seem to be suggesting that the ‘Knowledge Age’ is a recipe for success for the future. I would contest this.
Is a society that is totally reliant upon technology a good idea? We all know that computers are great when they work but what happens when they don’t? Big companies have been brought to a standstill by computer bugs and or hackers.
Look at the stress related to technology failure? What about the value of face to face interaction? Is there a danger of losing this in the future if we place too much emphasis on technology and communication in virtual chatrooms?
Then there are all the ethical implications to consider of children gaining access to inappropriate information. There are also inherent dangers of meeting inappropriate people via chatrooms that they then meet in person with disastrous consequences.
What too of Facebook? How many people are aware when they innocently share their photographs with family and friends that they are giving up ownership of those photographs to Facebook who have the right to us them as they see fit or indeed that those photographs remain in cyberspace and can come back to haunt them and have disastrous career implications?.
Call me old fashioned but I would much rather hear an actual person on the end of a phone when I need to make a call because for instance I want to query a bill, make an insurance claim etc. I just get frustrated and stressed having to go through awhile system of pushing buttons and listening to computer generated voices with stock answers to stock questions that rarely solve the problem.
Thinking about these issues reminded me of a blog I had written in which I discussed some of the dangers that can be associated with internet use and in particular social media. One comment by Lulzsec hacker Jake Davis, who was jailed for hacking into government websites comes to mind. In it he pointed out that people don’t fully realise the implications of using the internet and the possible inherent dangers. He stated:
“People need to think about the process of a needle moving around on a hard-drive and inscribing their data. Where is it stored? What happens when you send an email? How long-lasting is a picture? How far do the people who have your data have to be pushed to give it up to other people? People don’t think of the net as a physical thing — they imagine it’s all in this ethereal cyberspace. It’s a lot more personal than that.” (Davis,2014, cited in Godwin, 2014)
Trilling an Hood also present a derogatory view of factory workers implying they require no skills and have no place in this successful future they envisage for the ‘Knowledege age’. They state:
“Since most work will be high-skilled, project-based work (as opposed to low-skill service work or factory line-work), the ability to manage a progressive series of shifts from one project to the next and to quickly learn what is needed to be successful in each project will all be essential to career survival and lifelong learning in the Knowledge Age.”
Computers themselves are put together on an assembly line in a factory, are the people assembling the very tools that enable us to access this knowledge to be any less valued than those who helped create them?
What gives Trilling and Hood the right to decide that most work in this future ‘Knowledge Age will be high-skilled and what are they classing as high-skilled? I am a dance teacher and provide a service. I am highly trained and skilled as are many in my profession but, according to Trilling and Hood, service workers fall into the low -skilled category. I would also attest the implication that they make that, up until this ‘Knowledge age’, people have not had the ability to:
‘…manage a progressive series of shifts from one project to the next and to quickly learn what is needed to be successful in each project..”
The inference in the above quote is that technology has miraculously bestowed us with a new-found wisdom hitherto absent in previous ages. If this were the case, and people had not had this ability to adapt then we would still be living in the dark ages.
What right does anyone have to place more value on any particular phase throughout history? To do so is to belittle the great pioneers and inventors of the past. Penicillin was invented without computers, the pyramids were built without 4d imaging. Are they to be any less valued because they did not have access to the technology we have today?
Trilling and Hood seem to be extolling the virtues of technology and advocating schools embrace it. I question a reliance upon it. I worry about too much emphasis placed upon independent learning. I have seen the effects of my pupils becoming reliant. almost addicted to the internet on mobile devices. I have also seen each generation have shorter attention spans, not be as well behaved, speak out and question in class and have a lack of imagination.
Bibliography
Godwin, R. (2014) quoting Davis, J. (2014) Hacked off: Jake Davis talks about his life on the Dark, Evening Standard, (online). Available at: webhttp://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/gadget/hacked-off-jake-davis-talks-about-his-life-on-the-dark-web-9738273.html (accessed 30th September 2014)
Lynn Terry, (2014) Comments on reader 1 (online). (weblog). Available at:
http://lynnterry001.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/task-1b-comments-on-reader-1.html (accessed Oct 1st 2016)
Trilling, B. and Hood, P. (2001) Learning, Technology, and Education Reform in the Knowledge Age or We're Wired, Webbed, and Windowed, Now What? In: Paechter, C., Edwards, R., Harrison, R. and Twining, P. (eds.) Learning, Space and Identity. London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd.
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