TECHNOS

July 27, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 1999 Vol. 8 No. 3

The Two Sides of the School Culture Coin

by Crawford Kilian

A new kind of school, the interactive school, is evolving within the structure of the standard school. Computers have been the catalyst for this change, but they are far from critical to the establishment of a new kind of school.

In what follows, I want to compare Standard and Interactive models, but I don't want to imply that Standard is entirely bad or obsolete whil Interactive is entirely good and new. Neither model is aUtopia. But if we look at some of the contrasts, I think it's clear that something new is emerging from the schools' experience with computers — especially networked computers.

The Two Cultures: Standard vs. Interactive
Standard and Interactive schools are culturally quite distinct. The Standard model is deeply concerned with process, with “getting through the material,” with framing policy and devising regulations to implement that policy. Process is critical to ensure some kind of standardization and predictability in teaching and learning the traditional values of literacy, scholarship, and rational debate.

The Interactive school also holds those traditional values. But it cares less about process, especially administrative process, and more about results: what students have learned and how they've demonstrated that learning. The Interactive model will accept new teaching and learning methods, but only incrementally. Especially after 30 years of fads and gimmicks, the Interactive school regards any new technology as a failure until proven otherwise. Too many “technofixes” promised a revolution and delivered only disappointments. Too often, the technology pretended to do too much and achieved too little. Even good technology was then swept away to prepare for the next fad.

The two cultures use very different communication models as well. The Standard relies heavily on the “instrumental” model developed by electronics engineers half a century ago. In this model, information is a package designed to have some predictable effect on the recipient. A good example is the commercial that Federal Express was running in 1998 in which a horseman fords rivers, evades bandits, and finally hands a cardboard box to a pioneer woman who doesn't even need to open the package to express mindless ecstasy. In the instrumental FedEx model, the recipient is essentially passive and need only sign for the package, write the exam, buy the product, or vote for the candidate. We assume the package is fully meaningful to the recipient; if it is not, that's the recipient's problem.

Under the Standard school's FedEx model, teachers “deliver” courses like so many shirts from L.L. Bean — and if the shirts don't fit, that's not the courier's problem. Even students accept the FedEx model when they say of an inept teacher: “He knows the material but he can't get it across.” The same model underlies another communication metaphor, the projectile: marketers like to “target” consumers. Politicians try to “get through” to voters as if ads and news releases were armor-piercing shells, and they fire cruise missiles at their enemies to “send them a message.” In all such cases, the underlying message of the communication — and the culture — is: “Do what I want.”

Constructing Knowledge vs. Cataloging Information
In the Interactive school, the communication model is “constructivist.” Teacher and student are constantly changing roles as each message influences its reply. In effect, both are construing the meaning of their communication, and both may be surprised (and educated) by the meaning that emerges from their dialogue. Learning outcomes are highly unpredictable; the teacher is therefore much less in control, and much more on terms of equality with the student. Both ways, the underlying message is not “Do what I want,” but: “Is this what you want?”

In Standard culture, the school is essentially a library — because knowledge is scarce and therefore needs to be stored in some convenient central location. Teachers themselves are walking libraries, repositories of certified knowledge best kept in a single location also.

The Interactive school, by contrast, is a generator of knowledge — a publishing house. Knowledge is as close as the nearest networked computer. Finding what you want can be tricky, but it's more important to add to the worldwide store of knowledge. Any school with a Web site can disseminate such knowledge around the planet. For now, that information is mostly bureaucratic: how to apply for admission, what the course names are, what Professor Jones's email address is. But more schools will present the work of their students and teachers as original contributions to the world's body of knowledge.

Much of this material will, of course, be amateurish, redundant, or of very narrow interest. But some of it will be superb and will make life more interesting for its readers. As school publications become more common, new kinds of online genres will evolve with their own standards and conventions. Students and teachers will strive to meet those standards.

More important, a huge population of children, young people, and mature students will have a voice in the general discourse of their communities, both local and worldwide. While much present Internet discourse seems ignorant, crude, and even toxic, it will improve, thanks to sheer competition.

Driven Inward vs. Driving Outward
As schools become knowledge generators, another aspect of their culture will change. The Standard school's culture is relatively passive, driven inward upon itself by external influences. A political uproar may, for example, lead to imposing some new element in an already crowded curriculum. The schools have also seen several attempts by corporations to expose students to advertising messages in return for donations of free video equipment.

But as they begin to speak for themselves, the schools will become internally driven outward. Students and teachers will call for change (or no change) from within the school, engaging the rest of the community in a debate it has rarely experienced before. This will make many authorities, from principals to school boards to teachers-union bureaucrats, very nervous. A whole district full of whistle-blowers and complainers means more political headaches. The debates will not always be wholesome expressions of democracy: It's very easy to distort an issue, to libel an individual, or generally distract the public from genuine problems.

On balance, however, this change in school culture will be positive. One encouraging sign was the response of Columbine High School to the shootings that shocked the world in April 1999: the school's Web site gave it a way to express its members' feelings, and those of people around the planet who e-mailed their condolences and good wishes. Even in far less dramatic circumstances, schools will be able to reach out and speak to their communities; the communities will be able to respond, creating a dialogue far more valuable than any one-way communication could be.

Dynamic Stagnation vs. Catastrophic Success
Educators love innovations, especially if they don't really change anything. Politicians often find the schools more useful as a problem than as a solution, and alternately blast the schools' failings and impose faddish “cures.” This leads to what I call “dynamic stagnation,” in which everyone runs around calling conferences, bringing in experts, developing policy papers and new curricula — only to drop everything when the next government (or the next fad) comes along.

With its roots in the computer revolution, the Interactive school is a kind of survivor of this love of fads. Politicians and school bureaucrats like to see shiny new computer labs with big monitors because they make good photo opportunities. It's less glamorous to fund staff training, maintenance, and updating, so many a school becomes a museum of ancient technology while its teachers return to chalk and talk (if they ever abandoned these in the first place). Perhaps because computers themselves have so often disappointed their users, Interactive schools are also wary of “catastrophic success”: getting what you thought you wanted, and finding yourself unprepared to deal with the conditions you've created.

An Interactive school, however, can't afford fads. Computer-loving teachers do not love uncritically. More than most, they know the limits of these stupid machines. They also know that the potential for computers in education is too great to waste on ill-considered projects; they know that failure will only drive their colleagues back to the chalkboard. Therefore they move cautiously, in short steps, toward clearly defined and attainable goals.

Answers vs. Questions
Probably connected to the Standard school's role as knowledge repository is the cultural attitude that solutions are already in the library; the trick is in finding them. Hence the Standard school asks: “What's the right answer?” The Interactive school, on the other hand, intensely aware of all the information available, is far more cautious: it wants to know “What's the right question?” This is another cultural difference. In the Standard, teacher-centered school, the student must guess the magic words (“Open sesame,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Charles Darwin”) to gain admission to the teacher's adult world of status, power, and income. In the Interactive school, teachers and students alike are trying to define and create a world they can share, regardless of status.

Standard and Interactive schools don't just ask different questions; they look in different places for answers. Standard schools study success, while Interactive schools study failure. These are crucial differences. Concerned with right answers, the Standard school can create an impression in students' minds that all previous progress was smooth, uninterrupted, and inevitable. If their own progress seems less smooth, students may blame themselves and withdraw from learning altogether — intimidated into failure by the contemplation of success, and thereby undercutting the success of the Standard school itself. This is all the more ironic, since fear of failure is the Standard school's chief means of motivating students.

The Interactive school, however, lives by Edison's slogan: “I failed my way to success.” Critical analysis thrives on problems, failures, and mistakes. Far from being intimidated by failure, Interactive students are energized by it, like players of some multi-level computer game doggedly trying to get to the next level. Failure is simply the price they pay for success.

Future vs. Present
The Standard school is powerfully oriented toward the future, toward laying down foundations for success long after today. Much of the coursework even in elementary schools is academic job-training, designed for the tiny fraction of their students who will become Ph.D.s. Standard school culture teaches that learning is not for its own sake, but for some future demand — next semester, next year, next decade — that may never come.

No doubt the readiness to defer gratification is a virtue, but computers condition us for getting results right now. The Interactive school likes “just-in-time” learning, when knowledge is immediately applicable and feedback is rapid. The Interactive learner is preparing to meet her own demands, not those of some future thesis supervisor, so she judges the value of what she learns by very different criteria.

Of course, no school is “pure” Standard, and no school will ever be “pure” Interactive. I have exaggerated the traits of the two, though not by much. I am not advocating the mass conversion of our Standard schools into some interactively utopian system. The Standard system has much to recommend it, and its stubborn conservatism, beneath all the fads, makes it likely to survive for a long time to come. The Interactive system, for all its attractions, depends on teachers and students who are highly motivated by the prospect of success. Without such prospects, teachers and students alike will lapse back into motivation by fear of failure.

Nor is the Interactive system some inevitable outcome of ever-improving technology. Interactive schools will arise and flourish if teachers and students (and their communities) find a genuine benefit in them. Surprisingly, the greatest benefit may not come from the ability to link to Web sites in Zanzibar and Auckland, but from a renewed understanding, in the Standard schools, of the limits of the FedEx communication model. When we have learned to construe new meanings by discourse with people in cyberspace, and surprised ourselves with what we've learned, we may pay more attention to the discourse of people in our own classrooms. What we have learned in online communities will enable us to live more intensely and humanely in our geographical community. And that, in turn, may lead to construing a new meaning not only for education but also for the way we live with one another.

Illustration by Joe Lee.

Crawford Kilian is an instructor in communications at Capilano College in North Vancouver, British Columbia, and a frequent speaker at education conferences. His most recent book is Writing for the Web (Vancouver: International Self-Counsel Press, 1999). His email address is ckilian@thehub.capcollege.bc.ca and his Web site can be found at www.capcollege.bc.ca/magic/cmns/crofpers.html, where a longer version of this article is posted.