I had a lot of fun doing an extended comment on Skeff's blog the other week, so when Chris's blog caught my eye this time I figured I'd try the same thing! I want to hone in on two quotations from his post:
"The white middle class student who grew up with the family’s IBM or Macintosh at his or her disposal has the privilege. I look at my students, very few of whom even have access to cell phones, and their inability to navigate technology is telling of their lack of privilege and power."
How do we do this? I loved some of the examples from ReThinking Schools (especially the one about a math teacher who wants students to be in “the habit of asking ‘why’ about their world instead of merely consuming it—of making educated hypotheses then requiring multiple sources of supporting evidence”). But I'm still stuck on the issue of technology and phones, and I would treasure input from all of you. Students have never known a time without a smartphone to tell them the answers they want, and put a quick band-aid over their emotional woes. I don't live in that same fishbowl; that water is different from my own. How do we help them see that water?
"The white middle class student who grew up with the family’s IBM or Macintosh at his or her disposal has the privilege. I look at my students, very few of whom even have access to cell phones, and their inability to navigate technology is telling of their lack of privilege and power."
This passage from Chris struck me for at least three reasons. First, there was the reality that most of my students do have access to cell phones, despite living in the poorest state in the city; this was a useful reminder of the extraordinary variety and nuance in the workplaces represented in our class. Second, I do think that the reality of technological advance in personal electronic devices has had an overall democratizing effect. It is certainly true that some students can learn to be well-versed in Microsoft Office on a state-of-the-art Mac laptop while learning to type on expensive software their parents bought for them in a well-heated, spacious house with consistent wifi and private space to practice, while other kids are exposed to little more than apps on a Galaxy. But the reality of hardware disparities is not terribly different from the disparities that have always existed between kids who grow up knowing how to dress for an interview, give a corporate handshake, and read the latest textbook, and those who do not. Now, though, any kid who can get a phone or a $100 Chromebook with a grant for her school (like at the one where I teach) really does have a tremendous amount of empowering resources at her fingertips: free Google Apps to replace Microsoft Office, free typing games to replace the paid ones, and all the information that one would find in the latest update to the top textbook out there.
Third, given that many of my students do seem to be digital "natives" who have a better intuitive grasp of certain technological platforms than even I do, I think this actually presents a host of challenges. We know that phones are making our kids stressed, anxious, and sick. They cause students to be distracted in school, lose the ability to focus deeply, and seek the comfort of a glowing screen as soon as the going gets tough - instead of learning to sit with their troubles and process them in more healthful ways. Most troubling, though, is that as a teacher who spends a lot of time thinking about social justice and the movements for fundamental social change that will be needed to produce a more equitable society, I worry that these phones are a dangerous opiate that make students feel less driven to engage with the world around them because they are less aware of their own experiences. Sure, we could go start a movement that will change the world - but why not play a few rounds of Candy Crush first?
"As educators, we live in the same fish tank as our students. As such, we must get them thinking about the water."
The problems I have with phones are, of course, precisely what Chris is talking about here. How do we make young people aware of the ways the world around them is affecting them? In Rethinking Popular Culture and the Media, the ReThinking Schools authors quote Sut Jhally, founder of the Media Education Foundation, describing “getting the fish to think about the water.” The phrase immediately made me think about one of my favorite commencement addresses, titled "This is Water" and given by David Foster Wallace. "The most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about," Wallace says. "It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: 'This is water, this is water.'"
How do we do this? I loved some of the examples from ReThinking Schools (especially the one about a math teacher who wants students to be in “the habit of asking ‘why’ about their world instead of merely consuming it—of making educated hypotheses then requiring multiple sources of supporting evidence”). But I'm still stuck on the issue of technology and phones, and I would treasure input from all of you. Students have never known a time without a smartphone to tell them the answers they want, and put a quick band-aid over their emotional woes. I don't live in that same fishbowl; that water is different from my own. How do we help them see that water?
I totally agree with what you're saying here. My students as well have chromebooks through a grant at the school and while it is a valuable resource it is also a distraction. For example, just yesterday I had a group of 5 or so girls in my class that were involved in a Google chat while they were supposed to be working. The girls were all in the same classroom, communicating via a computer. As a math teacher, most of the work in our class is done on paper just because of the difficulty of doing certain math problems on a chromebook. However, the students often complain that we never use the chromebooks in math but they do in every other class. It's almost like a crutch for them and they feel lost without it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out!!
ReplyDeleteI have so few opportunities to think about how "stressed, anxious, and sick" cellphones make our teens, and how they're used as much as tools for procrastination and avoidance as they are for communication. Most of my students don't have phones, and those that do have strict limits and monitored usage. I do unfortunately have opportunities to think about how MY phone makes ME "stressed, anxious, and sick," and how I find myself absent-mindedly scrolling through social media and BBC News instead of focusing on tasks. The machines have invaded our lives to such an obscene extent, and it's terrible that we haven't done more to harness this unfortunate truth to use them as instruments of justice, equality, and education.