Recently, the former president of
the University of Guelph (Alastair Summerlee) -- delivered a speech in which he
urged students and faculty alike to embrace the future: ‘We're
part of a legacy system that goes
back to the days of monks. In the days since books were written one at a time,
society embraced the printing
press and now the internet. And yet we still teach by standing up and talking
to people” The answer, Summerlee said is
to ‘create more online courses.’
I disagree.
It’s important to note that Alastair
Summerlee is not alone in his views. George Mehaffey --Vice
President of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities -- shares
Summerlee’s ideas, stating that ‘technology can reduce the costs of
post-secondary education by reducing reliance on faculty members.’ The
University of Guelph is not singular; it seems that, increasingly, Canadian
universities are looking to Americans like Mehaffey who offer a
business/corporate approach to learning, one that is focused on getting more
of a ‘bang for the student buck’ by jettisoning teachers and increasing reliance
on technology.
Let
me state two things right away.
First, I am not worried
about losing my teaching job. I’m terribly old and will retire soon, and after
all I’ve spent most of my life in the theatre world, not the academic world.
But this essay is not a desperate attempt to save my living. What I am trying to do is save education.
And yes, save the children.
I
don’t hate technology. I think, however, that it’s foolish and short sighted to
imagine that technology is the answer to every problem. Technology makes our
lives easier – sometimes, but not all the time. And it’s important to remember that
the internet is no longer a disinterested source of information. As Google
begins to collect data for its massive world library it becomes more and more
evident that various profit-making search engines and operating systems are
competing for control of the lucrative digital world and the ‘information’ it supplies.
To
suggest that a professor standing up in front of a room full of students is a medieval
concept, makes as much sense as to suggest that love and sex will someday have
nothing to do with producing babies. Certainly we have technology to replace
both traditional procreation and traditional teaching methods – but is a world
without love and a world without interactive pedagogy one in which you wish to
live?
Not
me.
I
will go far as to say that a world without university professors is in some
ways equivalent to a world without love. Teaching and learning involves human
beings, interaction, opinions, facial expressions, emotion, and yes even a
touch of the hand or a warm, sweaty handshake. The dialectal method involves
asking questions and getting answers, and this means living people sitting in a
room together and spontaneously interacting (remember that?) experiencing all
the excitement and disappointment, the frustration and fury, of involved discussion.
This
idea is neither antiquated nor old-fashioned; it is simply true. We don’t learn
unless we can interact with others, unless we have real conversations and real
experiences.
Online
education is valuable for many reasons – for those who are disabled or who live
far from a university for instance. But should technological pedagogy be
universally and unequivocally embraced? Universities should be places where the effects of technology on human beings
and human interaction are studied. They should
not be simply places where the social, political and economic ramifications
of technology are accepted without critical thought.
There
must be some better way to ‘cut costs’ than to destroy the very essence of analytical
understanding that is the machine of our learning. Because when it comes to musing
and thinking, creating and debating – the teacher/student dialectic is the virtual
machine of our intellectual love.
