Rhetoric & Generalisation: a rebuke

Posted on | April 20, 2008 | No Comments

Mark Nichols, an educator in New Zealand, rebukes me, politely, for my “rhetoric and generalisation” in my recent post on Teaching at a Crossroads. It is always good to be pulled up and forced to consider your own statements in some detail, and to respond (which I shall do once I wake up properly from my trip back from Mexico):

“Hello John,

Sorry, but I see little here beyond rhetoric and generalisation, the sort of commentary that edubloggers really need to move beyond if they are to make a mainstream difference. I mean, “the very nature of what it means to be literate, to be educated, is shifting around them” – what did it used to mean? How has it really changed? How do new technologies “change what it means to be educated”? Is this an endorsement of connectivism, a theory that is yet to prove itself as a viable basis for framed education? Is connectivism suddenly a deterministic theory rather than a descriptive one? Also, is a Web 2.0-based education going to solve all educational woes? Are we even expecting too much of a system where success is more a matter of the student’s own social context than they way in which they are ‘educated’? There’s simply too much assumption underlying what you have posted here that lies beneath the surface. Are you assuming a ‘teacher-tells-all’ incumbent system? How accurate is this?

Again, sorry. I’ve read this sort of post too many times before, and each time I am frustrated at the way in which the honest and valuable efforts of teachers in today’s classrooms are perceived as being inadequate, incomplete or a waste of time because they are not perfect for all and do not embrace Web 2.0! Also, all too frequently, the benefits of our own ‘Web 1.0′ education are largely overlooked.

I’m looking for deeper commentary, research-based, self-critical, perhaps based on appreciative inquiry. Is there any edublogger who does this?

Sorry to vent in your comments!

Best regards,

Mark.”

Thanks, Mark – I’ll get back to you