Global
Technology Education in the Context of the Gramscian
World-View
Jerry
Ross, Lane Community College
Department of Computer
Information Technology
4000 E. 30th
Avenue
Eugene, Oregon
97405
541-343-5651
(phone/fax)
Track: Business
Education
Jerry Ross should receive
correspondence
Jerry Ross will present
Global
Technology Education in the Context of the Gramscian
World-View
Jerry
Ross, Lane Community College
Abstract
The
Gramscian context refers to the writings and vision of Antonio Gramsci, which
have an increased relevance for society today. His comments on the organic intellectual
and the need for mass education can be applied to problems we currently face in
preparing young adults for the digital age. The need for mass technical education is
based on the revolution in the marketplace and in technology itself, which
increasingly demands highly literate and trained problem solvers. The “digital divide” is the
technological “other side” to the uneven benefits to be derived from an
unconstrained global privatization.
Only a critical pedagogy can provide the more radical but much needed
break from formal “single loop” problem solving and the “surveillance-based”
education of the past. Chardin’s
notion of noosphere now extended to the cyberspace “membrane” is a powerful
metaphor for holonic, systems-based democracy required for a truly democratic
global civic society. The global
community college has been proposed as a model for a changed world. Global mass technical education can be
advanced worldwide through implementation of the goals of the Bologna
Declaration combined with serious efforts to overcome the digital
divide.
The
Gramscian Context
There
is a binary nature to the Gramscian analysis of education: one aspect of
Gramscian thought is critical while another aspect is affirmative. The critical side consists of Gramsci’s
concept of hegemony and the organic intellectual. The affirmative and positive
side relates to opening up educational opportunities and possibilities for
underserved
and economically challenged populations.
By
“hegemony,” Gramsci meant that the socio-economic elites governed through a
subtle but sophisticated control imposed by the cultural superstructure. On a more profound level, Gramscian
analysis challenges “privileged explanations” in the academies and touches upon
theories of knowledge acquisition.
According to Gramsci, hegemony was the
result of an organizing principle that, through the very process of
socialization, was made both invisible and automatic. The masses internalized into “common
sense” the philosophy, culture and morality of the ruling elite until bourgeois
consciousness comes to appear as the natural order of things (Boggs,
1976).
On
the positive side, through conscious efforts to raise the literacy and
intellectual levels of students, especially through specific work in adult
education, Gramsci introduces the notion of “educative politics” which is a
process whereby workers move from “common sense” to “good sense” (Coben, 1994).
In Gramsci’s own words:
“What
the proletariat needs is an educational system that is open to all. A system in
which the child is allowed to develop and mature and acquire those general
features that serve to develop character. In a word, a humanistic school, as
conceived by the ancients, and more recently by the men of the Renaissance. A
school, which does not mortgage the child's future, a school that does not force
the child's will, his intelligence and growing awareness to run along tracks to
a predetermined station. A school of freedom and free initiative, not a school
of slavery and mechanical precision. The children of proletarians too should
have all possibilities open to them; they should be able to develop their own
individuality in the optimal way, and hence in the most productive way for both
themselves and society. Technical schools should not be allowed to become
incubators of little monsters aridly trained for a job, with no general ideas,
no general culture, no intellectual stimulation, but only an infallible eye and
a firm hand. Technical education too helps a child to blossom into a man - so
long as it is educative and not simply informative, simply passing on manual
techniques. Councillor Sincero, who is an industrialist, is being too meanly
bourgeois when he protests against philosophy. Of course, meanly bourgeois
industrialists might prefer to have workers who were more machines than men. But
the sacrifices which everyone in society willingly makes in order to foster
improvements and nourish the best and most perfect men who will improve it still
more - these sacrifices must bring benefits to the whole of society, not just to
one category of people or one class. It is a problem of right and of force. The
proletariat must stay alert, to prevent another abuse being added to the many it
has already suffered (Gramsci, 1916).”
Parker
Palmer has recently reinforced this democratic humanistic vision of schooling in
his book “Courage to Teach” where he argues against the unauthentic and divided
learning environment. The
individual’s sense of isolation experienced when living in an unauthentic
culture is overcome by joining communities of likeminded people who are engaged
in some sort of opposition to the conditions giving rise to bifurcation (Korten, 2001).
It is clear that both globalization and
technology have been “put on trial” and that there is a significant and growing
body of literature critical of the impact of globalization on locally rooted and
self-reliant economies. The
negative side of globalization has been the focus of much discussion, especially
as it relates to the Third World, to the environment, and to women. In academia, the same issues that
divide the world are rending many departments dysfunctional as a result of
conflicts over ideology and political correctness. Academic discussions regarding the
political economies of knowledge production can become political, based on one’s
stance on issues of deconstruction, feminism, and globalization.
According to the Gramscian world-view,
the WTO demonstrations themselves are educative for the participants and the
focus of that learning could be considered a praxis that desires to build a
“global ethical society.” The
communities represented in the protests constitute a physical network and as
well as an electronic one. The
participants created a global democratic process, including coordination of
tactics and strategy via the Internet. Globalization was no longer simply a
top-down, secret, and one-sided affair.
The
Gramscian analysis relates to global technical education. The transformative school of higher
education emphasizes the ability of educational experiences to bring about real
changes in people and organizations.
Networks can also be transformative. Networks of transformation now exist
that are helping to build a global civic culture. These networks can also open up
education and employment opportunities for peoples throughout the world,
assuming that issues of the “digital divide” can be consciously addressed and
that all efforts at economic development and infrastructure include extensive
budgets for networks, computers, and technical training and education. Here “digital divide” is defined as the
growing disparity among social groups in computer ownership and overall use
(McConnaughey, 1997).
The
Need for Mass Technology Education
Recent
trends in higher education include changes in the marketplace, changes in
student demographics, and changes in employer needs. The marketplace has become
international with an ability to enroll students throughout the world. For
example, the American-style community college has to revise it mission and
charter to be able to compete with e-colleges, proprietary and non-profit
colleges. In addition, students are
enrolling at slightly older ages and often have to juggle jobs and family
responsibilities with academics.
Employers now require the baccalaureate degree and graduates capable of
higher-level thinking and problem solving (Walker, 2001).
With respect to technical education, recent advances in computing technology have given rise to a new collection of technologies that must be learned in short order and taught efficiently if students are going to find timely and meaningful employment in the global economic job market. The list of these technologies is a constantly moving target. These include Advanced Java 2 Platform topics such as J2EE, Multi-tier/distributed Computing, XML, DTD, DOM, Enterprise JavaBeans, 2D and 3D graphics, Advanced Swing GUI components, design patterns, internationalization and accessibility, database SQL and JDBC, servlets, session tracking and cookies, remote method invocation, peer to peer web services, wireless protocols, e-business, etc. Just the subject of XML itself requires students to learn some Java, Perl/CGI, and active server page technologies including HTML, XHTML, CSS, DTD, Schema and Parsers, DOM, SAX, Xpath, Xlink, Namespaces, and other related technologies.
From the Digital
Divide to Digital Democracy
The issue of digital divide is simply the lack of
societal technology access on the part of minorities and the poor who must live
and compete in an increasingly technology-enabled and connected world. Ever since the Bologna Declaration of 1999, Europe
has attempted to address the issue of the digital divide by taking concrete
steps to improve and democratize access.
The Bologna Declaration was signed by the European
Ministers of Education from 28 countries and outlines fundamental changes to
higher education. The ministers declared in part:
“… a Europe of Knowledge is now widely
recognized as an irreplaceable factor for social and human growth and as an
indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship,
capable of giving its citizens the necessary competencies to face the challenges
of the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and belonging
to a common social and cultural space.”
Regarding issues of access,
they called for a cheaper, faster, and more secure Internet, investment in
people and skills, and for new approaches to stimulate the use of the
Internet. European Ministers
adopted eLearning initiatives with various priorities: improvement in
infrastructures and equipment, digital literacy for all graduates, digital
literacy for teachers, creation of online learning platforms, access for all
workers to digital literacy, and the networking of all schools in
Europe.
Yet, despite great efforts,
there still exists tremendous unevenness in development between northern and
southern Europe and, in addition, an unfathomable gap between the haves and
have-nots worldwide. Indeed, if we
listen to Chomsky, the globalization enterprise if allowed to proceed on the
basis of unrestrained capital, will result in the globalization of poverty and
the restoration of colonial patterns.
The result might not be a benefit to the general population but rather a
framework for a world of growing inequality with a large majority consigned to
suffering and despair in the interests of narrow sectors of privilege and power
(Chomsky, 2001).
It has already been pointed
out (Castells, 1998) that the other side of the information age is inequality,
poverty, misery, and social exclusion and that unless we redefine social
development in the information age to mean a massive investment in people and
communities worldwide, we cannot be assured that the social transformations now
taking place will have a positive result.
It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling the
educational system everywhere, through cooperation between national and local
governments, international institutions and lending agencies, international and
local business, and families ready to make sacrifices for a tangible improvement
of their children’s future. It will require the establishment of a worldwide
network of science and technology, in which the most advanced universities will
be willing to share knowledge and expertise for the common good. It must aim at
reversing, slowly but surely, the marginalization of entire countries, or cities
or neighborhoods, so that the human potential that is being wasted -- and
particularly that of children -- can be reinvested. All people must become
valued producers and consumers, and they must be recognized as human beings in
fora other than the thirty second commercials of international
organizations (Castells,
1998).
Critical
Pedagogy and the Noosphere
The Sorbonne Declaration of
May 25th, 1998 expressed a European desire to reform the structures
of its own higher education system to ensure wider access, lifelong learning
opportunities, and provision for practical and employable skills.
In the following year,
the Bologna Declaration called for the introduction of new, meaningful
undergraduate degrees based on shorter, flexible, and more relevant
courses. This European interest in
a cycle of shorter studies and a 2-tier degree structure is interesting because
it is precisely what the community colleges movement in the States has been
doing for years, with great success.
Teilhard de Chardin’s
concept of noosphere is a helpful metaphor to understand what is needed. Chardin views the Earth as an
evolutionary unfolding in which it (the earth itself) grows a new organ of
consciousness called the noosphere analogous ton the cerebral cortex in
humans. The noosphere is a
planetary thinking network of
“self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication”
(Kreisberg, 2001).
Removing the theological
content from the metaphor, one can think of the “noosphere” in terms of its full
potential to coordinate and network global technical education. One important component of this
coordination in the USA is the network of thousands of community colleges across
the country -- schools that predominately serve the less privileged stratum of
local communities and yet which, simultaneously, provide a modern and
global-based education at a relatively low cost. The League for Innovation in
the Community College has established a model schools program that spotlights
best practices in learning and teaching in the community college.
The League for Innovation was originally
created for the purpose of promoting computer technology in the community
college. This organization holds an annual Conference on Information Technology
(CIT), which creates an environment that fosters globalization in national and
international communications among community college educators. The Conference
also sparks multiple exchanges of ideas for enhancing the teaching and learning
process and offers a path to support the human side of technology while helping
break down barriers and fears about technology.
The League consists of 20
outstanding community college districts throughout North America. The League
Alliance includes more than 700 community and technical colleges from around the
world. The purpose of the League for Innovation is to encourage new practices,
experimentation, institutional transformation, and the continuing development of
the community college movement internationally. Many of these
innovations, like the establishment of multidisciplinary learning communities,
recognize the need for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
approaches.
In addition, the League’s Foundations Project seeks to “enable community colleges to create transformative communities of faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, community partners, and students. The Center strives to foster communities of the heart by working with colleges committed to supporting individual and institutional formation. “
The simultaneous revolutions
taking place in the marketplace, in organizations, and in technology require a
radical departure from past educational forms of delivery. There is an increased need for
both educational breadth and depth:
skills will be needed in areas beyond technological subjects and the
“multidisciplinary nature of technology” will require multidisciplinary degrees
(Anton , Silberglitt, & Schneider, 2001).
Cogburn argues that the existing educational model needs to be replaced by a new system of knowledge, education, and learning to embrace a new focus on abstract concepts like modeling and a non-linear, holistic approach to learning. Students’ abilities to manipulate abstract symbols must be enhanced as well as their general ability to acquire and utilize abstract knowledge (Cogburn, 2001).
Although such changes in
pedagogy constitute a critical pedagogy and a much-needed break from formal
“single loop” problem solving and the “surveillance-based” education of the
past, it needs a practical form to have any real effect.
For example, Central Piedmont Community
College, in Charlotte,
North Carolina, has joined 15 other community colleges in
the League of Innovation’s 21st Century Learning Outcomes Project. Colleges were selected because they have
demonstrated interest in defining, developing, delivering, and documenting
student learning outcomes. The project goal is to increase the capacity of
community colleges to define and document the acquisition of the critical
competencies that students need to succeed in the workplace, in transfer
education, and in today’s society.
Grant Support was provided by a three-year grant from The Pew Charitable
Trusts, a major philanthropic organization.
The Student Competencies
identified by the Project are:
1. Communication
skills
(reading, writing, speaking,
listening)
2. Computation skills
(understanding and applying
mathematical concepts and reasoning, analyzing, and using numerical
data)
3. Community skills
(citizenship;
diversity/pluralism; local, community, global, environmental
awareness)
4. Critical thinking and
problem solving skills
(analysis, synthesis, evaluation,
decision making, creative thinking)
5. Information management
skills
(collecting, analyzing, and
organizing information from a variety of sources)
6. Interpersonal skills
(teamwork, relationship
management, conflict resolution, workplace skills)
7. Personal skills
(ability to understand and
manage self, management of change, learning to learn, personal responsibility,
aesthetic responsiveness, wellness)
8. Technology skills
(computer literacy, Internet
skills, retrieving and managing information via
technology)
Gramsci
AND ADULT Education
It is possible to view these
“critical competencies that students need to succeed in the workplace,” as a
neo-liberal conspiracy to create a compliant workforce meeting the
needs of globalization and capitalistic restructuring. (Mayo, 1999). If we define hegemony
according to Gramsci as a “social condition in which all aspects of social
reality are dominated by a single class,” then adult education,
especially adult community college education, is certainly constrained by
hegemony; any hopes for a “transformative” education are mitigated by this
limitation.
Despite this ubiquity of hegemonic domination, a two-way reciprocal process is possible whereby faculty members engage with the logic of "the system" and a discussion takes place on competing perspectives in community college education. [Mayo, 1999] Part of this process requires engaging with faculty across the political spectrum. Learning about and respecting faculty entails understanding their material conditions, especially in times of organizational downsizing known as "institutional restructuring." For many faculty members these material conditions are the "abyss" of unemployment and insecurity, rather than the bright springtime of renewal.
A
“transformative pedagogy” under such circumstances can unwittingly "downshift"
from liberation to domestication and what Freire calls "banking education," that
is, a top-down approach to knowledge acquisition and transmission, a
non-reflective mode of learning where the student is the passive object rather
than the subject of the learning process.
In the same
way, faculty can be made into the passive "objects" of organizational
structuring when the process has been driven by naked market and political
forces. The concept of participation has been appropriated into a neo-liberal
context in which the government abdicates its responsibility for ensuring
quality educational services, and abandons any pretext of being guided by the
principles of equity and entitlement (Mayo, 1999).
The offloading
of social responsibilities to the family, the individual, and the community in
the circumstances characterized by stringent budget cuts has its parallel in the
request that faculty "participate" in its own restructuring. This is
problematic to say the least. To
quote Jane Thompson, a theorist on transformative adult
education:
"There is no such thing as a neutral
education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is
used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present
system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the "practice of
freedom," the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with
reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their
world" (Thompson,
1988).
It is
difficult, if not impossible, to separate issues such as salary, benefits,
working conditions, and governance from discussions regarding curriculum,
teaching and learning processes, and innovation.
I continue to hope that
transformative solutions are possible. The problem is that participants
need to feel safe as they experiment responsibly, whether we are talking about
the classroom or about organizational change. People do not feel safe. Outcomes
are uncertain or are prescribed by the administration. Community College
faculty often feels that there has been little real group participation. Just as we criticize class time
domination by the teacher using a "delivery model" of teaching, it seems that
our organizational change has been external to us -- the result of a reification
or prescription of values.
Currently global technical education at
the community college level is part of a renaissance in learning in which the
“black art” of teaching is being reinvented and understood as both an art and a
science. For example, scholars
associated with the League for Innovation have stressed the following topics for
professional development of faculty (O’Banion, 1994).
a)
Teaching vs.
learning
b)
Assessment and
TQM
c)
Improving opportunities for
under-prepared students
d)
Transformative faculty
development
e)
The community college
faculty as scholar
f)
Use of learning
communities
g)
Technology enhanced
education
h)
Collaborative and group
learning
i)
Experiential and service
learning
j)
Distance learning
In addition to figuring out
how to bridge the digital divide, instructors will increasingly be discussing
how to implement this more humanistic, more effective approach to teaching and
learning. A technology-based
renaissance in pedagogy is emerging that holds great promise for its
applications to global technical education and training. Whereas the Renaissance looked back
towards antiquity for inspiration and a rebirth of learning, our neo-Renaissance
looks Janis-like, simultaneously backwards and forwards -- into the future of an
information age and the possibility of an associated global participatory
democracy.
Conclusion
Gramsci has renewed relevance in today’s
information society. His comments
on the organic intellectual and the need for effective, humanistic, adult
education can be applied to problems we face today in preparing young adults for
the digital age. The need for mass technical education is based on the many
revolutions taking place, especially the application of information technology
in a global business environment. The “digital divide” in which the “haves”
enjoy global connectivity and telecommunications services and the “subalterns”
have limited, if any, access, is a reality under increasing scrutiny. Critical pedagogy can provide
theoretical material needed to remake technical education and training according
to the humanistic vision of Gramsci who espoused an education informed by
political and cultural leadership. The globe itself is also threatened by
environmental destruction. Chardin’s global brain is a metaphor for a networked
intelligence that can take corrective action on behalf of the planet and on
behalf of humanity. The global community college and its progress in innovation
in innovation have been proposed as a model for global technical education in a
globalized and changed world.
Global mass technical education can be advanced through implementation of
the goals of the Bologna Declaration combined with serious efforts to prepare
students for meaningful work in the digital future.
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