Educ 1101:

Education In Modern Society

From Provenzos Chapter One
 The intent of this course is to
engage in the process of questioning:
the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in
U.S. culture;
the significance of postmodernism in shaping what
it means to teach and be taught in our schools;
the relationship between our schools and the larger
social, cultural, and economic forces at work in our
society.
 This course will
introduce students interested in U.S. schools
to the forces at work within the education
system.
This approach is interdisciplinary: drawing
on historical, philosophical,
anthropological, and sociological
reflecting sources from popular culture.
 Paideia:
Education as reflecting the ways of a culture.
Major theme of our study. What goes on in
schoolsthe values and knowledge children
bring to the classroom and content included in
textbooks and the curriculumultimately
reflects the values and beliefs of the society of
which they are part.
 Ironically,
according to physicist Albert Einstein, The
fish are the last creatures to consider the
water that surrounds them .
 Educating=shaping consciousness

Schools are still important institutions for

learning, yet they are not the only means by
which we educate people in U.S. culture.
Schools are only one of many institutions
including family, churches, museums, and
newspapersthat shape the consciousness of
our children.
 Every family, church, synagogue, library, museum,
scout troop, radio station, television station, has a
curriculum.
Radical educator Ivan Illich on education: Family life,
health care, professions, media play an important part in
the institutional manipulation of ones world vision,
language, and demands. School touches us so deeply
that none of us can expect to be liberated from it by
something else.
 Our goal: attempting to understand how these
things combine to shape us, students,
education, and society.
Our process: inquiryor exploringa social,
ecological approach to investigating traditional
and nontraditional modes of education and
schooling.
Our emphasis of our inquiry: a postmodern
perspective.
 Postmodern (Henry Giroux):

Entry into a new period of historical time

characterized by a crisis of power, patriarchy,
authority, identity, and ethics.
It is a form of cultural criticism regarding an
emerging set of social, cultural, and economic
conditions that have come to characterize the age of
global capitalism and industrialism.
It radically questions the logic of foundations that
have become the epistemological cornerstone of
modernism.
 Postmodern impact on education:
Profound social, political, technological, and cultural
changes that have taken place in the U.S. will certainly
affect your workas educators. Schools and the
educational system have profoundly redefined by this in
recent years.
We have entered into a new phase of our culture, and in
doing so, the nature of schooling has changed as well.
The conditions of schooling reflect profound changes in
society. In turn, the possibilities of schooling the role of
the teacher, the needs of the curricula are all affected by
the emergence of postmodern phenomena.
 Postmodernism means:
Decentralized forms of labor processes and work
organization, greater emphasis on choice and
product differentiation, targeting consumers by
lifestyle, taste, and culture rather than by
categories of social class, the rise of the service
industry, feminization of the work force, and
economy dominated by the multinationals, greater
autonomy from nation-state control, and the
globalization of the new financial markets.
These phenomena are indications of the
emergence of a new culture and society in the U.S.
 Re: Technology
Technologically, a great deal of the technology
emerging in a time of postmodernism has
served us well.
Yet, some of these tech applications have not
served us well, and others have changed our
world in ways that are not yet clear (9).
 Reflecting the ways of a culture
What goes on in schoolsthe values and knowledge
students bring to the classroom and the content in
included in textbooks and the curriculumultimately
reflects the values and beliefs of the society in which
they are a part.
This idea is not new, but ancient: paideia.
Peideia: Education as reflecting the ways of a culture
Major theme of our study. What goes on in schools
the values and knowledge children bring to the
classroom and content included in textbooks and the
curriculumultimately reflects the values and beliefs of
the society of which they are part (10).
 In Conclusion
as stated in introduction:
Ironically, according to physicist Albert Einstein, The fish
are the last creatures to consider the water that surrounds
them (9).
Intent of this course is to engage students in the process of
questioning the role of teaching, learning, and schooling in
U.S. culture; the significance of postmodernism in shaping
what it means to teach and be taught in our schools; and the
relationship between our schools and the larger social,
cultural, and economic forces at work in our society (11).
This course will introduce students interested in U.S. schools
to the forces at work within the education system. This
approach is interdisciplinary: drawing on historical,
philosophical, anthropological, and sociologicalreflecting
sources from popular culture (10).
 Discussion questions:
1. Given that schools are not as important in the education of children today as
they were in the past, why are they still important?
2. What have been the issues and forces in your own experience that have been
the most influential in determining what you know and how you view the
world (family school, religion, peer groups, television, etcetera)? The
choices you made earlier in class regarding your survival tools on a deserted
island may get you started here.
3. What are some of the issues facing schools and contemporary children that
did not exist a generation ago?
4. Can you describe some phenomena that are distinctly modern? Can you
describe some that are postmodern? How are they different?
5. How would your life and experience have been different if you had lived
fifty years ago?