To understand education as an intelligent missile

in #steempress6 years ago (edited)

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Do intelligent missiles teach us something valid about education? Let's read

In my university courses I tend to discuss polemical author’s papers. I recently proposed a reading on the education of the author Zygmunt Bauman, which is part of a broad study about what he calls "liquid modernity". In another post I will refer to that approach.

The missile and education

The first thing which got the curiosity of my students in the text assigned to the discussion was that, in the fourth chapter of the book: "On education in a liquid world", Bauman uses a very creative analogy to make his proposal of how to educate young people nowdays.

If pre-modern life consists on a daily practice of the infinite duration of mortal life, liquid modern life is a daily test of universal transience. What the citizens of the world now find in that world is that there is nothing destined to endure, much less forever. Objects that today are recommended to us as useful and indispensable tend to become a necessity of time. Nothing is here forever, nothing seems irreplaceable, this is the real belief. Everything is born with the stamp stamped of an imminent death.

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In the proposed analogy, the author starts with a comparison between ballistic missiles and intelligent missiles for different things: How the idea of the world that a given society had has changed, how it has changed in our way of using knowledge and how we need to rethink education to adapt it to the times that are running.

The ballistic missile had a pre-established and determined trajectory. The intelligent missile, on the other hand, seeks its objective through a process of permanent adaptation in its trajectory, it has to readjust moment by moment its instructions to reach the objective.

The educational change

Taking the analogy of the missile to the plane of education, it would mean that our traditional model was left behind as the ballistic missile. To update ourselves we have to develop the ability to learn, undo and innovate, according to the variability of the situations that we endure. Of course, we do not have to perform any destructive task like the missile does.

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What differentiates the current agony chosen by the elegibilities that have always been assimilated to the chosen Homo, the "man who chooses", is the discovery or the suspicion that there are no pre-established rules and the universally approved goals for which to aim, and that, consequently, last years of the adverse consequences in their selections. Any point of reference or guideline that today seems reliable and worthy of attention, with all the security of today will be unmasked and defined as deceptive or corrupt.

The resistance to new ideas

Any new proposal is going to meet resistance, it is a completely logical behavior. Few want to expose themselves to the elements, we all want to live in safety. Even the youngest can be reluctant to a new idea.

Let's see this comment one of my students did: ─ Teacher, but that description of the author is for a society different from ours, it is for the European world─, to which I answered: Yes and no.

It is true that the characterization of Bauman is designed for an European society. In a sense, we could say that it is Eurocentric. But from where are you reading me? Are we not sharing this writing from different parts of the world? Did not I need to learn a lot of things from the digital age to be able to specify this writing?

We are not in Europe, we do not live Europeanly, but we are inserted in the global world, that is a reality. Can we turn our backs and ignore the matter?

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How is the world today?

If we accept, as Bauman points out, that we live in a society where transience, the superfluous, the volatile, the ephemeral are essential components of the environment of life, then, we must necessarily rethink our teaching models.
So far no one has found the right formula to prepare the new generation. What is urgent and what is necessary? Which of the two should be prioritized? How to combine the autochthonous and the foreign? and the modern? There have been great discussions in the educational world.

The philosophers of the education of the solid modern era saw teachers as ballistic missile launchers. And they lectured them on ways to ensure that their products followed the route, a path given by the time of the initial shot that was strictly predestined for them.

Our main task

The education we have practiced here in Venezuela is based on an idea of a world oriented towards stability and permanence. Many of our classes continue to develop as if we were in the world of grandparents. It is true that didactic innovations are made. I recognize that work methods have been changed, there changes are noticed. But in our way of conceiving knowledge things move very slowly. Of course, that is my appreciation of the matter. One more among many.

I am one of those who think that new times demand different views. The old generation ─ does not have to be mine, it can be that of those older than twenty-five years ─ it is the one with the greatest responsibility in guiding and educating. It is not easy to forget knowledge that has been taken for granted, less to unlearn, but clarity of purpose facilitates the tasks. Keeping in mind that young people need help learning to live in a new world can make a difference.

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The invariable purpose of education was, is, and will always be, the preparation of these young people for life. A life according to the reality which they are destined to enter. To be prepared, they need instruction, "practical knowledge, concrete and immediate application", to use the expression of Tullio De Mauro. And to be "practical", a quality teaching needs to propitiate and propagate the openness of the mind, and not its closure.
All quotations correspond to the aforementioned work.

The discussion is served.

Thanks for your time.

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Hello. I appreciate your visit and your comment. I’m glad you liked it! Thanks.

Until the next delivery. Thank you.

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Digital edition and the gifs's authorship is mine.

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Posteado desde mi blog with <a href='https://wordpress.org/plugins/steempress/'>SteemPress</a> : http://irvinc.vornix.blog/to-understand-education-as-an-intelligent-missile/

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