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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Discussion Of Educational Method With Waldorf Educator Whitney MacDonald, A Good Friend

The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological ...

Dear Whitney,

I really like your poem. 

 It's the best homage to George Floyd I've read.


If you would like me to change anything (or perhaps "take down" your poem), please let me know.

Your effort to re-vision Waldorf Education is, I think, very important - and, below, I have annotated "Digital Change As Societal Change."

I remember our last meeting very well, although, I must say that - with only a dozen years of life left - it is spooky to hear you say that our Ixtapa encounter took place 2 or 3 years ago. Seems like "the proverbial yesterday." (I turn 73 on August 20.)

Without getting maudlin, it's hard to express my gratitude for your kind words and for hearing you say that you "love my work" and even incorporate some of my thought into your own labors.

The life of a scholar-intellectual-writer is lonely, and it is very encouraging to have your positive feedback. (A few years ago, a close "friend" told me - to my face - that my writing was a "waste of time.")

Here's an essay that covers some bedrock educational philosophy, which -- if this line of thinking has not already been incorporated at some "backdrop level" of your "group thinking" -- might be useful. 

Instruction And Education Aim At Antipodes


And here is a more specific essay -- aimed at the cultivation of good citizenship. It too may be of use.

Teaching Civics And American History: Humankind's Race Between Education And Catastrophe

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/11/teaching-civics-and-american-history.html
This last essay is probably too removed from the "unified educational field" that Waldorf seeks, but I'll include it just in case.

"Proposed Cross Border Charter School"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/03/proposed-cross-border-charter-school.html 

 I have interposed my comments in the document below:

Digital change as a societal change

We live in a digital world that has become indispensable. Whether we encounter it with uncertainty or enthusiasm is of secondary importance. Robin Schmidt introduces us to this emerging world from a cultural-historical point of view, without bias and with a gift for philosophical reflection. There are signs of a return to the archaic, to a kind of platonic condition using ‘bachelor machines’ with a tendency towards the "filter bubble" and in permanent "un-do mode. But the Leader of the Cultural Impulse Research Centre at the Goetheanum does not leave us alone with this. He sees pedagogical support in Rudolf Steiner’s idea of the “protecting hand” in connection with learning as described in the "Meditativ erarbeitende Menschenkunde” (Meditative Study of Man). – "Despite, About, With and By" using information and communication technology (ICT).


Technology appears destructive, if you look at it from a cultural-historical perspective, It seems to disturb our present culture. With each of these interruptions, however, something new challenges us, opening up new cultural possibilities. This may lead to tensions everyone senses, but at the same time we react intensively, either with uncertainty or enthusiasm.

"Tools For Conviviality." Ivan Illich's Best Book?


Beat Honegger, professor at the School of Education in Schwyz, typifies various spontaneous reactions to digital change (1). On the one hand, there are people who say that children and young people must be protected from the digital media; then there is the person, who ignores this change; then there is an approach, that says that children and young people must be taught media within a pedagogical context, so that they can learn how to deal with it competently; then some say, “we use the media creatively and integrate them into everyday life,” because digital media are simply a part of our everyday educational lives. At the other end of the spectrum, one can make out the 'enthusiasts' who envision the future with humanoid robots making teachers superfluous.

The Internet addiction expert Bert te Wildt (2) recently pointed out in a discussion that the addiction potential of digital media lies not only with the offspring of "enthusiasts", but also with the principal "prohibitionists", since forbidding turns the children and young people it wants to safeguard into dissenters and thus also gambles away the possibility for a pedagogical design. He pointed out, for example, that in connection with the task of learning to deal with digital media, with regard to preventing addiction, we need a different kind of thinking, one that does not move on the scale from prohibition to enthusiasm, but one that evokes creativity: a kind of thinking that can deal with ambivalences, contradictions and constantly changing rules.

The emergence of a new world
However, digital change doesn’t only deal with new media, but in terms of cultural history, we participate in the emergence of a new, different way of life. We have become the inhabitants of a virtual, digital world arising next to the one we were born in, influencing the way we are together and the way in which we communicate with each other. The foundation on which our society was based, has been transferred to the digital. We use it to regulate the water supply as well as the most important political decisions. It is not only a world that is increasingly penetrated by digital devices, but also the other way round: we inhabit a digital world. This has increasingly become the most significant environment as against the urban or the natural environment.

"What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses... is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses... In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilism inherent in this development. The sensual... cannot survive the death of the supersensual."  Hannah Arendt

Apokatastasis Homepage Quotations Collected Over A Lifetime


As a result, an interesting phenomenon can be observed: the digital world in which everything important seems to happen, has not only taken over a child’s first field of experience, but also of young people. The material world appears to them as a derived phenomenon, making it increasingly necessary to pave the way into experiencing the world of the senses. The world of objects is seen as another world, and seems to work differently in comparison to the digital. We might see small children "swiping" on a book or a window pane to get to another image. Or you might hear young people saying: "I have to go away for a moment, there's lunch now." Actual existence, being “here” seems to be sensed as "being in the digital world”. To be “away”, in contrast, means saying good bye to the digital, in order to get something to eat in the other world. This means, that the time I spend in the ‘good old reality’ is increasingly experienced as "being away."

Alan: Speaking of the role of eating...

 I always think of the eucharist as "The Sacrament of The Table," people gathering to break bread and drink wine, thus contining the age-old conversation of meaning and value.

"Frog Hospital" And "Pax On Both Houses" Discuss Fred Owen's "The Quotidian"

The Phenotypic Expression Of Religion Matters More Than Its Dogmatic Genotype

Maria Montessori wrote a book about the Eucharist.

"The Mass Explained To Children"
Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori On War, Peace And Education


A fundamental mental change is taking place: 98% of the current generation of 20-25-year-olds, who attend a university to become teachers, were already equipped with a smartphone in their early youth. This means that the feeling of being online is a permanent and normal state of mind. (3)

In the next 10 to 15 years – if we imagine this development stepping up - a situation will have arisen, in which particular consequences will probably begin to take hold. We can expect the next, third generation of children, following the one for whom "online" is a normal state of mind, to grow up under conditions that make it impossible to perceive the difference between online and offline.

NPR: Tracking Down Deep Fake Videos

The new world of technology 100 years ago
There is an interesting parallel to the time when the first Waldorf School was founded. In 1919, the third generation of proletarian children was ready for school. The industrial revolution had put them in a similarly changed situation, as the children of the coming generation.

The philosophers of that time watched this with concern: materialistic science had created a world through technology that functioned entirely according to the law of the material. People, who spend their lives in cities and factories, educated in schools which functioned like factories, will in the long run begin to see themselves as machines.


Rudolf Steiner, like other thinkers of his day, described this conviction as a problem caused by the materialistic, scientific world view. Steiner uses the word “view” here, as Fichte used it, drawing attention to its generative quality. This understanding leads to creating the world according to the thoughts, with which I interpret the world around us. One can see how Steiner battled the problem, by following the development of his work. First he began to develop a theory of knowledge, which would lead to beholding the world in a different way, thereby changing one’s world view. (4). In a second step he transformed this into an expanded understanding of art. In this way, natural science was replaced by "spiritual science".

Pseudo-Success And The Un-Doing Of America

Materialism and The Magnum Mysterium

Three losses due to the industrial environment
Overviewing cultural history, one can deduce three great "losses" as a consequence of the step into the urban living environment. The first is the loss of the relation to one’s natural environment with its seasonal changes, the second is the loss of one’s social integration, as it was shaped by the class-based society, and finally the loss of one’s relationship to religion, to God.

Some perceived this as the 'Decline of the West” in the context of loss, others saw in it the dawning of an age of liberation. The fundamental change in values, which ultimately identified the individual as the centre of culture, became clearer. For the urban environment, the individual becomes the focus of social values: everything revolves around the ego, everything that does not serve the individual is considered to be outdated.

Thus three great tasks challenge and challenged pedagogy: How can one design a school, a culture, that enables the social life of a school to place the emerging ‘I’ (x) in its centre. It would be guided by the understanding of a child’s individual development, but would also offer parents and teachers a dynamic field for their own development. Secondly: how can a relationship be formed through the individuals replacing that, which religion once provided; and how can the lost relation to nature be replaced by an activity that places the ‘I’ at the starting point? Three fields, which lie at the foundation of the Waldorf educational concept of 1919.

Life in the digital world
What is characteristic of the digital world, that is now emerging? It can be characterized as an imaginary world – meaning that it is located between the real and the fictitious. It bases on the fact that we refer to something by completing the meaning. Every emoji, every WhatsApp message, as long as it is short, cannot actually be understood by what it is or what it contains, because the meaning lies in the certainty, that the receiver understands the sign as the author meant it.

In this sense, we live in a world of creations of consciousness; the digital world is actually a world of continuous conscious creation, producing images, references, messages, which are such that other people can read, understand and refer to them.

Michel Maffesoli (5), a French sociologist, calls this a “life in imaginary”. It is the return of the archaic. By this he refers to the cultures, such as the ancient Egyptian, that lie before the Greek classical period. Not only does imagery return to us, but also the feeling that time follows cycles. The reappearance of polytheism is also interpreted as the return of the archaic. 

Alan: Professor Marshall McLuhan (who was a media celebrity for about a decade when I was a young man... even playing himself in the Woody Allen movie, "Annie Hall") was the first (and arguably most notable) historian-philosopher of technological change and its effect on human consciousness. 

 Although McLuhan (who taught at my alma mater, the University of Toronto) has passed "out of fashion," he is still, I think, a very fertile resource for contemplating the interface of technology and consciousness. (I will mention parenthetically that both McLuhan and I consider G.K. Chesterton among the most seminal thinkers who have pondered the transition from pre-electric culture to post-electric culture.) 

 Here is one of my favorite Chesterton quotes: "The Coming Peril": http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/10/gk-chesterton-on-coming-peril.html

Marshall McLuhan and the Idea of Retribalization

Bread And Circuses: The Role Of  Television And Other Screen Pastimes
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/02/following-essay-was-written-c.html

The subject as an object
One can add that life in imaginary also leads, as it did in the ancient Egyptian culture, to the fact, that the content of consciousness is not conceived by the subject, but that man is a thought of the Gods, and is constantly watched by them. Today, our digital devices think us, we are under constant supervision. A selfie is basically a minor example. I look at myself, I observe myself, I control myself, I administrate myself. I have a watchful eye in relation to myself: I follow caffeine levels, blood sugar, fatigue, how I can save time, where I can find next best possible tweet... This constant self-control is triggered by the requirement to optimise myself. Instead of being exploited by others, as Byung-Chul Han (6) states, I exploit my own resources by following the demands of self-optimisation as a starting point. Thus the body becomes the object, a ‘thing’ with which I can maintain an instrumental relationship.

Neils Bohr On Physics, Subjectivity, Objectivity And The Uses Of Religion In A Secular World

Reprise: "Not Only Is The Universe Queerer Than We Think..." J.B.S. Haldane


"Bachelor Machines"
The second level of loss is related to the biographical dimension. According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (7), digital machines are actually "bachelor machines", they keep us in the state of an inexperienced human being, who still has his life ahead of him, who has not yet committed himself, who does not yet want to commit himself, who continually upholds the option to decide this way or that, open. Digital life is a life in "possibilities". But if I stay in an environment of possibilities, there will never be commitment. Nothing will be realised. There is no biography in the literal sense: our life can’t be touched, nor do we leave our mark on life, by living a life of "Un-Do-Mode". In word processing I can ‘undo’ my last action by pressing the Un-Do-button. Biography, however, takes place in realisation: My life’s text comes about by writing it irreversibly.

It is actually a Platonic state, because Plato always wanted to think back to the place before the ideas were falsified and clouded by experience. Thus digital life can basically be understood as a Platonic life, that puts us in a prenatal state, that does not allow us to have experiences that have been "inscribed". Today's young adults - they give you this impression - are actually always like "just before”, ie. before life really starts: "Oh, I don't know yet... Now I'll do that, but only as a ‘project'..."

Alan: While attending Aquinas Institute in the early sixties, two of my priest-teachers (independent of one another) took me aside to ask if I'd been reading Plato because "you think just like him."

In the filter bubble
The third dimension of loss has to do with the relationship to the other, whereby the other appears in his or her otherness, his or her singular existence. Baudrillard describes digital communication very vividly as a life in the "hell of the same", because we move in a world that only shows us what we already know and like. We never come to anything else, but we always return to ourselves. I find myself in a filter bubble, in which, thanks to the algorithms, I only see what I like and agree with in my Facebook profile; or when I shop on Amazon, I am shown the items I already like. This actually puts my individuality at stake. Because, I, that which is me, takes on its being, when I am exposed to otherness.

Alan: This "hell of the same" is a very real phenomenon.

 However, it is born of silo-ing ourselves along with other like-minded people, and then - comfortably ensconced in Digital world - we seldom incarnate, we seldom value what Christian theology calls The Incarnation - "the Word made Flesh." 

 "God so loved the world that he sent his only son into it."

 The entire thrust of Divine Creativity is "into the world," "into the flesh."

But "Christian" "conservatism" is in an ungodly hurry to abandon the flesh, to get back to The Word, thus mistaking "God's" fundamental impulse moving into the world, taking up residence in the world, becoming the world - and becoming it every more fully, ever more lovingly.

Thomas Merton: "Our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire If They Are Worthy"


 I think "Christian" "conservatives" are in their ungodly hurry because they think God "on high" "does it all" for them. 

 Did He not provide them with the bible to answer every question? 

 And thus shielded by their unfailing belief in Providence, they render themselves impotent; indeed, from their vantage, God obliges them to be impotent by requiring them to have faith in Him alone. 

 And having faith in God alone, they are aware, however dimly, that they don't really intend to DO anything. 

 Global warming? 

 Why, there's no need for concerted human effort; God is an unfailing benefactor of his people.  

Well, how about concerted scientific effort to minimize the ravages of COVID 19? 

 Why, if God wants me to live, he will protect me as surely as he protected the Ancient Jews who daubed lamb's blood on their lintels to keep the plague at bay. (Never mind that God did NOT protect the Jews from several centuries of slavery at Pharoah's harsh hands.)

 And so "faithful rationalization" has become a certain recipe for irresponsibility: "I need not do anything but have faith; and if I have faith God will take care of my every need."
"Faith, Hope, Charity And Divine Desperation"

"First Stone: It Is Not Enough To Do What Is Right..."
Sola Fide

The Tragedy Of Modern Medicine And The Seduction Of "Faith Alone" ("Sola Fide")


Waldorf Education under the Condition of a Digital Living Environment
If the digital world were to become our normal environment, what would pedagogy look like?  What would happen to a pedagogy that is dedicated to an education towards freedom?

Being in the body is a cultural achievement
In the following I would like to sketch four levels, make four suggestions in view of a pedagogy, that would begin to look for its bearings within the context of these conditions.

Alan: Do you know "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire? If not, I encourage you to check it out. One of the enduringly great insights of Freire is that he starts from the vantage of the oppressed, asserting and assuming that all real learning must include all people right from the get-go. 

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people ...
"But you've been told many times before, Messiahs pointed to the door, and no one had the guts to leave the temple."
"I'm Free"

To me it is clear that "the classroom" is an annex to "the temple."

Admittedly, the temple and the classroom have their place.

But it appears that our challenge as people -- and as educators -- is to "get out of the classroom" as often as possible. 

And not only out of the classroom, but into the homes, into the workplaces and the lives of poor people, oppressed people, marginalized people.

And not by the lark of "drive-by slumming," but by becoming deeply insinuated in the ongoing lives of particular poor families.

Just as "foreign exchange students" become part of the households with whom they have lived, let us devise ways to "move in" with families who can only feed us rice and beans; families "on the edge" whose "edginess" imparts (paradoxical) vitality, rootedness, and extended family enmeshment, all of which make it impossible to stay hunkered down in one's silo. 

 In effect, to stay in one's temple, convinced they are God's faithful servants.

I know I'm repeating the first of the next two posts. 

 But I  believe the nub of something crucial is contained in "Cross Border Schooling" yet doubt I have enough remaining time to "work it out."


I also believe it is time for enlightened educators to promote, to anticipate and to ponder the best way to enact "Obligatory National Service." 

 Peter Moyer has always been keen on erecting a "Statue of Responsibility" to bookend the "Statue of Liberty," and I think Obligatory National Service -- early in one's life -- is the best and most efficacious way to imprint upon Americans the foundational importance of rendering service to others, regardless their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or worthiness. https://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2020/04/fr-thomas-merton-explains-in-16-words.html

"Proposal For Two Years Obligatory National Service"
Billionaire Capitalist Nick Hanauer: Why Money Doesn't Trickle ...

"Pope Francis says we should avoid being led by devotion to idols and magical ideas; instead we should have faith and let in and be guided by those at the margins"

https://catholicclimatemovement.global/pope-francis-says-we-should-avoid-being-led-by-devotion-to-idols-and-magical-ideas-instead-we-should-have-faith-and-let-in-and-be-guided-by-those-at-the-margins/


First, taking into account the conditions of rapid changes in the living conditions of the digital world, one would have to begin to accept them as the outset for a productive design. At the moment, the discourse on digital media is often shaped by the postmodern perspective of loss, a critique, that still assumes that one has the possibility to choose another world that is not digitally based. Instead of accusing kids and lamenting about the fact that the world has become like this, I would raise the question: how can we shape "inclusion", how can we include ourselves, and yet, how can we by pedagogical means enable to participate in life on earth? In other words - and this is my first point - we can no longer regard being in the body as granted by nature and natural development, but should begin to make it a question of culture and in this way kindle a pedagogical issue.

Pedagogy of the protecting hand
The second question: How can the Waldorf educator approach the issue in concrete terms? I think it worthwhile to start with the motifs Steiner mentioned in his second lecture in the “Meditative study of Man” (GA 302a), as opposed to taking up established Waldorf pedagogical traditions, which of course also were once new discoveries and contributions to developing issues. The motifs of the second lecture draw attention to the "reverence for everything that precedes a child" on the one hand of a polarity, and a teacher’s "enthusiasm" for the world on the other. And then he develops the gesture of a "protecting hand”.  What would a "protecting hand pedagogy" look like in view of the digital world? What would the teacher’s enthusiasm for the present world look like? Where does a feeling of "this world is actually wrong and should look quite different" undermine the enthusiasm to allow young people to find their footing in today’s world? “A protecting hand" does not mean protecting children from the world. But: How do we accompany these young people with a "protecting hand" into today's world, as it is? In such inner exercises regarding inner attitudes, I see great potential for pedagogical ideas and designs contributing to solutions in the changed situation.
Alan: I am not sure where to insert the following observation, so I'll put it here. 

One way to look at "digital life" -- and "digital possibility" -- is to conceive one's cellphone as "the world's largest library... which I keep in my pocket." 

In similar vein, a monk's fundamental work (and at bedrock I think of myself as a monk) is 1.) scholarship, 2.) song and 3.) agricultural labor. (Monks also eat together, which is a great good, but this necessity is not part of their "work" as a "chosen mission.")

If we inculcate the understanding that digital devices (which I often call "screens") are essentially libraries that enable studious exploration and even preservation of the world, we perform a great service. 

However, digital space is essentially two dimensional and this relative simplification of reality impels us to embody a kind of simple-mindedness which tends to result in watered-down visions of Reality -- Reality 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and so on. (Borges wrote a brilliant one page short story about a town in the Argentine pampas that is increasingly prosperous. At decade intervals the town fathers contract with a cartographer to make a new and more precise map. Finally, the town is prosperous enough that it creates a map that is draped everywhere in a ratio of 1 to 1 so that the entire town is entirely covered by the map. I won't tell you how the story ends... The tale is titled "Del Rigor en la Ciencia," or "On Exactitude in Science.")

Enveloped by these simplified visions of reality, we more or less isolate ourselves from the multidimensionality of Reality, often becoming "sophisticated simpletons" - and worse, simpletons who get irritated with the complexity of multi-dimensional Reality, multi-dimensional enfleshment, multidimensional incarnation.  

 And so we take shelter in our simplified, streamlined silos, dependable redoubts against the fullness and complexity of Creation-Incarnation where everything "is complicated."

What, exactly, are we sheltering from when we flee to our silos?

C.S. Lewis says “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”

Just as the "peace" that my generations' parents longed for is now routinely perceived as a boring threat -- a "roaring silence" menace -- we have come to rely on our neatly-tailored, narrowly-siloed and highly-simplified cyber-lives as "the way life is supposed to be," with the result that we are ever more easily irritated by reality's uncontrollable "interruptions."

 In my lifetime, history's evolving trajectory has gone something like this:

First, peace -- as understood for millennia -- became a silently howling menace.

Then, Reality became such an irritant that we decided to defend - tooth and nail - against its intrusion.

 At any cost, Reality was to be kept at bay.

Despite, About, With and By - digital media learning
Thirdly, in my opinion, the question of ICT Learning (Information and Communication Technologies Learning) at school needs to be tackled fourfold:
It needs reflections on (a) "learning despite ICT ", it needs (b) "learning about ICT ", it needs (c) "learning to cope with ICT " and it needs (d) "learning by using ICT ".

(a) Learning despite ICT. The question from a teacher's point of view is: what is the value of being together in a classroom? Why should we be present for example, when it becomes clear that for certain forms of learning, i.e. "blended learning" or "flipped classroom" would perhaps be more efficient than the current learning operations? Is there still a case for it being worthwhile to be together with the pupils?

In view of such and similar developments, the question from a teacher's perspective arises: can we re-address the meaning of school under these conditions? A primary school in Germany has introduced an ad hoc subject "Talking to Each Other”. It was a spontaneous reaction to communicative behaviour in the playgrounds of that school where children stand in a circle and send each other WhatsApp messages, without being able to  write complete sentences. An experienced sixth grade Waldorf teacher told me that he can no longer use the didactic structure, he used for his last class. He became aware of a structural change in the way children think. This he called algorithmic thinking: before the children get involved, they ask if there is not an easier way to solve the problem, implicating that in such a case it wouldn’t be necessary to embark on a common didactic search.

From the student's perspective, too, there are shifts that require a new set-up. One experienced class teacher told me that this time, like never before, he had the greatest difficulty teaching children how to write with a fountain pen. When a quill was used, there was a certain interest to see how people wrote in past times. In our conversation we came to the conclusion that present day children do not see any grownups using fountain pens for their hand written work. From a child’s point of view  point of view writing with a fountain pen may therefore seem like learning a cultural technique from the past, as it was with quills. Writing by hand has become a cultural technique that does not lead them into the adult world, as fountain pen writing used to do, especially when they know that their teacher has his iPad in his schoolbag.

(b) “Learning about ICT". This is about clarifying and minimizing potential dangers. Looking at the teacher’s tasks, one can ask, if they can still fulfil their protective role. For them, this means first of all: do they know what is "going on" in the ICT field, so that they can exercise their supervisory duty? In the worst case, are they able to recognize a student's ICT activity when it is on the verge of turning criminal? If they cannot, such teachers are basically violating their duty of supervision. Teachers today need a minimum level of “knowledge about ICT”.

From a pupil's perspective, a kind of elementary digital "traffic education" is necessary. A ban on smartphones at school may at first provide a shelter from such dangers as cyberbullying. But it also brings problems with it: the educational issue is then simply delegated to the way to and from school. Even at home one can hardly expect active education in this sense. In my opinion it is necessary, that we should create spaces for adults and even smaller children to get to know the digital world together and “learn about ICT”, its limits and dangers.

(c) “Learning to use ICT”: Learning to cope with ICT spreads over the whole field of media education. Edwin Hübner has shaped the productive distinction between direct and indirect media education. Indirect media pedagogy means: which non-medial (school) activities promote a sovereign personality to find a genuine way of dealing with these media? In the field of direct media education, one can ask, what skills and knowledge should young people have acquired in dealing with ICT,  when they leave school? What knowledge and skills enable their sovereignty? Do pupils get to know the technical basics, functions, programming and application of software in such a way that they really understand them? Do they learn to question critically, how digital media work, how to analyse and evaluate images and news? Do pupils learn how to use ICT in an adult manner? Who is going to show them, in concrete terms, how to use ICT for working and not just for "chatting"? 15 years ago, this applied only to mathematics and natural sciences, but today art, languages and the humanities are included.

(d) How can one develop “learning by using digital media”? That is a question of didactics in their relation to ICT. How can I teach history, how can I teach English by using ICT, not just augmenting former techniques, but using ITC didactically to lead to better results in a certain subject. This is a very difficult question, which cannot be simply answered.

The idea of using only laptops, iPads or smartphones in class, fitted with learning software or colourful presentations to make history lessons better from a didactic point of view has scientifically been proved wrong. The decisive factor, if and how ICT is used in teaching, as we know today, is closely related to the teachers’ convictions about ICT, about learning and good teaching.

A specific category of teaching competence is increasingly being considered: what is required to achieve better learning results through ICT? (An example of the academic research in this field is known as 'Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge', TPACK). Here, too, initial examples can be given on the basis of empirical research: In physics, students should learn the relationship between acceleration and gravity. An example: They use their own smartphones or those from the school, on which an app has been installed, to record the data from the gyroscope (acceleration sensor). Then the students use the swing in the playground, with their smartphones in their pockets. The data is then read and evaluated, formulas reconstructed and so everyone could finally calculate, who was swinging how high. The accompanying research showed that the much better learning effect, compared to learning on the model in the classroom, was not primarily due to increased motivation, (because the children were allowed to use smartphones), but to physical experience and their own involvement in the experiment and in its reconstruction. This is perhaps a very early example of “subject learning by using digital media”, but it shows how didactic perspectives can be created and used to validate the use of ICT for each subject in view of its own teaching objectives.

Shaping Digital Change
The fourth aspect to which I would like to draw attention in concluding this article, focuses on the criteria for shaping digital change. The cultural shaping of the industrial revolution was gradually guided by the unconditional dignity of the individual, sometimes modified after making horrific mistakes. It was towards this dignity within society, that the shaping of the essential institutions in Western countries began to orientate themselves. In its wake pedagogy began to focus on the development of the individual.

Now we can ask ourselves, in what way does the digital world continually generate new ideas and designs, thereby deceiving and disrupting the foundations of our individual culture? If digital change is not completely rejected and contested, which is quite understandable from the just mentioned point of view, it may be necessary to consider a change in values that gives cultural and educational concerns a new orientation. In this way it would enable us to actively participate in the shaping of digital change.

Translated by Ronald Templeton


Robin Schmidt studied philosophy and cultural history, then educational science (focus on adult education) with philosophy as a teaching subject. Robin Schmidt has been head of the “Cultural Impulse Research Centre” (“Forschungsstelle Kulturimpuls”) since 2001 and is currently working on the project "Humanism of a Digital Modernity". Since 2016 he has also been a research fellow at the University of Education of Northwestern Switzerland, with a research project on teaching and learning in digital change.

Literature
(1) Honegger, Beat: „Mehr als 0 und 1. Schule in einer digitalisierten Welt.“ Hep Verlag. 2017. ("More than 0 and 1. school in a digitized world.”)
(2) Te Wildt, Bert: Digital Junkies. Internetabhängigkeit und ihre Folgen für uns und unsere Kinder. (Digital Junkies. Internet dependency and its consequences for us and our children). Droemer TB. 2016
(3)  ZHAW, Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Departement Angewandte Psychologie (Hrsg.) (2017): JAMES. Jugend | Aktivitäten | Medien – Erhebung Schweiz 2016. Ergebnisbericht zur JAMES-Studie 2016. (ZHAW, Zurich University of Applied Sciences Department of Applied Psychology (Hrsg.) (2017): JAMES. Youth | Activities | Media Survey Switzerland 2016. Report on the JAMES Study 2016.)
Lorenz, Ramona; Bos, Wilfried; Endberg, Manuela; Eickelmann, Birgit; Grafe, Silke und Vahrenhold, Jan (Hrsg.) (2017): Schule digital – der Länderindikator 2017. (School digital - the country indicator 2017) Münster: Waxmann.
(4)  Steiner, Rudolf: „Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung.“ (“The Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe’s World Conception”) Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung. 2001.
(5) Maffesoli, Michel (2014): Die Zeit kehrt wieder: Lob der Postmoderne. (Time returns: Praise of Postmodernism) Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
(6) Han, Byung-Chul (2014): Psychopolitik: Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken. (Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and the New Power Techniques) 5. Auflage Aufl. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
(7) Baudrillard, Jean (1992): Transparenz des Bösen: ein Essay über extreme Phänomene. (Transparency of Evil: an Essay on Extreme Phenomena). Berlin: Merve Verl. (= Internationaler Merve Diskurs 169).

(x) Translator’s footnote: The ‘I’ is seen here as the opposite of the self centred ego.

Summary of a talk on September 22, 2017 at the Goetheanum within the framework of the conference of the Pedagogical Section "Digital Time - Pedagogy - Perspectives"
Edited by Walter Riethmüller, shortened by Katharina Stemann
First published in: Lehrerrundbrief (teacher’s newsletter) 107, Educational Research Centre at the Federation of Free Waldorf Schools in Germany, 2018.
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 1:15 PM whitney macdonald wrote:

Dear Alan,
Wow.  Great work.  As I told you, I don’t often respond but I do love your work.  War vs. the slow torture of economic oppression: I wrote a poem inspired by the George Floyd murder based on this idea.
All the best to you,
Whitney

PS- We met serendipitously a couple of years back at Ixpata.  You posed a question some thing like: If machines (computers) do everything they say that they can do, what will be left to give human beings a sense of dignity?  As a teacher who is trying to teach in a way that will meet the needs children for the future, I carry that question constantly.  There is a small cadre of us who are beginning to reimagine the Waldorf curriculum.  It’s an interesting process.  If you have the time, I will attach an article from a Swiss thinker who is asking this question.  Quite interesting, I think.  It’s translated from German so some of the phrasing is a bit odd sounding but the gist is there.  I think you will find it it thought provoking. I had a conversation yesterday with him, the author, and a friend who is an expert in curative education, primarily working with developmentally disabled people (he runs a Camp Hill community if you are familiar).  We are planning to continue the conversation at regular intervals.  Keeps me out of trouble. :-)
George Floyd

George went quick
Eight minutes 
Four hundred and eighty seconds
A time lapse
In numbers I can count
But how many seconds does it take
To crush the dreams 
To extinguish the spark 
In the eye
Of a young black child
Who dreams
Of being  
A doctor
A teacher
A father
A man
How many seconds does it take 
Before that mother
Arms around her newborn son 
Starts to worry 
Starts to count the days 
Until she gets that call
Or sees that video
That video that sped it up
For all of us to see
Life slowly crushed 
A white man 
On his neck
Every day
Every 
Black 
Man

On Jun 13, 2020, at 11:49 AM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
 

"Why Adolf Eichmann's Final Message Remains So Profoundly Unsettling," The Guardian

Dear Maria and Danny,

On a recent walk, I mentioned the systematic ways that we all participate in "structural evil" and how anyone who thinks s/he is among "the blameless" or "the unimpeachably innocent" has not examined the consumingly tentacular nature of systematic wrongdoing.



The article below concerning Zoom's treachery in China is a case in point.

Orthodox Christianity dealt with this knotty problem of ubiquitous wrong-doing through the doctrine of Original Sin, making clear that EVERYONE is born with an inevitable impulse to commit "sin"... whose original New Testamental reference is "hamartia," a Greek word to describe an archer "missing the mark." (Notably, "Original Sin" is actually celebrated in the Easter Exsultet, the most unusual prayer of the liturgical year. https://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-easter-exsultet-evil-celebrated-as.html)

It is, I think, easier to deal with our inevitable shortcomings by recognizing them for what they are, and then doing what we can to make progress without ever fixating on perfection.

The bloody aftermath of the French Revolution, brought to fever pitch by Robespierre's Reign of Terror, resulted (as I see it) from the revolutionary belief that the overthrow of Evil Monarchy and co-related marginalization of the "damnable church" justified the (often bloody) conviction that "being a revolutionary" was an indubitable, unimpeachable good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

Mommy and I will go to our graves in clear acknowledgement that the Sandinista government - which we supported and championed -betrayed its people in ways that were despicable, authoritarian and profoundly self-seeking. Daniel Ortega, our one-time hero, continues to do all these villainous things.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (for whom I have high regard) identified an seldom acknowledged phenomenon (first set forth by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus) which he called "enantiodromia" based on his observation that any behavior "pushed far enough" -- including, for example, revolutionary behavior -- results in a rather sudden transformation when any behavioral impulse taken too far morphs into its opposite.

Oxford Reference:

enantiodromia

QUICK REFERENCE

The principle attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (?535–?475bc) according to which everything eventually changes into its opposite. In analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) described it as ‘the principle which governs all cycles of natural life, from the smallest to the greatest’ (Collected Works, 7, paragraph 112). [From Greek enantios opposite + dromos course + -ia indicating a condition or quality]
One of my "Top 5" quotation-insights is from Trappist monk Thomas Merton:

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton


I believe Trump cultists are, at bottom, perfectionists who have been "blinded by the light."

If you study the essential "ideals" of Trumpistas -- many of them ostentatiously-but-superficially "Christian" people -- you will see that these stunted human beings are essentially "too true to be good," a psycho-spiritual state largely attributable to their insistence on incandescent-but-non-contextualized principles that have resulted in personal behavior that embodies the polar opposites of what they formally profess. And so, freedom, liberty, truth, justice and personal responsibility transmute into a moral portrait as hideous as the one Dorian Gray kept in the attic. 

A brilliant expression of this "unacknowledged shadow side" is voiced by Rebecca Hamilton, a staunch opponent of abortion: 

5 Pro-Life Votes: The Supreme Court Can Overtuen Roe Now
(This is a remarkable piece of writing!)



And behind the Pharisaic sham...



Enter the relentless search for ways to prove that "certain" people -- but certainly not people like me! -- are undeserving.


Alan: Conservatives would LOVE to be loving, kind and generous... 
if only these traits did not encourage n'er-do-wells and parasites to persist in irresponsibility 
and despicable refusal to take care of themselves.

To close on The Cornerstone of Hopefulness, consider these other observations by Merton.

"You are fed up with words and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes.  I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes.  This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean.  It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it.  And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make meaning be there again by magic..."

"Do not depend on the hope of results.  When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."  
***
The great good news of The Apocalyse has begun to unfold.  

Revelation is at hand. (The two Greek words that comprise "apocalypse" mean "lifting the veil.") 

And as the veil lifts we realize (like the curtain being pulled back on The Wizard of Oz), that it has been the ruling class -- propagating and perpetuating full-spectrum trumpery -- that has held humankind in thrall.

It is this same Ruling Class Trumpery that has always kept its knee on George Floyd's neck.  


"The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.
An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict... An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects. … The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil — man's greed.
"Non-Violence — The Greatest Force" in The World Tomorrow (5 October 1926)

The greed of "The 1%" -- now revealed in the biblical abomination of Donald Trump -- has imposed a hugely disproportionate amount of unnecessary misery on the longsuffering people of our world.  

"The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil" - An Open Invitation To Christian Conservatives

And although "perfection" is an illusion-to-be-shunned (at least in the light of its commonplace misunderstanding), human life can be markedly better than the cesspool in which we flounder.

Yuuuvvvvvooooooo!!!

Daddy man

PS Blessedly, Western Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia already demonstrate a categorically better way of life. But here in the "United" States, where we have built an American Dream of private opulence and public squalor, the veil is lifting. 


American Conservatives Are The Apotheosis Of Pharisaism. (Conservatives, Please Weigh In)

The Pharisee Party And The Devolution Of GOP Leaders Into Oligarchs Who Despise Democracy

The Pharisees Are Always With Us: A Field Guide



Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts At China's Request

Teleconferencing company Zoom acknowledged it shut down the accounts of several activists and online commemorations of the Tiananmen Square massacre ...
NPRYesterday














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Zoom Promises To Do Better After Banning Tiananmen Square Protests—Then Builds Tech To Help China’s Censorship

Zoom reinstates accounts of Tiananmen Square commemoration organizers, but is creating tech to ensure mainland Chinese users can be censored.
ForbesYesterday














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