Group 1 - School's Out

Overview

Lewis J. Perelman:

...the technological gap between the school environment and the "real world" is growing so wide, so fast that the classroom experience is on the way to becoming not merely unproductive but increasingly irrelevant to normal human existence. (Perelman, 1992)

• He believes the current educational system is becoming an obsolete technology because schools are failing to keep pace with the changes taking place in society
• He believes that combining teaching and learning with artificial intelligence, broadband telecommunications, information processing, and biotechnology will replace standard teaching practices.
• He labels this style of learning as hyper-learning which emphasizes active, student-directed experiences rather than institutionalized, teacher-directed instruction.
• He believes an important strength of the American educational system is our great diversity. This allows us to adapt more easily to change than more centralized systems found elsewhere in the world.
• He observes that community colleges are in a better position to adapt to these changes than other segments of higher education, since community colleges are generally more flexible and consumer-orientated, and already serve in many ways as community learning centers open to all individuals.

References:

Perelman, L. (1992). School's Out. New York: Avon Books.

1. What is the purpose of our educational system? Is it to educate a work force or is it something else?

Tom Peters’ called Perelman a visionary because of his idea of “kanbrain”- just-in-time learning, expertise, support, experience, and collaboration, based on the Japanese kanban system of on-demand (just-in-time) delivery that transformed manufacturing in the 1980’s. The kanbrain shift (just-in-time delivery of information) promises revolutionary changes in work, management and society.

Perelman places the emphasis on “work-force development” learning. He supports life-long career based education. No mention is made of knowledge for knowledge sake-the essence of Liberal Arts education-the creation of a well-rounded, knowledgeable member of society. He developed his theory of hyperlearning for a business audience, to explain how technology is spawning a new relationship between work and learning in a knowledge-based (intellectual capital) economy.

Knowledge (intellectual capital) is the “steel” of the modern economy. Learning has become the strategically central enterprise for national economic strength. Nations that replace the existing education training institutions with a brand-new high-tech learning system will be the world’s economic powerhouses through the 21st century.

Now learning is literally the work of the majority of U.S. jobs and will be what virtually all adults will do for a living by the early years of the 21st century.

Perelman is convinced that education as we know it is obsolete and irrelevant in today’s world and workplace. The central failure of our education system is not inadequacy, but excess: our economy is being crippled by too much spending on too much schooling. The knowledge aged economy will be mobilized not merely by automation but by intelligence, and will be filled not just with information but with comprehension.

The essence of education is instruction -something some people do to other people. But the essence of the coming integrated, universal, multimedia, digital global network is discovery - the empowerment of human minds to learn spontaneously, without coercion, both independently and cooperatively. The focus is on learning as an action that is “done by”, not “done to” a person.

Arthur Clarke and Seymour Papert have echoed a similar view of academic obsolescence. Papert stresses support for personal variation in learning styles, and for the increased acceptance by schools of the ability of children to learn without assistance. and, if given the incentive to learn it independently, will even learn a subject better than they would have learned it in school.

Papert (and Perelman) argue for a constructionist philosophy that will promote teaching "in such a way as to produce the most learning for the least teaching" (Papert, S., p. 139).

Reference:

Papert, S. (1993). The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York: Basic Books.

2. Can our continual attempts to tweak the current system actually accomplish anything? Or do we need major educational reform in this country?

No, our continual attempts to tweak the current system are not accomplishing anything. What is considered “educational reform” today is not useful at all. In fact, “nations that stop trying to “reform” their education and training institutions and choose instead to totally replace them with a brand-new, high-tech learning system will be the world’s economic powerhouses through the twenty-first century.” Reform is not going to get us anywhere. These little changes must be replaced by a complete overhaul. Ultimately, “reform is a hoax”. This “new, improved” education that current reformers are trying to sell us is actually causing our education system to decline further and further.

• The principal barrier to economic progress today is a mindset that seeks to perfect education when it needs only to be abandoned.
• Need to develop “hyperlearning” and open up to universal access

Criticisms of current reform:

• “technology is just a sideshow”
• "more of the same, only better”
• Reform platform of “American schools are failing” // Mission: catch up to the standards of other nations
• Claim that the central failure of our education system is inadequacy (In fact, it is excess: too much spending on too much schooling)
• Need a technological and political revolution (nonexistent in current reform)

3. What should we be teaching in schools? What are the new basics?

It is worth noticing that Perelman talked little about what should be learned in the new era. He argued that instead of gaining knowledge, the new learners should "actively involve in knowledge management", a process of "learning how to manage in an environment where knowledge represents the key factor of success" (Educom Review, 1997). However, he didn't demonstrate how such learning could be established. Perelman did give an example of a business manager failing to understand a productivity issue and taking wrong procedures trying to solve the problem to illustrate the failure of the current education system (Easterling, 1994). So it seems that the ability to interpret information and act accordingly is one skill worth learning in the new economy. On the other hand, it seemed like Perelman supported the idea to let learners decide what they wanted to learn (Easterling, 1994). He argued that even if people chose wrong things or took wrong approaches to learn, it would still be better than having a “professional bureaucracy” to decide what were good for people.

References:

Easterling, D. (1994). Learning without education. Retrieved November 26, 2006, from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/27/33/56.pdf.

Educom Review. (1997). Barnstorming with Lewis Perelman. Educom Review, 32(2). Retrieved November 26, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/32218.html.

4. What is technology’s role?

The technology’s role is to revolutionize the learning, not just to reform it or change the current practices. A revolution in learning (new waves of learning through technology) will be unavoidable since the new wave of technologies called hyperlearning will make pre-planned learning such as the classrooms absolute by taking it into the next level which will be accepted by people. Hyperlearning is transforming our knowledge and behavior through experiences. It will enable learning as discovery; learning as an action, “done by” not “done to” the actor. Learners will become more active in building their own knowledge structures in a nonlinear, just-in-time fashion through the actions and collaborations provided by the technologies such as Internet and computers. It will permeate from every where, any where at anytime.

Like McLuhen (1964), Perelman argues that the new role of technology in learning will bring about a change that will make the schools’ absolute. The role of technology will be to reinvent education or learning so that our current schools’ or classrooms’ will become absolute.

Reference:

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Gingko Press.

5. Where are we going? What will the future of education look like?

According to Perelman, the future of education will be hyperlearning. Hyperlearning “is not a single device or process, but a universe of new technologies that both possess and enhance intelligence” (Perelman, 1999, 6).

• hyper – “refers not merely to the extraordinary speed and scopre of new information technology, but to an unprecedented degree of connectedness of knowledge, experience, media, and brains; both human and non-human” (Perelman, 1999, 6)
• learning – “refers most literally to the transformation of knowledge and behavior through experience; what learning means in this context goes as far beyond mere education or training as the space shuttle goes beyond the dugout canoe” (Perelman, 1999, 6)
• “We have the technology today to enable virtually anyone who is not severely handicapped to learn anything, at a “grade A” level, anywhere, anytime” (Perelman, 1999, 6).
• “…schools are one of the principal barriers to the growth of not only this new industry, but the whole world economy” (Perelman, 1993).

Other Quotations:

• “What we need instead, says Perelman, is "hyperlearning" which can be achieved if we "form a coalition that demands the commercial privatization of the entire education sector." (104) "School's Out," he says. Let's sweep it into the rubbish can of history” (Dator, 1993, 10).
• Information technology theorist Lewis J. Perelman says: "In the near future, hyperlearning will be the core process of nearly all business, work, and home life. And that process has nothing to do with schooling, except to make it at best useless and at worst intolerable. But education, as an industry and institution, is not just going to fade away or be reformed into the 'classroom of tomorrow.' It's going to collapse suddenly and swiftly -- here today and gone tomorrow -- like the Soviet Union, or, for that matter, the World Series and Tom Foley." Perelman is author of the book "School's Out." (Seattle Times 11/27/94 J2) http://educom.edu/edupage.old/edupage.94/edupage-12.08.94 (Retrieved from http://urban.arch.virginia.edu/~km6e/tech_pres/teach_quotes).

References:

Dator, J. (1993). The college classroom of the year 2010. Seminar for Presidents of Community and Junior Colleges from Japan and the United States. Retrieved November 26, 2006 from http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/dator/education/class2010.pdf.

Perelman, L. (1999). School's out: Hyperlearning, the new technology, and the end of education. New York: William Morrow and Co. Retrieved November 23, 2006 from Blackboard Academic Suite.

Perelman, L. (1993). School’s out. Retrieved November 26, 2006 from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/hyperlearning.html.

University of virginia school of architecture. Retrieved November 25, 2006, from Untitled Web site: http://urban.arch.virginia.edu/~km6e/tech_pres/teach_quotes.