All We Need Is a Warm Hug.
“I wondered if all I had ever really needed was the equivalent of a warm hug from a cold algorithm.” Ta-Nehisi Coates
This quote sounds like the new version of all that’s needed is a warm hug from a tough parent. But wait, this time there is no one to do the kicking but an algorithm. Thank God. Now everyone is off the hook. We can blame the machine. This quote comes from a story written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s called "The Littlest Schoolhouse" and was published in The Atlantic in July. Its really a nice article with some very good points about growing up, but the centerpiece of the story is the latest technological craze that let’s students and staff see results on student achievement right before your eyes. Like video games, students are in front of a computer screen and learning math from lessons that will supposedly take them past test anxiety, increase their motivation and deem them ready to enter into the world of college and work. Can a warm hug really be built into a cold algorithm? I’m not sure, and I’m skeptical of the notion and the software they are promoting. I don’t think that machines read emotions very well and they really can’t tell if you really understand something. Remember, even in classrooms where teachers can sense student’s level of engagement, we are asking teachers to teach to the test so a student will look good to an algorithm. We are taking out the human factor. Our eyes no longer matter because only the instruments that measure matter. This type of schooling is not about thinking and/or tinkering or understanding. This is about testing to a measure and going on to the next measure with the assumption being the measures measure whether we really can use knowledge and not just repeat words back the way they came to us.
In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr states, “We have to remember that the Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as ‘knowledge work...What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.”
Shades of Chaplin’s Modern Times; where is Charlie when we need him more than ever?
Carr ends his article with a reference to HAL, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
So perhaps Ta-Neshi Coates is correct and this is where we are heading. HAL may be the most likely candidate to give our children a warm hug from a cold algorithm and we become the machines.
In Mathew Crawford’s book from Shopcraft to Soulcraft, he states, "The mechanic’s proper response to the situation cannot be anticipated by a set of rules or algorithms." Ahh! I’m feeling a bit better now. Crawford takes us to the other side.
In two weeks Big Picture Learning will be running its second symposium of the year at the Maker’s Faire in Dearborn, Michigan. Aptly named by Charlie Mojo, Make Their Way In the World will bring together the BPL symposium team to facilitate, assimilate,and create new ways to make in and out of school. It sometimes seems like only a few of us know that tinkering and thinking happen at the same time. They play with one anther even though at times they act separately. There is no one-way and as Mark Mitton told me in our weekly phone call, “the dirty little secret is that thinking and tinking are both inaccurate and you need both.” Leave it to Mark to mystify us with language and reality. All you have to do is watch the cap being put on the well in the Gulf this week and you’ll see tinking and thinking in action. The problem in schools is that there is a complete lack of balance between tinking and thinking. How we correct this is part of our BPL mission but the solution could also help us resolve the gaming dilemma when the games allow you to both “think and tink.”
Please feel free to send me your thoughts, comments, reactions, or suggestions. I would love to hear from you!
Monday, July 19, 2010 at 03:35PM
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