Follow up: “The iPhone Mom: Applications for Educating, Distracting, and Multitasking”

I am not even going to comment this. The picture is already enough. If you cannot catch the evident and disturbing symbolic implications of the image, here is a quote for you: “Now I’m not ashamed to admit that I have apps on my iPhone for the sole purpose of keeping my five year old distracted while I navigate Costco. But on the other hand, I also have apps that have helped him learn how to read. My ten year old has used apps to gain a better grasp on her multiplication skills and my seven year old has become a better speller through word games”. If you need more read this blog. If you need more… I really do not know how to help you.

Laptops in class

Some professors in the U.S. are (finally) realizing what was evident since the beginning. Laptops and Wireless, for obvious reasons, are distracting students and constructing an "inappropriate" learning environment — now I am waiting for some brilliant psychologist demonstrating that multitasking reduces concentration, inhibits creativity, etc. David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown, in 2007 (a pioneer) banished laptops from his class. When he raised the idea of cutting off laptop access with his colleagues, some accused him of “being paternalistic, authoritarian or worse”. And, of course, these “masters” added: “We daydreamed and did crosswords when we were students, so how can we prohibit our students, who are adults after all, from using their time in class as they deem fit?”. Comparing a crossword to Google, Facebook, YouTube etc… How can anyone possibly make such a comparison? Furthermore, who is the genius of pedagogy who thought that students would benefit from wireless connection in class? You can read Cole’s articles in the Wahington Post, and check an interesting video showing professors frustration about laptops in class, some other reactions to the use of cell in class (usually breaking them in pieces or similar ) and another interesting experiment during April 1^st 2008 that summarize lots of things, laptops, evaluation etc.  I leave it up to the student’s sense of responsibility what to do with the laptop. I do, anyway, have a dream, a tiny but significant dream… May be one day a student — the average price for a private four-year university in the U.S. is around $28,000 (see this Report) — will tell to the colleague sitting next to him: “Could you please stop surfing the web, you are distracting me. I am not paying so much money to follow your Fakebook conversations”. Along with the freedom to surf the web — let’s put it this way — it exists also the freedom not to waste money and get a good education.

Max Weber: Science as a Vocation

Excerpts from Weber, Max (1918) Originally a speech at Munich University. Published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich. Eng. Trans. Science as a Vocation (Eds. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press 1946.

Science as a Vocation

What is the meaning of science as a vocation ... Tolstoj has given the simplest answer, with the words: “Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question important for us: what shall we do and how shall we live?”... Politics is out of place in the lecture-room. It does not belong there on the part of the students ... Neither does politics, however, belong in the lecture-room on the part of the docents ... 

The true teacher will beware of imposing from the platform any political position upon the student, whether it is expressed or suggested. “To let the facts speak for themselves” is the most unfair way of putting over a political position to the student... One can only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations... If he asks further why he should not deal with both types of problems in the lecture-room, the answer is: because the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform...

To the prophet and the demagogue, it is said: “Go your ways out into the streets and speak openly to the world”, that is, speak where criticism is possible. In the lecture-room we stand opposite our audience, and it has to remain silent. I deem it irresponsible to exploit the circumstance that for the sake of their career the students have to attend a teacher’s course while there is nobody present to oppose him with criticism... 

The task of the teacher is to serve the students with his knowledge and scientific experience and not to imprint upon them his personal political views. It is certainly possible that the individual teacher will not entirely succeed in eliminating his personal sympathies. He is then exposed to the sharpest criticism in the forum of his own conscience... I ask only: How should a devout Catholic, on the one hand, and a Freemason, on the other, in a course on the forms of church and state or on religious history ever be brought to evaluate these subjects alike? This is out of the question. And yet the academic teacher must desire and must demand of himself to serve the one as well as the other by his knowledge and methods... The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize “inconvenient” facts — I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts... 

In practice, you can take this or that position when concerned with a problem of value... If you take such and such a stand, then, according to scientific experience, you have to use such and such a means in order to carry out your conviction practically. Now, these means are perhaps such that you believe you must reject them. Then you simply must choose between the end and the inevitable means... Does the end justify the means? Or does it not? The teacher can confront you with the necessity of this choice. He cannot do more, so long as he wishes to remain a teacher and not to become a demagogue... 

The error [of youth] is that they seek in the professor something different from what stands before them. They crave a leader and not a teacher. But we are placed upon the platform solely as teachers. And these are two different things... The qualities that make a person an excellent scholar and academic teacher are not the qualities that make him a leader to give directions in practical life or, more specifically, in politics ... The professor who feels called upon to act as a counsellor of youth and enjoys their trust may prove himself a person in personal human relations with them. 

And if he feels called upon to intervene in the struggles of worldviews and party opinions, he may do so outside, in the market place, in the press, in meetings, in associations, wherever he wishes...