Chris Lott

[Gardner Campbell & Jim Groom, OpenEd09]

Day Two of Open Education 2009 and I can honestly say I’ve yet to see a presentation that wasn’t at least as good as the best presentations I’ve seen at any conference anywhere.

Gardner Campbell’s “No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences” is one of those that had me repeatedly saying to myself “every teacher needs to watch this.” In true Gardner-esque fashion—the model I aspire to—he weaved together the invention of the alphabet, Brazil, Shakespeare and the music of the spheres, and much else besides into a (there’s no other word for it) compelling whole.

I came to this conference seeking hope… hope that despite the brokenness of our educational institutions, good teachers can elevate the profession; hope that despite the toll exacted by the daily grind of working within those institutions, excellence can be had. Gardner’s presentation restored some of that hope… his excellent (and funny) analogy to being given a bag of gold is what I need to keep in mind when I return to the other part of my real world.

My question is, how to maintain that hope? Gardner puts forth a premise that we should be teaching using narrative, curation and sharing. We all like to talk about the regressive factors that hold us back: institutional lethargy, recalcitrant educators, simple fear, technological complexity. But worse still is that as much as those factors exist, progress towards this vision of education is impeded by people at the front. Creating narrative is thwarted by concerns about community building and identity. Curation is pushed back by far-leaning constructivists and discovery-based educational theory promoting leading from behind. Efforts at sharing crumble and dissolve beneath the weight of arguments over licensing and which space should be used. Despite the clarity of these three simple concepts—narrate, curate, share—the world feels exceedingly dark.

Gardner used the example of a quotation that feels like it was written yesterday but was actually the words of Marshall McLuhan from over 40 years ago. I’ve used similar examples from the work of Baltasar Gracian (300 years ago) and Michel Montaigne (500 years ago). The wise words grab our attention and confirm our intuitions and desires… but they cut sharply the other way. Go back 40 years, 300 years, 500 years—go back to Plato and Haraklitus—and the relevance of their words also demonstrates clearly how little progress has been made. How do we keep the faith if the answer to that lack of progress is wait, wait, wait, it’s coming, but not yet?