McLuhan and the Future of Education: A Christian Critique

By Guest Columnist Annette J. Ford

McLuhan and the Future of Education
Education is a vast field of communication. In light of our changing society, is our educational system still effective in its present form, or is a paradigm shift needed? Indiana University professor Curtis Bonk wrote, “Web technologies have blown the doors to educational opportunity wide open. Schools, colleges, universities, government agencies, and corporate training organizations not only need to take notice, they need to take action” (2009, p. 22). Collins and Halverson wrote, “People around the world are taking their education out of school into homes, libraries, Internet cafes, and workplaces, where they can decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn” (2009, p. 3). Davidson and Goldberg asserted, “We continue to push old, uniform, and increasingly outdated educational products on young learners at their – and, by implication, society’s – peril” (2010, p. 24).

Many are calling for educational reform in our schools and universities. This essay first examines Marshall McLuhan’s views on education and reform, looking at (a) media ecology theory, (b) education’s progress from the tribal and literacy ages to the print age, (c) education’s progress from the print age to the electronic age, and (d) education’s future. The essay then critiques McLuhan’s ideas from a Christian worldview, looking at (a) a Christian perspective on educational reform, and (b) a Christian response to McLuhan’s views.

McLuhan’s Views on Education and Reform
Marshall McLuhan, originator of the media ecology theory, spoke to the issues of education and needed reform decades ago. He observed the effects of technology on our teacher-centered, knowledge-limiting school system, and wrote,
I say, therefore, with impersonal assurance, that unless we choose to abandon all electric forms of technology we cannot possibly retain in our teaching and learning the modes of instruction and apprehension associated with the mechanical forms of print and its innumerable progeny. (McLuhan, 1960, p. 10)

Media Ecology Theory
In order to understand McLuhan’s views on education and reform, a clear understanding of media ecology theory is necessary. Griffin summarized the theory as follows:
The media must be understood ecologically. Changes in communication technology alter the symbolic environment—the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings. We shaped our tools—the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegraph—and they in turn have shaped our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. Thus the medium is the message. (2009, p. A-5)

McLuhan said new media infiltrate our lives, “stripping the older forms of experience to their bare bones or basic codes” (1960, p. 11). This revolutionary change happens without our conscious acceptance of it, because we are so focused on what we know from the past that we do not see what is happening to us in the present (McLuhan, 1970). McLuhan and Fiore said, “When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future" (1967, pp. 74-75).

A clear understanding of the past does offer, however, a better understanding of the future, if one is willing to learn and apply the lessons. Examining education’s progress from the tribal and literacy ages to the print age, and then to the electronic age, offers wisdom in reforms for the future.
Education’s Progress From the Tribal and Literacy Ages to the Print Age
McLuhan described the pre-printing press era as characterized by orality in the form of dialogue, disputation, and active teacher-student interaction (1960). The printing press changed the world to be visually focused. It empowered students to read widely, quickly and silently, rendering oral learning, memorization, and disputation unnecessary. Instructors no longer needed to mentor students personally in their thinking and writing (McLuhan, 1960). In this new era, education separated the functions of teaching and learning, and focused on learning the content of individual subjects such as math, science and history, rather than on gaining broad insight (McLuhan, 1960). This compartmentalizing happened because “print exists by virtue of the static separation of functions and fosters a mentality that gradually resists any but a separative and compartmentalizing or specialist outlook” (McLuhan, 1962, p. 126).

Education’s Progress from the Print Age to the Electronic Age
McLuhan said, “Today radio, telegraph and T.V. have no moving parts. The electronic age abandons mechanism for the movement of light and information only…. It is inconceivable that school and society alike should not receive the full impact of this change” (1960, p. 2). “The new electric structures for teaching and learning are basically a return to dialogue, or to the fusion of teaching and learning functions” (McLuhan, 1960, p. 15). “Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. 'Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening” (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967, p. 63). Since McLuhan wrote, the Internet arrived, enabling further connectivity. The Internet combines television’s visual capabilities with the telephone’s two-way connection, and adds the library’s information access, creating a worldwide network unimaginable to past generations.

Although society has transitioned to the electronic age, our education system still operates in the print age. McLuhan said, “I can understand the ferment in our schools, because our educational system is totally rearview mirror. It’s a dying and outdated system founded on literate values and fragmented and classified data” (Rogaway, 1994, p. 13). Davidson and Goldberg said:

Youth who learn via peer-to-peer mediated forms may be less likely to be excited and motivated by the typical forms of learning than they were even a decade ago. Conventional modes of learning tend to be passive, lecture driven, hierarchical, and largely unidirectional from instructor to student. (2010, p. 50)

McLuhan said the environment outside the school is far richer and more informational than within the school, making school an interruption of learning rather than a place of true learning (1970). He said the child of the electronic era “finds it difficult if not impossible to adjust to the fragmented, visual goals of our education after having had all his senses involved by the electric media; he craves in-depth involvement, not linear detachment and uniform sequential patterns” (Rogaway, 1994, p. 13). Just as the assembly line approach to factory production has been largely replaced by electronic functions, so the assembly-line approach to education must be changed to become relevant and effective in our electronic world.

Education’s Future
McLuhan said, “In our schools there is simply too much to learn by the traditional analytic methods; this is an age of information overload. The only way to make the schools other than prisons without bars is to start fresh with new techniques and values” (Rogaway, 1994, p. 14).

Discovery learning.
The future of education, according to McLuhan, lies in discovery rather than in instruction (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). “There will be no instruction in our schools in a very few years…. No instruction at all. There will be discovery. Teams of students will be prowling the environment on research programmes, and that applies to elementary school children. Discovery takes the place of instruction in any environment in which the information levels are very high” (McLuhan, 1970, p. 3). McLuhan pictured discovery learning taking place by, for example, giving groups of four or five elementary students a project like “Punishment in Society,” and releasing them for several weeks to discover, discuss, investigate and research in the broader community, like detectives (1970, p. 7).

The MacArthur Foundation’s ThinkeringSpace project is a contemporary example of discovery learning. It creates “new experiential opportunities for exploring through tinkering and interacting both locally and remotely. By promoting fluid interplay of physical and virtual experiences, these environments introduce a new genre of hybrid interactive spaces” (Moura, Fahnstrom, Prygrocki, & McLeish, 2009, p. 48).

Discovery learning in schools requires instructors who facilitate and guide the discovery process. McWilliam said that in order for university students to thrive in our increasingly fluid society, they need the active participation of instructors who are meddlers in the middle instead of the traditional sages on the stage or more recent guides on the side (2008, p. 265). McWilliam advocated a shift in pedagogy toward encouraging “experimentation and risk-taking” by the teacher becoming a “usefully ignorant… designer, editor and assembler” and a “collaborative critic and authentic evaluator” (2008, p. 265).

No known answers, no absolutes.
McLuhan asserted that strong moral stances and spiritual values are part of the defunct print age (1960, p. 10). He said, “Our kids have no goals because they understand the world they are living in and you can’t have goals in an electronic total-field world. You cannot have fixed objectives” (1970, p. 2). He said the reason instruction should be replaced by exploration is “children reject any form of instruction, the answers to which are already known” (McLuhan, 1970, p. 7). He said, “I don’t care what problem you mention, I would welcome an opportunity to see the youngsters tackle it head on with a full understanding that there are no answers known and no holds barred” (McLuhan, 1970, p. 10). He said, “The meaning of the electronic is total decentralism, total diversity” (McLuhan, 1970, p. 4). “There is no maintaining of a point of view, but only the common participation in creating perpetually new insight and understanding in a total field of unified awareness” (McLuhan, 1960, p. 9).

Christian Critique of McLuhan’s View
Scripture says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15, NASB). Where is truth in the electronic future of education? Where is truth in McLuhan’s thinking?

Christian Perspective on Educational Reform
Schultze wrote, “We find ourselves talking about the entire educational enterprise apart from our responsibility to be better persons, caring neighbors, and wiser citizens. New educational technologies certainly deliver information, but can they also cultivate careful discernment and good judgment?” (2002, p. 56). Answers to this question lie both in shalom – “living a good and right life in tune with the moral wisdom gained through revealed truth” (Schultze, 2002, p. 72), and in mentoring.

Technology and shalom.
Educators in an increasingly electronic world must remember, “Unless we intentionally cultivate intimacy in a cyber-world, we will find it evaporating from our lives as we pursue instrumental practices” (Schultze, 2002, p. 36). Caught up in the wonder and novelty of emerging technologies, people easily forget the negative part of the Faustian bargain with technology described by Postman: “A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided” (1990, para. 5). Conway offered this solution to overcoming the negative side of technology:

So those who are members of the Body of Christ, who are building on the foundation of gratitude, praise, and service to the God made known in Jesus, need to help each other discern the attitudes of mind and heart that reflect his love and openness. Only by growing into this way of being and acting can the web of technological decision making become part of the movement toward the shalom of Christ’s kingdom.
(1999, p. 114)

Educators seeking reform must remember that “the media are potential resources to help us serve our neighbor by telling the truth and building communities of shalom” (Schultze, 2000, p. 121).

Educational reform through mentoring.
Jesus taught large groups of people, but he also focused much time and energy on a group of twelve men, three of whom were closest to him. In a world depersonalized by technology, education systems must offer the personal touch and kindness that small group mentoring and peer mentoring offer. Christian educators must work to bring the Christian disciplines of mentoring and discipleship into the classroom – even the secular classroom – developing a system of mentoring that will give each student personal challenge, worth, and attention as trained and trainer, mentee and mentor, learner and teacher. This is possible to an extent through the Internet, but “No fancy technologies that promise to relieve us of the burden of being somewhere are adequate substitutes for conversation, let alone for communities of hospitality and neighborliness. Being in real time and place speaks volumes” (Schultze, 2002, p. 179).

Christian Response to McLuhan
Although McLuhan tried to simply present facts and remain neutral in all he said, and although much of his analysis of the impact of new technologies is true, his postmodern view of absolutes is unscriptural. Referring to Internet based education, Davidson and Goldberg wrote, “The larger questions remain pressing, even universal: What to believe and on what grounds? On what rests the credibility of sources, on what basis are claims to be trusted, and what are the most and least compelling uses of available knowledge?” (2010, pp. 73, 74). As already described, McLuhan believed absolutes, moral values, and set answers are outdated and counterproductive in the electronic age.

Schultze said, “Like ethical chameleons we adapt our moral practices to the latest technologies rather than summoning our technologies to follow a long-term moral vision” (2002, p. 29). Christians must come back to the foundational premise that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17, NIV), and that truth, rather than shackling us and preventing progress, will set us free (John 8:32, NIV). Christians must be open to be led by God’s Spirit “in all the value judgments and decisions made on our pilgrimages as disciples of Jesus within a technological culture” (Conway, 1999, p. 115).

Conclusion
McLuhan implied that a paradigm shift is needed in education. Educators and researchers are looking for ways to introduce needed reform in an outdated system. Reform is necessary, but will be effective only if grounded in the truth of Scripture. With God’s guidance, Christians will discover great reforms that will revolutionize the world in education for the furtherance of the Gospel.

Resources
Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and schooling in America. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Conway, R. (1999). Choices at the heart of technology: A Christian perspective. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.

Davidson, C. N., & Goldberg, D. T. (2010). The future of thinking: Learning institutions in a digital age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look at Communication Theory (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

McLuhan, M. (1960). New media and the new education. (Report No. 1974). Retrieved from ERIC database: http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy.arbor.edu

McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man (1st ed.). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

McLuhan, M. (1970). Education in the electronic age. Interchange 1(4), 1-12.

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the massage: An inventory of effects. New York, NY: Random House.

McWilliam, E. (2008). Unlearning how to teach. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 45(3), 263-269. doi:10.1080/14703290802176147

Moura, H., Fahnstrom, D., Prygrocki, G., & McLeish, T. J. (2009). ThinkeringSpace: Designing for collaboration around the book and beyond. Visible Language, 43(1), 44-59.

Postman, N. (1990, October). Informing ourselves to death. Speech given at the meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik), Stuttgart, Germany.

Rogaway, P. (Ed.). (1994). The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan. In U. C. Davis, Ethics in an age of technology, ECS 188. (Reprinted from Playboy Magazine, 1969).

Schultze, Q. (2000). Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Schultze, Q. J. (2002). Habits of the high-tech heart: Living virtuously in the information age. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.