The Dying Art of Instruction in the Digital ClassroomTIM PARKS |
Umjetnost podučavanja u digitalnoj učionici na samrtiTIM PARKS |
| Is it possible to lose a foundation stone of one’s culture without even having identified it as such? This year will be my last year teaching at the university; I’ve decided to throw in the towel three years before retirement age. There are a number of reasons behind this decision, but one is definitely the changed situation in the classroom. Even at post-graduate level, it is getting more and more difficult to feel that one has the attention of students or that something really useful is happening during the lessons. | Je li moguće izgubiti kamen temeljac nečije kulture bez da je se identificira kao takvu? Ova godina biti će moja posljednja godina predavanja na sveučilištu; Odlučio sam odustati tri godine prije mirovine. Postoji nekoliko razloga za ove odluke, ali jedna je definitivno promijenjena situacija u učionici. Čak i na postdiplomskoj razini, sve je teže osjetiti da netko može zadržati pažnju učenika ili da se tijekom predavanja zbiva nešto usitinu korisno. |
| Of course, teachers have been reporting a loss of control in school classrooms for decades. I remember in the early 1970s a high school teacher working in a poor area of Boston telling me she might as well simply turn the radio on as loud as possible and spend her lessons listening to music. Friends in Milan today, teaching at the so-called scuole professionali, report similar experiences: the near impossibility of making oneself heard, the need to resort to more and more aggressive tactics to focus the minds of the pupils, many of whom simply don’t want to be there and can’t see the point. Having youth unemployment at high levels for so long in Italy hardly helps. | Naravno, učitelji desetljećima prijavljuju gubitak kontrole u školskim učionicama. Sjećam se u ranim 1970-ima kako mi je jedna profesorica u srednjoj školi, koja je radila u siromašnom području Bostona, govorila da bi mogla jednostavno uključiti što glasnije radio i držati lekcije slušajući glazbu. Prijatelji u Milanu danas, predavajući u takozvanim scuole professionali, izvještavaju o sličnim iskustvima: nemogućnost da se nekoga čuje, potreba za korištenjem sve agresivnijih pristupa za bolju usredotočenost učenika, od kojih mnogi jednostavno ne žele biti ondje i ne vide nikakav smisao. Visoka nezaposlenost mladih u Italiji nikako ne pomaže ovomu stanju. |
| Nevertheless, it was always assumed that such problems were specific to certain social situations or conditions of economic deprivation, that there would always be “good schools,” where “bright children” motivated by “attentive parents” behaved with respect and diligence and hence made useful progress. It seemed that if you had “well brought-up” youngsters and “serious teachers,” the formula of traditional teaching would go on working forever. Then came the computer, the Internet, and, crucially, the smartphone. | Ipak, oduvijek se pretpostavljalo da su takvi problemi specifični kod određenih društvenih zbivanja i u uvjetima ekonomskih kriza, te da će uvijek postojati „dobre škole“, gdje su se „sjajna djeca“ koju motiviraju „pažljivi roditelji“ ponašati s poštovanjem i marljivošću, što će svakako uroditi plodom napretka. Činilo se da će se, ako imate „odgojene“ mlade i „ozbiljne učitelje“, formula tradicionalnog poučavanja nastaviti uspješno primjenjivati zauvijek. Potom su stigli računalo, internet, i ključno, pametni telefon. |
| In his ground-breaking study Naven (1936), the anthropologist Gregory Bateson suggested that it is not what we learn that matters, but the way in which we learn, and that this was something that would be determined by the culture that we grow up in. He had been living with the Iatmul tribe in New Guinea, observing how the men in the tribe sought to know, or possess, extraordinary numbers of ancestral names (as many as twenty thousand) and the myths connected to them. Different clans in the tribe would challenge each other over such knowledge in open debate, asking questions over specific details, but at the same time never revealing an entire story, since to do so would put their possession of the ancestral names at risk. These curious circumstances, Bateson observed, had obliged Iatmul men to develop a kind of learning that was “directly opposed to rote remembering” of the kind used in the West. It was an extremely sophisticated system that affected their cognitive skills in general and the way in which they went about appropriating new knowledge in other spheres of life. The fact that different cultures developed different ways of learning, Bateson thought, might explain why one ethnic group might suppose another was less intelligent; each had different cognitive skills developed in different ways. | U svom revolucionarnom eseju Naven (1936), antropolog Gregory Bateson sugerirao je da nije važno ono što učimo, već način na koji učimo i da je to nešto što će biti određeno kulturom u kojoj odrastamo. Živio je s plemenom Iatmul u Novoj Gvineji, promatrajući kako muškarci u plemenu teže spoznati ili zapamtiti izvanredan veliki broj imena svojih predaka (čak do dvadeset tisuća imena) te s time povezane mitove. Različiti klanovi u plemenu izazivali bi jedni druge radi provjere toga znanja i otvoreno raspravljali, postavljajući pitanja o određenim detaljima, ali tako da istodobno nikada ne bi otkrivali cijelu priču, jer je tu ležao rizik da odaju svoje poznavanje imena predaka. Ove su čudne okolnosti, primijetio je Bateson, obvezale Iatmulske ljude da razviju vrstu učenja koje “predstavlja obrnuti pristup učenju pamćenjem”oblika koja se koristi na Zapadu. Bio je to izuzetno sofisticiran sustav koji je utjecao na njihove kognitivne vještine općenito ali i na način na koji su usvajali nova znanja u drugim sferama života. Činjenica da su različite kulture razvile različite načine učenja, pomislio je Bateson, mogla bi objasniti zašto jedna etnička skupina pretpostavlja da je druga manje inteligentna; svatko ima različite kognitivne vještine razvijene na različite načine. |
| The combination of computer use, Internet, and smart phone, I would argue, has changed the cognitive skills required of individuals. Learning is more and more a matter of mastering various arbitrary software procedures that then allow information to be accessed and complex operations to be performed without our needing to understand what is entailed in those operations. This activity is then carried on in an environment where it is quite normal to perform two, three, or even four operations at the same time, with a general and constant confusion of the social, the academic, and the occupational. | Smatram da je kombinacija korištenja računala, interneta i pametnog telefona promijenila kognitivne vještine koje se traže od pojedinaca. Učenje je sve više stvar savladavanja različitih proizvoljnih softverskih postupaka koji tada omogućuju pristup informacijama i obavljanje složenih operacija, bez da razumijemo što je sadržano u tim operacijama. Zatim se ta aktivnost vrši u okruženju u kojem je sasvim normalno istodobno obavljati dvije, tri ili čak četiri operacije, s općenitom uz učestalu zbrkanost društvenog, akademskog i profesionalnog života. |
| The idea of a relationship between teacher and class, professor and students, is consequently eroded. The student can rapidly check on his or her smartphone whether the professor is right, or indeed whether there isn’t some other authority offering an entirely different approach. With the erosion of that relationship goes the environment that nurtured it: the segregated space of the classroom where, for an hour or so, all attention was focused on a single person who brought all of his or her experience to the service of the group. | Ideja o suodnosu učitelja i razreda, profesora i učenika je na taj način narušena. Učenik može brzo provjeriti na svom pametnom telefonu je li profesor u pravu ili postoji li zaista neki drugi autoritet koji nudi posve drugačiji pristup. U narušavanje tog odnosa spada i okruženje koje ga je njegovalo: odvojeni prostor učionice u kojem je približno sat vremena sva pažnja bila usredotočena na jednu osobu koja je sva svoja iskustva prenijela na korištenje skupine slušatelja. |
| There was an element of seduction in this; it required a certain performance, the ability to impose what in the best circumstances you might call a collective enchantment. One thinks of the lesson that D.H. Lawrence, himself a schoolteacher, describes in Women in Love: Lawrence has his teacher, Ursula, “absorbed in the passion of instruction,” while her students are so hypnotized by her lesson that the arrival of an unexpected visitor is experienced as a shocking intrusion. | U tome je bio element zavođenja; to je zahtijevalo određenu izvedbu, sposobnost nametanja onoga što bi se u najboljim okolnostima moglo nazvati kolektivnim čaranjem. Čovjeku pada na pamet lekcija D.H. Lawrencea, koji je sam bio učitelj, a opisuje ju u “Zaljubljene žene: Lawrence je svoju učiteljicu Ursulu prikazao kao “zaokupljenom strašću podučavanja “, dok je njezine učenike toliko očarala lekcija koju su obrađivali da se dolazak neočekivanog posjetitelja doživio kao šokantno ometanje. |
| If the teacher was not up to it, of course, it was time wasted. I can think of no moments of my life more utterly squandered than my last high school year of math lessons with a pleasant enough man whose only aim seemed to be to get out of the classroom unscathed. In traditional schooling, where there is no authority, there is no learning. So it’s not hard to see why society began to look for ways of reducing its reliance on the charismatic teacher, imposing materials from outside (books, audio-visual aids, and so forth) and eventually looking for some more universal control in the form of a supreme authority that everyone could access at any time. | Ako učitelj nije bio na visini zadatka, naravno, vrijeme je bilo izgubljeno. Ne mogu se sjetiti ni jednog uzaludnije protraćenog trenutka svog života od završnih sati nastave matematike u gimnaziji u društvu dovoljno ugodnoga nastavnika i čovjeka, čiji je jedini cilj bio neometano izaći iz učionice. U tradicionalnom školovanju, gdje nema autoriteta, nema učenja. Stoga nije teško shvatiti zašto je društvo počelo tražiti načine kako smanjiti svoju ovisnost o karizmatičnom učitelju, namećući vanjske materijale (knjige, audio-vizualna pomagala i tako dalje) i na kraju tražeći za nekim oblikom univerzalnog kontrolora koji bi predstavljao vrhovni autoritet kojemu bi svi mogli pristupiti u bilo kojem trenutku. |
| Introducing supports of all kinds to reduce reliance on the charismatic teacher also had the added advantage, we were told, of making the classroom more interactive. Students no longer simply listened and took notes (as if that wasn’t a form of activity); they participated. So long as interaction simply meant doing exercises in books, it was something that could be integrated into traditional teaching well enough. When it became a matter of working with a computer, the intrusion that broke the spell of Lawrence’s classroom became the norm. | Uvođenje pomagala svih vrsta radi smanjenja ovisnosti o karizmi učitelja također je imalo dodatnu prednost u tome, rekoše nam, što učionicu čini interaktivnom. Studenti više nisu jednostavno slušali i bilježili bilješke (kao da to nije oblik aktivnosti); sudjelovali su. Sve dok je interakcija jednostavno značila ispunjavanje zadataka u knjigama, to je bilo nešto što se moglo dovoljno dobro spojiti u tradicionalno učenje. Kada je došlo pitanje rada s računalom, upad koji je šokirao čaroliju Lawrenceove učionice postao je pravilo. |
| In the late 1990s, I had my first experience of students bringing laptops into the classroom. At that time, there was no question of their having wifi connections. Since these were translation lessons, students argued that their computers were useful for the fifteen or twenty minutes when I invited them to translate a short paragraph. They translated better on their computers, they said; they could make corrections more easily. | Kasnih 1990-ih imao sam svoje prvo iskustvo s učenicima koji su u učionicu donijeli prijenosna računala. U to vrijeme nije bilo WiFi veze. Budući da su to bili satovi prevođenja, učenici su tvrdili da su im računala korisna u nekih petnaest ili dvadeset minuta rada kad sam tražio da prevode neki kraći odlomak. Bolje su prevodili na svojim računalima, rekli su; mogli su lakše vršiti ispravke. |
| Nevertheless, I noticed at once the tendency to hide behind the screen. Who could know whether a student was really taking notes or doing something else? The tippety-tapping of keyboards while one was speaking was distracting. I insisted laptops be kept closed except for the brief period of our translation exercise. | Bez obzira na to, primijetio sam vrlo brzo tendenciju skrivanja iza zaslona. Tko bi mogao znati hvata li učenik bilješke ili radi uistinu nešto drugo? Tipkanje po tipkovnici dok sam govorio strašno me smetalo. Inzistirao sam da prijenosna računala budu ugašena, osim za kratkog perioda naše prevoditeljske vježbe. |
| It was a long and losing battle. My university, in its determination to appear modern, introduced classrooms with laptop computers at every desk. I insisted that I be assigned old-fashioned classrooms. Students opened their laptops anyway. They ignored, or perhaps genuinely kept forgetting my rule. They had excellent dictionaries on their laptops, they protested. Wifi arrived. Now they could check things instantaneously. Now they could put a passage in Google translate or DeepL and simply edit the machine translation rather than translate. | Bila je to duga i bezizgledna bitka. Moje je sveučilište, u svojoj odlučnosti da bude moderno, uvelo u učionice računala za svaki stol. Inzistirao sam da mi se dodijele staromodne učionice. Učenici su ionako imali svoja prijenosna računala. Studenti su ignorirali ili možda zaista zaboravili na moje pravilo. Imali su izvrsne rječnike na svojim prijenosnim računalima, prosvjedovali su. Stigao je Wifi. Sada su podatke mogli odmah provjeriti. Sada su mogli staviti odlomak u Google translate ili DeepL i jednostavno urediti strojni prijevod, a ne prevoditi. |
| I pointed out that in this way they surrendered the possibility of actually understanding an original text and rearranging a whole sentence in the kind of diction and syntactical structures that their sensibility told them were most appropriate in their language. They understood this, but the machine approach was always there, as a lure. It was a procedure similar to the other procedures they had learned to carry out. For, by now, these are students who have grown up with computers. “Digital natives,” as they’re sometimes called, have a different mind-set. | Istaknuo sam da su na taj način odbacili mogućnost stvarnog razumijevanja izvornog teksta i preuređivanje čitave rečenice po dikciji i sintaktičkoj strukturi za koje je njihov osjećaj govorio da su najprikladniji u njihovu jeziku. Oni su to razumjeli, ali strojni pristup je uvijek bio tu, poput mamca. Bio je to postupak sličan ostalim postupcima na koje su naučili. Do tada su to postali već studenti koji su odrasli uz računala. “Digitalni domoroci”, kako ih se ponekad naziva, imaju sasvim drugačiji mentalni sklop. |
| Still, I continued to fight my fight and keep the laptops mainly closed, and I was holding my own pretty well I think, until the smartphone came into the classroom. In his 1923 lecture “The Ritual of the Serpent,” Aby Warburg remarked that the invention of the telephone marked the beginning of the end of the idea of a sacred space; from then on, the German scholar predicted, the ancient practice of segregating an area so that it was free from any interference would always be an uphill struggle—every form of ritual requiring total focus would be threatened by invasion from without. And he could hardly have foreseen the mobile phone, let alone the smart phone. Recently, I have read in newspapers of priests answering phones during mass and football referees making calls while the ball is in play. How can you stop a class of adult students from using their smartphones? | Ipak, nastavio sam voditi svoju bitku i laptope držati uglavnom zatvorenima i to poprilično uspješno, mislim, sve dok pametni telefon nije ušao u učionice. U svom predavanju “Ritual zmije” iz 1923. godine, Aby Warburg napomenuo je da je izum telefona označio početak kraja ideje o svetom prostoru; od tada pa nadalje, predviđao je njemački učenjak, drevna praksa izdvojenog prostora bez uplitanja vanjskoga svijeta će zauvijek ostati bezizgledna borba – svakom obliku rituala za koji je potrebna potpuna usredotočenost uvijek je ugrožen vanjskim upadicama.On dakako nije mogao predvidjeti mobilni telefon, a kamoli pametni telefon. Nedavno sam čitao u novinama o svećenicima kako odgovaraju na telefonske pozive tijekom mise i o nogometnim sucima koji također telefoniraju za vrijeme utakmice. Kako možete spriječiti razred odraslih učenika da koristi svoje pametne telefone? |
| Last year, the university told me they could no longer give me a traditional classroom for my lesson. So I have thirty students behind computer screens attached to the Internet. If I sit behind my desk at the front of the class, or even stand, I cannot see their faces. In their pockets, in their hands, or simply open in front of them, they have their smartphones, their ongoing conversations with their boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers, fathers, or other friends very likely in other classrooms. There is now a near total interpenetration of every aspect of their lives through the same electronic device. | Prošle godine mi je sveučilište reklo da mi više ne mogu dati klasičnu učionicu za predavanja. Dakle, imam tridesetak učenika za kompjuterskim ekranima priključenima na internet. Ako sjedim iza stola u prednjem dijelu razreda ili čak stojim, ne mogu vidjeti njihova lica. U džepu, rukama ili jednostavno ispred njih leže njihovi pametni telefoni, preko kojih se stalno komunicira sa dečkima, djevojkama, majkama, očevima ili drugim prijateljima, vrlo vjerojatno u drugim učionicama.Potpuno prožimanje svakog aspekta njihovog života putem istog elektroničkog uređaja je postignuto. |
| To keep some kind of purpose and momentum, I walked back and forth here and there, constantly seeking to remind them of my physical presence. But all the time the students have their instruments in front of them that compel their attention. While in the past they would frequently ask questions when there was something they didn’t understand—real interactivity, in fact—now they are mostly silent, or they ask their computers. Any chance of entering into that “passion of instruction” is gone. I decided it was time for me to go with it. | Da bih zadržao pozornost i održao rad, hodam stalno, kako bih ih podsjetio na svoju fizičku prisutnost. Ali cijelo vrijeme učenici imaju pred sobom instrumente koji im odvlače pažnju. U prošlosti su često postavljali pitanja ako je bilo nešto što nisu razumjeli – stvarna interaktivnost – sada oni većinom šute ili pitaju svoje računalo. Nema šanse za ulazak u onu”strast podučavanja”. Odlučio sam da je vrijeme da im se pridružim. |
| Of course, this doesn’t mean the end of learning. It doesn’t mean, or doesn’t necessarily mean, that people will be stupider (though perhaps they may seem so to survivors of a different world). My youngest daughter recently signed on for a higher-level degree in which all the teaching is accessed through the Internet. Lectures are prepared and recorded once and for all as videos that can be accessed by class after class of students any number of times. You have far more control, my daughter observes: if there’s something that’s hard to understand, you can simply go back to it. You don’t have to hear your friends chattering. You don’t have to worry about what to wear for lessons. You don’t miss a day through illness. And the teachers, she thinks, make more of an effort to perfect the lesson, since they only have to do it once. | To, naravno, ne znači i kraj učenja. To ne znači ili ne mora nužno značiti da će ljudi biti gluplji (mada se možda onima koji su odrasli u drugo vrijeme možda tako čine). Moja najmlađa kćer nedavno se prijavila za višu razinu obrazovanja u kojoj se svim oblicima poduke pristupa putem interneta. Predavanja se pripremaju i snimaju jednom kao video snimci kojima generacija za generacijom studenata može pristupiti neograničeni broj puta. Imate daleko veću kontrolu, moja kćer primjećuje: ako postoji nešto što je teško za shvatiti, jednostavno se vratite na to. Ne morate slušati prijatelje kako čavrljaju. Ne morate brinuti o tome što obući na nastavu. Ne može se zbog bolesti propustiti predavanje. A učitelji će, čini se, uložiti više napora kako bi usavršili lekciju, jer to moraju učiniti samo jednom. |
| The advantages are clear enough. But it’s also clear that this is the end of a culture in which learning was a collective social experience implying a certain positive hierarchy that invited both teacher and student to grow into the new relationship that every class occasions, the special dynamic that forms with each new group of students. This was one of the things I enjoyed most with teaching: the awareness that each different class—I would teach them every week for two years—was creating a different, though always developing, atmosphere, to which I responded by teaching in a different way, revisiting old material for a new situation, seeing new possibilities, new ideas, and spotting weaknesses I hadn’t seen before. | Prednosti su dovoljno jasne. Ali također je jasno da je ovo kraj kulture u kojoj je učenje bilo kolektivno društveno iskustvo, koje je podrazumijevalo određenu pozitivnu hijerarhiju, koja je i učitelja i učenika tjerala da urede poseban odnos za svaki razred, a koji ima svoju posebnu dinamiku u kojoj sam najviše uživao za vrijeme nastave: svijest da je svaki različiti razred – ja bih ih podučavao svaki tjedan tijekom dvije godine – uvijek bih nastojao stvoriti posebno ozračje koje je bilo stimulativno, za što sam pripremao predavanja na drugačiji način, preispitivanjem starog materijala za novu okolnosti, uočavanjem novih mogućnosti, novih ideja i otkrivanjem slabosti koje ranije nisam vidio. |
| It was a situation alive with possibility, unpredictability, growth. But I can see that the computer classroom and smartphone intrusion are putting an end to that, if only because there’s a limit to how much energy one can commit to distracting students from their distractions. The time has come to bow out. | Bila je to živo i neponovljivo iskustvo, nepredvidljivo i progresivno. Ali vidim da ulaskom računala u učionicu i agresija pametnih telefona svemu tome pišu kraj, jer nedovoljno je snage da se studente ometanjem omete od njima dragih ometala. Vrijeme je za predaju. |
| Izvornik: The New Yorker Review of Books,
The Dying Art of Instruction in the Digital Classroom July 31, 2019, 7:00 am |
Preveo s engleskoga: Lovro Počepan, 1.e |
Izvor naslovne slike: https://cdn.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/parks-teaching.jpg