The debate over the value of information technology in learning within our institutions of higher education increasingly pits those who believe the historic paradigm of verbal dialogue between teacher and student is optimal against those who would try new strategies focused on learning rather than teaching.
It brings to mind a similar debate first recorded several thousand years ago in Plato's Phaedrus. As many of the defenders of the old paradigm invoke the tradition of Plato it might be useful to recall the story and contemplate the paradox.
I heard then, that . . . in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, whose sacred bird is called the Ibis, the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers, and arithmetic, and geometry, and astronomy, all draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters. Now the king of Egypt at that time was the god Thamus. . . To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying they ought to be imparted to other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved and disapproved.
The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which would take too long to repeat but when they came to letters,
"This invention, O King", said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of wisdom and memory that I have discovered." But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but to judge their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you who are the father of letters, may have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters, which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir, not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant, and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear to be wise."
To hear some in our community tell it, information technology not only signals the decline of learning, but perhaps the end of civilization as we have come to know it. It has always seemed paradoxical that so many folks in the academy who spend their lives learning through their research and scholarly pursuits, without the aid of classroom lectures, somehow feel that the only way everyone else can learn is in the classroom listening to lectures. It is more than a little ironic that we hear similar comments regarding the historic paradigm of the academic library.
Our historic compromises and the surrogates they spawned - the classroom lecture and the central book repository - have become so ingrained in our way of thinking that some can't imagine a world without them. What if, to begin with, books had been inexpensive and universally available and television had been invented by Plato? Would we still have created libraries as physical repositories and built educational institutions around them? Would the classroom lecture be the standard method of learning?
The major task confronting higher education, and it is a daunting one, is to find ways to use this marvelous new technology of computers and communications as something more than an add-on to our historic teaching and learning paradigms. We have made that transition in the way we conduct research and are making significant strides toward a similar transition in the way we administer our institutions of higher learning. These transitions are relatively easy to make because they fall in the personal/professional domain of the faculty or they are considered peripheral to the principal mission of the academy.
At the heart of the academy lies learning. And, lifelong learning lies increasingly at the heart of our society. We need to begin to redirect our energies from condemning the new and exalting the old to finding how to take the best features of the old, marry them with potential of the new and create new paradigms for a learning society. In doing so, we will take the academy to new heights of service to society - something which, no doubt, would be in the best tradition of Plato.
Robert C. Heterick, Jr., is president of Educom. heterick@educom.edu