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  • 标题:The state-of-the-art school: a fairy tale - Colloquium
  • 作者:David A. Gilman
  • 期刊名称:Technos: Quarterly for Education and Technology
  • 印刷版ISSN:1060-5649
  • 出版年度:2002
  • 卷号:Summer 2002
  • 出版社:Agency for Instructional Technology

The state-of-the-art school: a fairy tale - Colloquium

David A. Gilman

Once Upon a Time ...

Time was, when tribes taught their young braves survival skills--hunting, fishing, homeland defense, and growing of grain--by word of mouth. One day, a tribal elder noticed that burning leaves and twigs created smoke that could be controlled by waving a heavy animal hide over a smoldering fire. Braves could readily observe signals that the smoke created, and to their surprise, braves from other tribes reported that they, too, had seen the rising puffs of smoke. An unexpected finding was that braves camping in remote sites could also build fires and send messages to any tribe that they chose to send messages to.

Someone (nobody remembers who) reasoned that smoke signal lessons could be sent in such a way as to teach survival skills to young braves of many tribes. A council of tribes was formed to create and supervise training through a network of lesson providers. Some of the tribes were skilled fishermen, some knew how to grow grain, and others were fine hunters. Still others were proficient at defending their homes. In this way, each of the tribes offered its own training specialty through an intertribal network of smoke-signal creators.

The tribal elders praised their invention, saying: "Surely, our school is state of the art. There is nothing like it in the world." Word quickly spread about the convenience and economy that could result from teaching survival lessons at a distance.

The elders had wisely anticipated that their internet would experience technological problems. On rainy days, for instance, fires could not be built. On windy days, the smoke was wafted so that signals became garbled and confusing. There were logistical problems. Also, records of training were hard to keep because nobody knew for sure who was watching the signals at any given time or what progress the many students were making toward completing their training.

But another problem became the intertribal network's dirty little secret. Everyone knew about it, but nobody would ever talk about it. The tribal elders had become divided into three factions.

Sophists, Luddites, and Obfuscators

Some were Sophists who proclaimed that this was an idea whose time had come. They made outrageous claims about just what the inter-network was accomplishing and its unprecedented potential for teaching young braves. Their battle cry was: "Hot damn! Everybody must have our internet, and they must have it now." However, it became readily apparent that the creation of lessons was a slow process, and the school could not produce instruction quickly enough to satisfy its students.

Other tribal elders, the Luddites, were doubtful that anything as complicated as survival skills could be taught at a distance. "Smoke and mirrors," they proclaimed, "can never teach the sacred content that is contained on yellowed papyrus notes. We have always done it this way. It was good enough for our ancestors, and nothing could or will ever be as good as the old school." The Luddites, threatened by the changes that the State of the Art School foretold for them, set about to overthrow the School and even hindered the progress its students.

The third group, the Obfuscators, was the most dangerous of all. They had acquiesced to the reality of the tribal council and allowed for survival skills to be taught through the council's internet. But deep down, they believed that everyone in the tribes would come to believe that internet training was "superficial" and that the State of the Art School was handing out "cheap degrees." So, they sought to make internet training difficult to complete. Because of their limited abilities, the only ways that the Obfuscators could imagine to accomplish this was to make the lessons more ambiguous and to introduce endless delays. The Obfuscators told young braves that teaching was a low priority, for which there was not sufficient payment. Through bullying of their students and pettiness, they did succeed in making the distance learning more turgid.

Each of the three groups, through its Own arrogance, contributed to the demise of the State of the Art School. The Sophists were not able to create lessons quickly enough to satisfy the needs of students, who quickly became impatient because they were unable to progress due to lack of materials.

The Luddites' persistent sabotage and their claims of the inadequacy and failure of the State of the Art School caused students to say to each other, "We shall not touch the State of the Art School with a 10-foot spear."

The young braves came to see the Obfuscators as rigid, anal retentive, petty, and frustrating. Many braves left the tribe so that they could continue survival training elsewhere, and others gave up the study of survival skills altogether.

Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians

Now the tribal chiefs, who never understood the complexity of the internet, could have solved this problem through meetings of the three groups. However, because of tribal rules, jurisdictional disputes, and territorial imperatives, each chief was reluctant to become involved in the struggle. The chief of fishing could not be bothered with student problems caused by difficulties in hunting training. The hunting chief did not want to hear problems that had anything to do with the growing of grain.

The grand chief of survival training said, "Don't dump these problems in my teepee. Find yourself another chief to complain to." The young braves noted that there was no place they could go for help or guidance.

Students went from one chief to another, only to find that their complaints always seemed to fall into black holes. This made progress toward their training goals impossible to attain. An ever-increasing number of them abandoned internet lessons, and others sought refuge in more traditional training offered by other councils and tribes.

One day, the elders noticed that there were no students in the State of the Art School. There were chiefs, elders, and would-be teachers, but the smoke signals were no longer rising and young braves were no longer watching the skies. Slowly but surely, it became readily apparent that the State of the Art School had died.

And the moral of the story is that for a school--even a state-of-the-art

school--to survive and prosper, the smoke has to blow both ways.

David A. Gilman is professor of education at Indiana State University in Terre Haute and has been a pioneer in the areas of research in computer-assisted instruction and distance learning since 1965. He teaches distance education classes through statewide television, Web-based instruction, and tape/CD format. His daughter and co-author, Ruth Ann Gilman, is an instructor at United Space Alliance in Houston and at Corporate Education, a consortium of San Jacinto Community College and the University of Houston. She has taught distance learning courses through lecture, statewide television, and Web-based instruction.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Agency for Instructional Technology
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

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