The Brave New Citizen By :
Jamie Mckenzie
This article is based on a keynote delivered at the November 2007
annual conference of the National Council of the social studies.
In
essence, social studies promotes knowledge of and involvement in civic affairs.
And because civic issues - such as health care, crime, and foreign policy - are
multidisciplinary in nature, understanding these issues and developing
resolutions to them require multidisciplinary education. These characteristics
are the key defining aspects of social studies. NCSS Standards
New technologies promise all kinds of great miracles like stronger
thinking and better writing, but it turns out that many of those promises
amount to Fool's Gold, unless good teachers and good schools combat much of the
marketing and pressure to substitute templates, wizards and short-cuts for
careful research, logic and questioning.
These technologies bring
a mix of peril and promise as they may promote and nurture desirable
citizenship behaviors or may do the very opposite, spawning a generation
content with the glib, the superficial and the well-packaged.
We must be on guard
against the onset of "mentalsoftness" characterized by a
preference for platitudes, near truths, slogans, jingles, catch phrases and
buzzwords as well as vulnerability to propaganda, demagoguery and mass
movements based on appeals to emotions, fears and prejudice.
Smart uses of new
technologies such as mind-mapping software combined with strong questioning and
the pursuit of "difficult truths" can serve as antidotes to the
disturbing cultural drift brought on by an uncritical embrace of all things new
and digital.
No comments:
Post a Comment