Hyperbole and hubris (it’s absurd, really)
Corrie Bergeron (twitter: skydaddy) tweeted the following, attributed to David Warlick:
“We are the first generation in history that knows we have to prepare our children for a world which we cannot imagine.” - @dwarlick
I replied that I thought the quote was absurd, and Corrie asked why. Since I thought my response would take more than 140 characters, I decided to write a short post here instead of via twitter.
I’m actually surprised that this statement just passes unchallenged as truth. We’re the first generation to rear children in uncertain times? Really? I was born and grew up at the tail end of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, free love–a time more broadly known as “the 60s.” I can’t even imagine what my parents might have thought about my future. I think it would be a fairly trivial exercise to look back at history and pick out periods of unrest or change where parents might have thought the future uncertain or unimaginable.
Such alarmist quotes bring to mind a Mark Twain essay I read in high school, Was the World Made for Man? In short, it’s a satire about man’s hubris in thinking that he is the perfect end result of creation. I also think it’s a bit of hubris to think that we are the only generation to live in a time of change or uncertainty. A few quotes from that Twain essay:
An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. And anyway, this one could not know, at that early date, that he was only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more to the scheme, yet…
Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.
That’s why I think the quote is absurd; it is absurd to think that we are the first generation to face an unknown future. It is extreme and alarmist. If you have to resort to absurd, extreme, alarmist statements to sell your ideas, I wonder just how valid (and valuable) those ideas are.
September 3rd, 2008 - 10:00 am
Well said! Very well said. It seems to me that fear is often used by those that are weak and wish to remain in power. Fear of the future, fear of retaliation etc.
p.s. like your tag line “It’s the teaching, not the technology.” I may borrow that if you don’t mind.
September 3rd, 2008 - 12:57 pm
Thanks for taking the time to reply at length. I still disagree. .
I, too, grew up in the 60’s. My dad worked for a large company. It was his first “real” job (not counting the typical high school and college jobs, or the stint in the Navy during WW2). He put in 40 years and retired. That was the way the world worked, and there was no reason to expect things to change. There was no talk of “re-careering” or “the brand of you.”
Vietnam was just a proxy for the Cold War; that was understood. We fought in ‘Nam to avoid having to lob ICBMs, it seemed. After ‘Nam we hammered away at various agreements, but the USSR clearly wasn’t going away.
Sure, technology was changing things, but in predictable, incremental ways. Yes, we went to the Moon, but that was really just an extension of Manifest Destiny. We’re Americans; we explore new lands. Next question?
Sure, communications technology was changing. Communications satellites were amazing - they let ABC, CBS, and NBC broadcast live across the country, and helped our calls on AT&T get across the country more efficiently. But electronic communications were still controlled by Ma Bell and the Big Three when I was a kid, and CNN and MCI weren’t even visible on the horizon. Interestingly, portable phones were demonstrated by James Bond and Maxwell Smart. (Not to mention Dick Tracy back in the 30’s with his TV wristwatch)
Take a look at the most forward-looking, futuristic film of the time: Kubric’s “2001″. Remember the scene where the character makes a videophone call? Ma Bell. And who could have imagined that by 2001, not only would there *not* be commercial space travel, but that **Pan Am** would be bankrupt and out of business?
When I was a kid, my Dad - and my teachers - could not have imagined the World Wide Web, GPS, YouTube, the iPhone. We live in a world that is not only NOT what they imagined, but that they could not have imagined.
But they didn’t realize it at the time.
September 3rd, 2008 - 1:21 pm
Corrie, I agree that our parents couldn’t have foreseen these technological advances; however, I don’t think we are the first generation to be facing an uncertain future. You could name nearly any item or historical event and say people of the previous generation could not have imagined it. Who (in 1850) knew Archduke Ferdinand would be assassinated? Who (in 1400) knew the Spanish were coming? Boats, trains, cars, and planes have all changed the world. Change happens. The end is near. My parents don’t understand me. The future will be different. Film at 11:00.
September 3rd, 2008 - 1:30 pm
I am challenged on that statement every once in a while, especially when people encounter it outside of the context of my presentations.
Certainly we’ve known times of change and rapid change. I, too, am from the post-WWII generation who lived with the Red Scare, unprecedented economic growth, war, civil rights, and all of that before the advent of personal computing.
The difference is that when I became a teacher (years before Apple and TRS-80) and many of my friends entered their jobs in manufacturing (textile mills for my part of the country), we had no reason to believe that our jobs would change in any substantial way over the next 35 years.
Today, however, most of us recognize that our world is changing so rapidly that we can not predict the work place and many aspects of future lifestyles. The difference is that today we know it — and I believe that this has profound implications regarding what and how we teach.
The point of that statement is that we know that a huge part of work and life in our children’s future (and ours) will be continuing to learn. One of North Carolina’s State School Board members said in a talk a while back that you go to college to get your first job — that college can’t prepare you for the next, because we don’t know enough about it.
I agree wholeheartedly that it is “not about the technology.” I couldn’t agree with you enough. However, I think that today, it is much more about the “learning” than it is about the “teaching.” My generation was taught how to be taught. Our children need to learn how to teach themselves.
– dave –
September 3rd, 2008 - 3:32 pm
Dave,
Thanks for chiming in. Back in our parent’s day it was ALL about the tools - you learned to be a plumber, or a mechanic, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith - your tools didn’t change, and you didn’t expect them to. Today, we KNOW that the tools are going to change. We just don’t know how.
See, Todd, that’s the difference. The Black Plague, the Reformation, WW1, an so on… these were unforseen, but the people they happened to not only didn’t see them coming, they had no clue that Something Big was just over the horizon.
We KNOW there’s something out there. That’s the difference. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it’s a “known unknown.”
September 3rd, 2008 - 6:41 pm
Corrie, you’re entering the field of religion/historical cosmology, and that’s a place I don’t care to go. I once read a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and after a visit by some gypsies one of the characters commented that amazing things were happening all over the world while they continued living like donkeys. I still don’t buy the notion that we’re the first generation to be facing a “known unknown.”
Dave, I certainly agree with your point that learning how to learn is critical. Educators and psychologists have been writing and talking about this for quite some time. I see it in my work every day–older students returning to school after the factory closing, layoffs, divorce. I saw it in my mother and father who, although they were able to keep the same career (for the most part), were always having to learn new things to stay current. I see it in my own position and a recent change in focus from technology to teaching and learning. Perhaps my life experience has been radically different, but I find it hard to believe that this sort of change is a new thing.
I get the shift from industrial to information and all that entails, I just disagree that the “world which we cannot imagine,” is unique to this time in history. One need only refer to The Saber-tooth Curriculum for ancient examples!
September 30th, 2008 - 11:53 am
[…] fundamental problem with this view of the unpredictable, unfathomable future is that it assumes that the relatively recent historical growth trends will continue in a positive […]