An Engaging Pedagogy “Sesame Street”

“Sesame Street” undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents.” When I read this statement of Neil Postman, I wanted to read what he had to say about the different forms of education prevailing throughout the history. The reason was also because I was intrigued by his article- Postman, N. (1998). Five things we need to know about technological change. http://Recuperado de http://www. sdca. org/sermons_ mp3/2012/121229_postman_5Things. pdf.

So when I started reading the back ground for: “Sesame Street” undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents.” I was amusingly-interested in reading the backdrop of this book, the works of Marshall McLuhan and Neil postman; both the writers felt that media has the potential to bring about change, however their perspectives differed. For Mc Luhan, his “the medium is the message” approach emphasized qualities of media and technologies with their varied repercussions on human perception and behavior. Postman critiqued how media was affecting cultural and educational theory. He was concerned with the effect of television, and its impact on education, public discourse, and the erosion of critical thinking skills. McLuhan spoke about the transformative potential of new media technologies. He believed that technological innovations, including television, had the power to reshape society and create new forms of communication and community. Postman’s idea of Classroom was that of a place of interaction whereas it was becoming a space in front of the TV. The two significant concepts mentioned here are:  there’s the shift of responsibility from human educators to an entertainment medium. Secondly, there’s the shift from a social learning environment, like the classroom, to a solitary one, in front of a screen. Over three decades later, these issues remain unchanged. Whereas skimming through the various works of Postman- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” (1992), “The Disappearance of Childhood” (1982), I felt Postman was more skeptical of the impact of television and other media technologies. He warned against the uncritical adoption of technology and argued that certain forms of media, particularly television, were contributing to the erosion of traditional forms of knowledge and critical thinking.

Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in today’s world is bound to lose the lustre. In our everyday life as we wake up the smartphone has many apps to take care of our time, workout, To do’s, health, travel, so on and so forth. Segregating technology from today’s world means separation from the world.

One thing I do agree with Postman is that: “Parents need to regulate how much time their children can watch television and what they can watch, what films they can see and even what records they can have. They must talk to their children a lot about what they are exposed to in these media. If parents are paying considerable attention to what’s happening, then I think it’s possible to provide children with a childhood.

But, if you are too busy or your life circumstances, for whatever reason, don’t permit that, then NBC, CBS, Steven Spielberg, Coca-Cola, and Procter and Gamble will simply do the job.”

Postman continues:

This does not mean that “Sesame Street” is not educational. It is, in fact, nothing but educational—in the sense that every television show is educational. Just as reading a book—any kind of book —promotes a particular orientation toward learning, watching a television show does the same. “The Little House on the Prairie,” “Cheers” and “The Tonight Show” are as effective as “Sesame Street” in promoting what might be called the television style of learning. And this style of learning is, by its nature, hostile to what has been called book-learning or its handmaiden, school-learning. (p. 144)

If against this backdrop we view the contemporary world, how knowledge is imparted, how learning happens, especially after the onslaught of IOT, connectivity and then Pandemic; we can practically operate, learn, and educate ourselves with media being the prominent factor. I feel the key to calibrating what works what doesn’t (Faustian Bargain) makes all the difference. The various ways of imparting education today seem kind of indispensable, which can be MOOC, Virtual classrooms, Social Media, video sessions, etc. Change has been constant ever since; if we look back in the history; in the 5^th century BC, the 1^st change came when the Oral culture shifted to alphabet- writing culture, the second was in 16^th Century with printing press, the 3^rd is with EdTech.  

http://elearninginfographics.com/the-history-of-classroom-technology-infographic/¹

A lot of education for all age groups is not just imparted through various Educational websites, Social Media, LMS…rather online element always exists in one form or the other.  The need for paper notebooks is almost fading. And I think this is what Postman dreaded. While the most common objects in the 20th century classroom consisted of slates, boards, pens, sheets of paper, chairs and desks, personal digital devices have become central objects in today’s BYOD schools. In the BYOD model the devices that are used for education are owned by students and which have their personal stuff, stored onto these devices, to school (Carvalho et al. 2016).  Henceforth the digital media brings loads of distraction for the students and that in some way affects the quality of education too

References

Willis, D. J. (1987). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business [Review of Technological Media, from Message to Metaphor: An Essay Review of Neil Postman’s

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” by N. Postman]. Journal of Thought, 22(1), 58–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42589207

Carvalho, L., Goodyear, P., and de Laat, M. (2016). Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315724485