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| navigate: home: magazine: spring/summer 1998: article | |
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Scholars explore impact of technology on education and society By Deborah A. Benedetti | ||||||||||||
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Graduate students in Dr. Henry C. Johnson Jr.’s seminar on the impact of technology on education and human life were so concerned about the issues they were discussing they urged their professor to find a way to share this information with a broader audience. The result was the development of an international conference on the topic Education and Technology: Asking the Right Questions. “My students prevailed upon me to undertake this effort. I agreed to develop a conference if they would help me,” Johnson said. He formed a planning committee, enlisting the assistance of Penn State colleagues James Martin, associate professor of psychology, and Carl Mitcham, associate professor of philosophy and Science, Technology and Society. The colleges of Education and the Liberal Arts sponsored the conference in collaboration with Penn State Continuing Education. The conference featured 80 papers and poster presentations. More than 200 participants from more than 30 states and 17 countries attended. “The more I read of Jacques Ellul’s work, the more I became persuaded he was a major voice of our time in interpreting our life with technology,” Johnson said. A Penn State faculty member since 1971, Johnson is interested in the history and philosophy of education and the history of educational thought, as well as the impact of science and technology on education. He taught graduate seminars on issues of education and technology prior to developing the Education and Technology conference. “The planning committee decided to dedicate the conference to Ellul and Ivan Illich, another primary voice and critic of technology who now teaches at Penn State,” Johnson noted. Ellul (1912–94), a French philosopher, sociologist and social critic, is best known for his landmark work of 1954—the book La Technique: ou l’enjeu du siècle (The Technological Society). He spent his life warning against the power, not of this or that machine, but of the technological ordering of all human life, Johnson said. Illich, himself deeply influenced by Ellul, became known for his views on technology and society through a series of four books published during the 1970s: Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality, Energy and Equality, and Medical Nemesis. He now serves as professor of philosophy and Science, Technology and Society at Penn State and divides his time between the United States, Germany and Mexico. With the writings of Ellul and Illich as a foundation, the conference planners developed five themes: technology and education in general, the effect of technology and education on the person, the effect of technology on the socioeconomic situation, the effect of technology on the culture and the effect of technology on schooling. They placed special emphasis on the impact of technology on the Third World. “On the first night of the conference, we immediately began a conversation that continued throughout the conference,” Johnson added. “It was unbelievable how people who did not know each other personally, but who shared very strong concerns about technology, melded into a community during the conference.” The planning committee invited leading technology critics to address the conference, including: Seyyed Nasr, professor of Islamic studies, George Washington University, who focused on the impact of technology on Third Worlds; Joyce M. Hanks, professor of French, University of Scranton, and a colleague and translator of Ellul, who spoke on technology and her teaching experience in the Third World; Langdon Winner, professor of political science, Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, who dealt with the use of technology in higher education; Daniel P. Cérézuelle of Bordeaux, France, a student of Ellul and collaborator, who focused on the effects of schooling on the individual in contemporary France; Neil Postman, chair of the Department of Culture and Communications and professor of media ecology, New York University, who addressed the issue of technology and education; David W. Gill, professor of applied ethics, North Park College, who discussed the problems of technology; Willem H. Vanderburg, director of the Centre of Technology and Social Development, University of Toronto, who discussed technology and the person; Clifford G. Christians, research professor of communications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who talked about technology and schools; and Leonard J. Waks, professor of educational leadership and policy studies, Temple University, and adjunct professor of Science, Technology and Society at Penn State, who also spoke on the issue of technology and schools. The addresses and papers from the conference are being prepared for a volume on the major themes of the conference, as well as for publication in various professional journals which have requested them, Johnson said. Partly in response to the suggestions of many attendees, another conference—on ethics and education and technology—is already being planned for 1999 at Penn State. This conference, under the chairmanship of Carl Mitcham, will continue the conversation begun at the 1997 conference. an outreach program of the colleges of Education and the Liberal Arts | |||||||||||
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