posted
An interested discussion came up at work today. Consider the rough categorizations of the Ages of Civilization:
Hunter/Gather Age (pre Babylon) Agrarian Age (?BC to 1800s) Industrial Age (1800s to present) Information Age (present day to 2020?) Bio-Technical Age anticipated to begin around 2020.
Much discussion could be had simply on these categorizations and what they mean, but what struck me was a comment on the state of our education system:
Our school structure (at least in the US) is largely intended to teach our students information to be successful in an Industrial society modeled around a calendar built on an Agrarian society.
It is sort of a slap-in-the-face obvious statement that summarizes a lot of the glaring problems in education.
Of course, I also wonder what was meant by the phrase "bio-technical age" and what such an age would entail.
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One quick problem I see with this structure you've presented is that it's unclear how you're determining your "ages". It looks like it's in relation to the main way the economy is structured, but then I'd have to question the supposed existence of a future "Bio-Tech" age (the focus I'd imagine will still be on information creation), and I'll also quibble over the dates for the Information Age (certainly started before 2000).
But the bigger issue is why the production system is the only one that matters (I'm an economist, too, so I'm fighting my bias here ). What about big jumps (or falls) in social developments, such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, etc?
Also, we've got countries that still mainly consist of subsistence farming, many that are just now industrializing, and then a few that are jumping full throttle into the information age. How does that affect international politics?
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posted
¨Also, we've got countries that still mainly consist of subsistence farming...¨
There are some groups that are still hunter/gatherers, in a few really remote areas. It will be interesting to see where those groups are in 100 years, or 400.
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posted
I'd say the invention of currency and the fall of the feudal system (due, as I understand it, to the firearm) are worth inclusion. With these come democracy and widespread education.
I'm not sure what "biotechnical age" is supposed to mean. Cyborgs? Artificial Intelligences?
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I'm not sure Babylon is a good marker of the beginning of Agrarian societies. There were non-nomadic agrarian societies long before there were cities.
quote:Also, we've got countries that still mainly consist of subsistence farming, many that are just now industrializing, and then a few that are jumping full throttle into the information age. How does that affect international politics?
This was always true of the world. It's only now that we're so aware of the level of development as directly affecting us.
I have a few quibbles with this: You seem to ignore intermediate periods such as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, all markers that historians use to track the advance of western civilizations- those concerned with tools, at least. Pooka pointed out that there was a change at 1500ish that marked the advancement of the merchant economy. This of course ignores the back and forth of various civilizations, the East etc.
I think that were you going to stick to judging food by production (which you seem to have done) I would suggest going by the percentage of the population involved in the gathering/sowing/harvesting/preparing/selling etc. of food. For instance, in a Hunter/Gatherer society I think that effectively 100% of the population able to help (i.e. not so ill or so young they cannot even perform simple tasks such as feeding a fire) would be involved in the production of food. An early agrarian society might to drop to 95%, with some people specializing either in leadership or other technical roles. This would drop more slowly as various advances were made and depending on where you were and the population you count. Rome would have a lower count than, say, more northern areas in the same era. 1000C.E. in Europe this might be down to 85%. You'd get a fall again with the growth of cities at 1500 to maybe 80% and this would then proceed to drop dramatically with the Industrial era down to much lower numbers- 50%? (I'm making these numbers up but I know info exists on this very topic). 20th century it would plummet to, depending on where you were, to as low as 10%-6% (this is including packaging, shipment, and sales remember- actual farming is much lower).
You could counter this by people involved in non-agrarian work (such as blacksmith or nowadays someone in a factory making clothes) and the sudden rise of people in the service industry which would start out with scribes and counsellors and end up with making up a vast portion of the population in Westernized countries.
I think you have to think about what makes your Ages of Mankind, and if you're going to mix and match various things by precedence (i.e. sometimes social changes make a bigger change than technological changes) you have to speculate which is which and why this change is better than some other change.
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Who was king during the Hunter Gatherer days? Well, not king, but chiefs? It was not the greatest Hunter or Gatherer, but the wise men and women who knew how to use the food and resources the wisest.
Who was king during the bronze, or the Iron ages? Not those who forged the Iron and Bronze weapons, but those who had the wisdom to know how to deploy those who used them.
Who was the king during the Industrial Revolution? It was not those who created the new industries, or invented the new world, but those who had the wisdom to use those industries to power their nations or their pocketbooks.
Who was the kings during the Nuclear Age? It was not the nuclear engineers, or the physicists. It was the politicians who knew how to use the fear of those weapons do create or maintain empires.
Now, who are the kings in this information age? It is not those who build or design or run the computers. The digital technocrats we call nerds. Not even close. It is those who best know how to use and deploy the information--Tom Delay, Putin, Osama Bin Laden.
In the information age, the spin doctor is no more. He is the Spin Lord.
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quote:Also, we've got countries that still mainly consist of subsistence farming, many that are just now industrializing, and then a few that are jumping full throttle into the information age. How does that affect international politics?
This was always true of the world. It's only now that we're so aware of the level of development as directly affecting us.
How were there information or industrialized-based civilizations before there was industrialization? If you go back, say, 500 years, there's not that much difference between most parts of the world. You could take a Aztec farmer and drop him in feudal Europe or, say, India, and he'd probably understand a lot of what they were doing. Might be amazed at the farming technology (quality of metal or the particular animals working as beast of burden), but I doubt it'd take that long for him to get the hang of things. He could do the same work that the average peasant was doing.
Compare that with taking some of today's illiterate, never-been-beyond-the-neighboring-village subsistence farmer from Africa or India or China, and dropping them in the middle of Silicon Valley, where the information economy is perhaps strongest. The skill-base of the average worker there is so completely different that I'd be surprised if he understood what most people were doing or why. It's not exactly The Gods Must Be Crazy, but it's not that far away.
(I'm ignoring those few hunter-gather societies that still exist in isolated pockets, since there's so few of them left.)
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posted
I want to assure you that I'm not overlooking the inadequacy of the 'ages' listed here. I have many of the same questions about the missing eras like the Dark Ages, and the sole dependence of the economic systems involved. As for the dates listed,...well, I suspect those were pulled out of a donkey's rear end, if you know what I mean.
I also wonder what in the heck was meant by the "Bio-Tech" age and what evidence there is to support that this is coming about. This topic was presented as a smaller part of a discussion about education.
So...
Leaving the discussions regarding the specifics and validity of the dates/ages/eras aside, I think the presenter today had an astoundingly good point: that our education system is hopelessly out of sync with the world for which we must prepare our children.
What possible reason do we have for having summers off in the education system? (Other than the potential for student revolt around the world, that is...)
Why is our goal seemingly to get kids ready to work in trades? Shouldn't we focus on instilling in them a hunger for knowledge and then arm them with the tools and abilities to seek it out? If so, how do we accomplish this?
What is the best way to fashion students into contributing members of a society of the Information Age? (I think it is more important to educate people to be contributing participants in the Age rather than rulers of the Age, with all due respect to Dan_Raven.)
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posted
¨I'm ignoring those few hunter-gather societies that still exist in isolated pockets, since there's so few of them left.
Some of those groups are still living those lifestyles by choice, like some of the Machiguenga. They´ve had a taste of what we´re offering, and they don´t like it. Not only that, they are in places that are probably going to be super-remote for a looong time, like the Amazon rain forest. There might not be a lot of people by the numbers, but their remoteness, as well as their unwillingness to assimilate might mean that they´ll be unassimilated for a good long while.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: Why is our goal seemingly to get kids ready to work in trades? Shouldn't we focus on instilling in them a hunger for knowledge and then arm them with the tools and abilities to seek it out? If so, how do we accomplish this?
Could you elaborate more on what you mean by this? In what way are schools focusing more on preparing students for "work in trades"?
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quote:Originally posted by steven: ¨I'm ignoring those few hunter-gather societies that still exist in isolated pockets, since there's so few of them left.
Some of those groups are still living those lifestyles by choice, like some of the Machiguenga. They´ve had a taste of what we´re offering, and they don´t like it. Not only that, they are in places that are probably going to be super-remote for a looong time, like the Amazon rain forest. There might not be a lot of people by the numbers, but their remoteness, as well as their unwillingness to assimilate might mean that they´ll be unassimilated for a good long while.
I don't disagree, steven. There's some islands where we know virtually nothing about the populations there (other than that they exist), because any outsiders (or their helicopters) are attacked as soon as they're spotted. However, in discussing world society/societies they're such outliers that it's just not worth it to keep adding on an "except for those tribes..." clause.
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The Age of the Hunter-Gather - pre33,000BeforeCommonEra
The Age of Art and Burning - 33,000BCE to 9,500BCE Ever-increasing signs of the use of symbology and art. Harvesters along with ever-increasing spread of the use of fires deliberately set to suppress unwanted vegetation (ie weed-control) to encourage the growth of crop trees and bushes. Arboriculture. Barter.
The Age of Beer - 9,500BCE to 6300BCE Man discovers grains that naturally ferment into alcohol and also easily dried to be preserved for longterm food storage. and Having good reasons to encourage grain grasses over crop trees, agriculture is invented.
The Age of Agriculture - 6300BCE to 2900BCE Rapid spread of deliberate sowing and planting as well as irrigation. Beer for everyone.
The Age of Civilization - 2900BCE to 600CommonEra Rise of cities, states, and empires. Writing and thus history. Money to buy beer.....that could also be used to buy stuff of lesser importance.
The Age of Horsepower - 600CE to 1315CE Replacement of human muscle-power; including draft-horses, plows, windmills, watermills, etc
The Black Death - 1315CE to 1420CE Hitting the MalthusianLimit. Idiot nobility desiring ever more expensive baubles warring to loot other countries because they can't steal enough from their own. And the Plague.
The Age of Reason - 1420CE to 1709CE Modern/practical Colleges. Science and political philosophy replacing superstition and the Divine Right of Kings and Bishops. Banking and private bank notes. Mass-production printing. Literacy becomes de rigeur for the better off.
The Industrial Revolution - 1709CE to 1855CE Inexpensive cast iron which leads to coal-fired steam-power replacing human and animal labor. Goods made only by highly skilled craftsmen replaced by goods made by laborers using mass production techniques. Public libraries. Public literacy via laws mandating private education. Economic philosophizing.
The Age of Chemisty & Electricity - 1855CE to 1903CE Steel, petroleum, chemical engineering, generators & motors, clean lighting, etc. High speed transportation independent of weather. Telegraphs and telephones for high-speed low-density communication. Publicly-funded education. National currencies replace private bank notes. Foundational work for economic science.
Age of Communication - 1903CE to 1966CE High-density cinema, national telephone networks, radio, and television weaving nearly autonomous regions into singular nations. Similarly, massaging national agendas to form common international goals. Foundational work for economic engineering.
Age of Information - 1966CE to 1983CE Compiling and correlating data sets into streams of useable information. Easy credit for the common man. The BigBlueMarble and the development of the GlobalVillage philosophy. Economics remains mostly a collection of sycophants hoping to gain status by spinning sophistry for the betterment of thieves.
Age of the World Wide Web - 1983 to at least 2030 From cellphones to Internet to videophones and personal GPS, the common man gains the ability to have nearly continuous contact with nearly anyone else in the World. Eventually, similarly quick&easy retrieval of all info through the Library of the SemioticWWWeb. The GlobalVillage becomes a generally accepted philosophical foundation for ethical transactions. National identities evolving into a transnational identity. Economics will become a hard science. And sophistry will earn only scorn from economists wielding hard engineering.
The Age of BioTech or the Singularity (whichever comes first) - post2030 - The end of human labor. Gaining the knowledge and power to collectively do whatever we want that isn't ruled out by physics... ...or by negative psychological interactions. Disliking that limit, nearly all people opt out for intravenous feeding to live a fulltime VirtualLife within VirtualReality games. ArtificialIntelligences will raise the cognition and self-awareness levels of near-sapients such as chimps, elephants, dolphins, etc, and former human companion animals such as cats and dogs....cuz the AIs will miss the cute antics of their little pet humans. Neochimps et al will slowly colonize the galaxy as each replacement generation of AIs undergoes its own Singularity. And through those long light years riding between stars, neodogs and neocats will still tell tales of wonderment&longing about Man the Creator.
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: What about big jumps (or falls) in social developments, such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, etc?
*facedesk* Don't fall for the propaganda. The "Dark Ages" never really existed, and the Renaissance just had better PR.
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posted
[doomsayer]We're forgetting the impending doom of the oil crash and global warming, and the wars and famines that will result.[/doomsayer]
We're also forgetting the inevitable Rise of the Machines. 2029 will be the year we finally kill Google by sending terminators back in time to destroy the internet.
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: What about big jumps (or falls) in social developments, such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, etc?
*facedesk* Don't fall for the propaganda. The "Dark Ages" never really existed, and the Renaissance just had better PR.
Both Wikipedia and a number of different history journals I searched through certainly seem to believe that the "Dark Ages" - i.e. the Early Middle Age - existed even if it's not as bad as we're told in elementary school. And it was certainly a different "epoch" socially than the times before or after it, which is all I was trying to point out.
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BandoCommando: That must be one of the "things" they're talking about in education these days...I went to a conference last summer and all anyone wanted to talk about was 21st century literacy and how much kids have changed.
The one really interesting idea I took away was how our current middle/ high school structure mimics the factories of the Industrial Age (which I believe is the term our speaker used...interesting). Bells ringing, subjects taught as if they are discrete and unrelated--kind of like how factory workers would become very skilled at one small part of creating whatever it was the factory was creating. And yes, her ultimate point (I think it was Kylene Beers speaking, but I could be wrong...there were 3 or 4 headlined speakers at the conference) was that the way we are educating kids is inappropriate and ineffective given how knowledge needs to be used now, let alone 5-10 years into the future when these kids will be entering the workforce for the first time--or 20 or so years down the road when they'll be in the middle of their careers.
To answer one of your questions--we prepare students to be effective participants in the Information Age by teaching them to read in its broader sense. Decoding is necessary, comprehension is important, but they don't go far enough, despite what state standardized testing would have us believe. Students need to be critical of the texts they read (where "text" is information conveyed in any medium). They need to be able to think. And teaching kids to think is wayyyy harder than teaching them to do.
NCLB has had positive effects on education--we have to care about students in subgroups who aren't performing at minimum standards. But I believe that it has been detrimental to this kind of deeper, critical reading. which is hard to measure with a multiple-choice test.
I didn't mean for this to turn in to a NCLB rant, though. Sorry. Posts: 834 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Liz B: education does indeed tend to work in trends. The discussions about preparing students and modifying education for 21st century needs is quite old: I had just never heard it put in the terms I had today.
By the way, NCLB rants are more than welcome as far as I'm concerned. You are absolutely correct about the relative difficulty of teaching kids to think.
ricree101: What I mean can't easily be summarized, but my use of the word 'trades' is certainly a gross mischaracterization, for which I apologize profusely.
In primary/secondary education, we tend to teach a very broad range of topics, but rarely do we go very much in depth with them. "A mile wide and an inch deep" was a quote oft mentioned today in our discussion. Ostensibly, we are giving our students a sampling of a wide range of fields, hoping that they will find one to latch onto and desire to explore more deeply, hopefully selecting that one as the field that they pursue as a fulfilling career.
The unfortunate thing is that we are not simultaneously arming our students with the necessary skills to decode information on their own and truly pursue subjects that interest them. Additionally, so many students are overwhelmed by the breadth of the subjects taught that they end up with little interest in exploring any of them in depth.
Nevertheless, by post-secondary school, students are expected to have chosen a field in which to specialize. While not always the case, college attendance is often geared toward earning a degree that grants qualifications in a specific field. Students may change a few times, or eventually select a degree that gives them a wide variety of career options, or perhaps even get their degree in one field and find a job in another. But, by and large, college degrees are often specifically for a particular field of employment. This is what I meant by my earlier phrasing, which was definitely unclear.
Secondary school is NOT geared toward a specific subject, but this is a huge problem as well. Secondary schools operate on the assumption that everyone who leaves high school will go on to pursue a degree in a more specific field, when, for better or worse, students often do not pursue continuing education.
Because of the lack of in-depth training in *any* subject, and because students often leave high school without the critical thinking skills, research skills, or even inquisitiveness necessary to learn on their own, they are often left to fend for themselves.
Another possible interpretation of my earlier phrase could be that education seems intended solely to create a work force, but not one that is necessarily intelligent (on an individual or group level). In the so-called Information Age, high demand is placed increasingly on those who have the flexibility, drive, and resources to acquire new skills and adapt to new situations. School curricula do not often nurture these attributes, except by random chance.
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quote:But, by and large, college degrees are often specifically for a particular field of employment. This is what I meant by my earlier phrasing, which was definitely unclear.
This is becoming less and less true. More and more, the bachelor's is broad, and it is the advanced degree that is specific.
quote:You are absolutely correct about the relative difficulty of teaching kids to think.
Amen! And in many ways, that is precisely the issue.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: This is becoming less and less true. More and more, the bachelor's is broad, and it is the advanced degree that is specific.
Perhaps this is a good thing. I think that universities are better at encouraging in-depth thought than are the secondary and primary schools. Certainly my own professors encouraged us to re-examine preconceived notions and often gave excellent critical feedback to our own ideas. Liberal arts studies are great at this.
The only breakdown was (for me) the freshman- and sophomore-year sociology classes that I took to meet general degree requirements (for the so-called social sciences. Why aren't they just called social studies? I would think that true scientists would be very much opposed to the term 'science' being applied to a field where experiments with controlled variables are nigh impossible.)
The professors were very much opposed to any contrary (conservative) opinions and expected their students to take them at their word rather than providing sources and examining the evidence at hand. For me, it at least provided a challenge in that I was forced to provide compelling arguments on behalf of my viewpoint. But for all of the sheep who took those classes, they only needed to ape the words of the professors without citing sources, and they usually ended up with a better grade than did I.
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Medievalists rant about this all the time. It's one of our pet issues. The Renaissance gets re-labelled "Early Modern" and early modern scholars get to lord it over us oooh, we're more "accessible". Ugh. Even general-history journals fall for it.
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quote:The Renaissance gets re-labelled "Early Modern" and early modern scholars get to lord it over us oooh, we're more "accessible". Ugh. Even general-history journals fall for it.
I would add that "Early Modern" is much more common in English history/lit. than in others. I do quite a bit in Italian lit., where we call it the Renaissance. 'Cause, you know, that's where it came from. Posts: 100 | Registered: Jun 2006
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