Freire, the Matrix, and Scalability

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An excellent presentation on Freire at AERA titled I’m Morpheus in this Hip-Hop Matrix: The Industry, Oppression, and the Word provoked some of the most (personally) interesting thinking I’ve done in a while. Short version: I’m now thinking that talking about the scalability of educational opportunity is immoral, and that there is a far bigger problem facing instructional technology researchers than simply making education more effective.

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Montreal. AERA is a massive gathering – around 15,000 people descend on a city and take it over for a week. Equally overwhelming is the experience of trying to find sessions to attend – talks generally start around 8am and run through 8pm, with 50 or more concurrent sessions going on in parallel every hour of the day. The presentations are generally of decent quality, reporting research that is generally well designed if generally of little consequence.

I generally only average two or three sessions a day at AERA given all the people there are to catch up with and all the joint projects there are to plan. But something amazing happened this year. One of the sessions I attended was good. Not good in the sense that I enjoyed it, but good in the sense that attending it transformed my perspective completely. The session was comprised of three papers on Freire’s work; I only caught the last two. Borrowing a lyric from a popular song, the second of the papers was titled “I’m a Morpheus in this hip-hop Matrix.” The paper’s author connected Freire’s ideas of oppression and the transparency of systems of control to the Matrix, and then went on to analogize the work we educators are called to do with unplugging people from the Matrix. He proceeded to quote lyric after lyric from hip hop songs to show how some artists are taking on this role, revealing and exposing forms of institutionalized oppression from which many black youth know no alternative. He derived an interesting taxonomy of oppressive forms from the lyrics of these songs as well, including police, prison, drugs, and school.

I think the author was right. Morpheus and Freire would agree that, like the proverbial fish that cannot see or know the water, these youth (and many other individuals) are controlled and manipulated by systems of oppression. Our role, as educators and human beings, is to “free their minds” as Morpheus would say. To unplug them from the system. Morpheus said, “This is a war. And we are soldiers.” I agree with the spirit of this statement. We should each be waging peace, freedom, and equity in our classrooms and daily lives.

The author of the next paper commented on the role of love in education. Quoting Freire, he said that we should not fear to be laughed at, ridiculed, called unscientific, or even called anti-scientific, but that we must base all we do in education in love. Love for the student, the learner, the other. He went on to describe Freire as a spiritual man, and bemoaned the fact that this aspect is left out of many discussions of his work.

It made me think… over and above the classroom, the commonplace realm of our daily lives is critical. As I recently read in bell hooks, all that we say, think, and do is robbed of its power if we lack integrity in our lives. Integrity that involves truly living out the principles of peace, freedom, love, and spirituality. As bell said, most of the places we work, and the communities in which we participate, are openly hostile toward these types of commitments, particularly spirituality. It takes hard work to embody these principles in all we say, think, and do, moment after moment, day after day, year after year, with consistency and integrity.

When the presentations were over, it was time for audience questions. This is generally the most completely useless part of AERA presentations, as listeners take the opportunity to grandstand, make comments rather than ask questions, and generally unfurl their intellectual tail feathers in stupid attempts to show one another up. However, there was a different feeling in this room. It was almost palpable in the air. This was a group of people who really believed all the things that had just been said, and they were about to practice those beliefs. As questions were asked and comments were made, listeners applauded both the speakers and each other, built constructively on what had been said before, and verbally and silently supported each other. You could feel it. It was unique among all the professional meetings in which I have ever been involved. It was truly inspiring.

Reflecting on the experience of attending this session brings me back to one of my favorite topics – the automation of the delivery of instruction and the provision of feedback. As I interact with an intelligent tutoring system, what will be the source of my inspiration? Who will be the teacher I remember forever, with whom I form a transformative bond of trust, who I know cares and worries about me? Where is my connection to an other? Where is the modeling of competent, passionate living? Where is the enculturation into a community of meaningful practice?

I know as well as anyone else the reasons people are so interested in automated instruction. Scalability of instruction is the primary reason. (Insuring that the instructional experience is completely uniform and exactly consistent for every single student is another, but we will leave its inappropriateness for another time.) There is a political problem with talking about the scalability of instruction that makes it morally inappropriate. “Scalability” looks at the ability to reach large numbers of learners, and the economics of doing so. This is morally inappropriate because “scaling to a large number of learners” implicitly and purposefully excludes some learners. Generally, we assume that the excluded group is comprised of potential learners without the financial means and other resources available to secure access to educational opportunity. (Or it could be that one group is excluded in order to provide an economic or military advantage to another group.) Regardless of which reading of scalability one may choose, we should never talk about scalability of instruction because the language of scaling is the language of exclusion for the sake of profit. Instead of talking about “reaching large numbers of students” we should talk about “reaching each and every potential learner.”

Numerically the difference between “large numbers” and “all” may be small, but it is the largest philosophical distance of which I am aware. We should speak of education as a universal and inalienable right. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that as many men as we can scale to are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – for as many people as we can scale to.”

This thinking leads me to reaffirm my position that there is a larger educational research problem to solve than making instruction more effective. The scientific literature is full of research that will tell anyone willing to read how to make education extremely effective. It is high time the field of educational research, and especially instructional technology research, decided that the most pressing problem facing us today isn’t making education more effective, it is making education more available.

Here’s an idea – let’s spend billions of dollars and millions of person hours per year making significant progress on the access problem, which progress we can make if we will, instead of committing those same resources to making almost unperceivably small incremental improvements in the effectiveness with which we keep instructing the same subgroups.

18 thoughts on “Freire, the Matrix, and Scalability”

  2. Sounds like a good commentary for your next address at an ADL event 😉 But seriously, I share your concern for the dehumanizing aspects of technology particulary with respects to scalability…

  3. Hi There,

    This has certainly occured to me — but that is because I am not entrenched in education — but I do teach. The underlying logic that drives much application of technology in learning is deeply flawed.

    We are clinging on to the ideas fostered by the Industrial Revolution — but we are in post-Industrial Revolution. We invented computers to take drudgery out of our lives — computers are great for boring repetitive tasks.

    Does this describe teaching?

    We (our founding fathers) decided that we needed an educated population for a sustainable democracy (which is true), but we decided we would push for consistency. Education is very expensive. We wanted it cheap. Computers can help enforce consistency. No Child Left Behind is a embodiment of this mindset — that metrics from industry can be applied to education completely.

    Now — we have 200 seat classrooms. We complain that students don’t show up. We complain they don’t learn. We decide to give them clickers to “engage them”.

    I could go on. I stand on the threshold of starting a masters or PHD (at 45)– but it is looking more and more like it will not be in education. I don’t think I can help fix it that way. I have to look for another way. Education is that important to me.

    Thank you for your excellent posting.

    –hal

  5. Thanks to Stephen Downes for noting this article, and for your bringing it to my attention David. I share similar concerns and sometimes get very caught up in trying to fix the present systems, whereas this approach seems more redeemable and appropriate in our times. I will join the efforts, and would really like to see some practical projects to move this idea forward.
    Do you know of any links to the actual presentations? It would be great to read or hear the words that were so inspiring.

  6. Thanks to Stephen Downes for noting this article, and for your bringing it to my attention David. I share similar concerns and sometimes get very caught up in trying to fix the present systems, whereas this approach seems more redeemable and appropriate in our times. I will join the efforts, and would really like to see some practical projects to move this idea forward.
    Do you know of any links to the actual presentations? It would be great to read or hear the words that were so inspiring.

  7. The answer is to stop thinking about “providing” education and start thinking about facilitating or encouraging learning. Learning is what people do. Education and all that implies, is about delivery of a commodity. Learning is about internalization and ownership of knowledge.

    The way to scale learning for everyone is to expand your learning environment to the world. As long as we say “education happens here” or “this is educational” and “this is not” we won’t be helping anyone. Humans are made to learn, and they have to be forced to stop learning.

    Real innovation will improve access to mentors, and just plain old folks with ideas and opinions who are willing to share them. Sharing our thoughts and ideas is the way to spread learning. That’s why weblogs are so interesting. Getting a wide variety of ideas is the real value. Of course we need to help everyone learn how to use this type of information and think critically for this kind of idea to work.

    I think you can say that your experience at the conferenece was a learning one, and that was from receiving ideas from others willing to distribute them. It worked because the people in the room wanted to help each other understand what they had learned from the presentations.

  8. Thanks for this commentary, David.

    You say, “Scalability” looks at the ability to reach large numbers of learners, and the economics of doing so. This is morally inappropriate because “scaling to a large number of learners” implicitly and purposefully excludes some learners.”

    To me, this seems illogical. Scalable systems at least have the potential to reach more learners with the same amount of economic resources than non-scalable ones. Thus, non-scalable systems will necessarily exclude more learners than scalable ones.

    You address this somewhat when you state a little further along, “. . . we should never talk about scalability of instruction because the language of scaling is the language of exclusion for the sake of profit. Instead of talking about “reaching large numbers of students” we should talk about “reaching each and every potential learner.””

    I don’t think that you can always associate desires for scalable systems with profit motives. Scalable systems mean that given economic resources can reach a greater number of learners. I think that to many educators, reaching large numbers of students is the practical outowrking of the ideal of reaching each and every potential learner. Without attention to how to utilize given economic resources better, providing education to all will not be achievable in practice.

  9. Hi David
    I come here reading the commentary of Stephen Downes and love to read all that you said. I’m brazilian and don’t write well in english.
    We, here in Brazil, have good inspiration in Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. As he said, the student doesn’t learn when we put the content inside him, as we put money in the bank. We all learn when we understand the meaning of the things. When we create inside us the correspondent meaning that reflect the content.
    Paulo Freire let a great work to all educators and I think that this work will support educational research outside Brazil, as it supports here.
    I finished my master degree last year, researching about teacher education, mainly about the inserction of technology in the work and education of the teacher. In this work I propose to use weblogs and technologies like that, because they are open, interactive, public and free.
    I associate in this work Paulo Freire, Vygotsky (social learning), Bakhtin (to understand weblogs). The dissertation (here we call it this way) was indicate to be a phd (doctorat) work and, now, I’m working in it.
    I intend to continue with Paulo Freire and with weblogs/rss/wikis in a way to build alternatives of critical approach to technology in teacher education.
    I’ll be happy to find people discussing weblogs and this theories. In Brazil weblogs in education is very new and there are a few works about.
    If you can read portuguese, my dissertation are in the digital library of the University: here.
    best regards from the south of Brazil,
    Suzana

  10. David,
    As I write here on my new ultra computer (VaioU71) I wonder about your comments on scalability, which I find dificult to understand. We are experimenting with mobile devices precisely for investigating means of actualizing learning opportunities for large numbers of learners – making learning accesible. For this scalable systems are essential. So, I just do not understand your positing accessibility agains scalability or your suggeting that scalable systems leave people out. My understanding is that ELITE small scale systems leave people out. If we can use these new affordable devices to reach more people and develop effective learning methodologies to support learning to more people more cost effectively – the essence of scalability- then how can you equate this with immoral actitvities. You lost me there as you did when you state that this would EXCLUDE people. Small scale systems exclude not large scale.
    Another fallacy in the background here is one that is all too pervasive among educators — that one way is right and the other ways of teachig are wrong. I would suggest that many different approaches and methodologies are possible AND appropriate in a wide range of situations. Scalable systems mean that students can ACCESS learining opportunities that they would not otherwise have. Thes learning opportunities may not be optimal (but I would challenge those who think that small scale systems are always better!) – but they do increase accessibility – to me that is morally ok. Having these scalable systems does NOT stop you or anyone from having what they consider more meaningful encounters nor does it stop people from informal learning. There is room for all of these – and with scalable systems using new cheap mobile devices that are coming available combined with the Internet, FREE universal post-secondary education for all is beginning to look like it can be realizable.
    Finally, for people who posit humans against technology I would remind them that people are people because of technology. Human intelligence requires technology. Try doing a complex calculation without a pen and paper or a calculator and see how far your humanity takes you. Computers are great for boring tasks, but they ALSO seem to be far better than classroom teachers in engaging young people in interesting tasks.\
    That,s my harange for this lovely Saturday morning.
    All the best
    Rory

  11. A pencil is not scalable. Only one person can use a pencil at a time; only one person can read the product of pencil-writing at a time. But though not scalable, a pencil is cheap, can be distributed at little cost to everyone, and gives each person the capacity to read and write.

    The scalable version of the pencil is the printing press. However, to paraphrase an oft-cited truism, the benefits of the printing press accrue primarily to those that own one.

    It is easy and common-sense to tout the benefits of the printing press (careers have been founded on less tenable hypotheses).

    But the printing press is of no value without the pencil, because without literacy there is no use for a printing press, and thus as much the use of the printing press impacts the use of pencils, it diminishes itself.

    I read David’s point as this:

    While some (maybe most) instructional technologists are focused on creating bigger and better printing presses, we live in a world where there are not enough pencils, and that it makes no sense to expend our efforts improving the printing press when the distribution of pencils is not such that it is possible to contemplate using it.

  12. I don’t think that the scaling vocabulary automatically excludes the idea of maximizing access and reaching everyone. Ever since I discovered Inst Tech my interest has been mono-focused on how to educate the planet — young people, old people, middle aged people, anyone who wants to keep learning. By using sound teaching/learning models that work well for huge distributed cohorts, large numbers of people can get what they want and need under the Transnational Ed banner. Yes, that means working with private profitmaking organizations. I don’t care. I will work with anyone who wants to reach lots of people and do it in a way we can be proud of. And for those with the inclination but not the means, there’s always scholarships. Plus, my program is extremely price competitive.

    I’m doing this, Dave. We have developed such a model and we are reaching out to lots and lots of people in North and South America and Asia. And we’re just getting warmed up. Glad to see you being so profoundly influenced by Freire. He was a major influence on me, for his politics and his compassion.

  13. David asked, “Who will be the teacher I remember forever, with whom I form a transformative bond of trust, who I know cares and worries about me?”

    I don’t know, I’ve always felt that the Microsoft Paperclip liked me just a little bit more than other users. There is something about the way it winks at me… 😉

    Rory said, “Computers are great for boring tasks, but they ALSO seem to be far better than classroom teachers in engaging young people in interesting tasks.”

    I sometimes think that there is nothing my children find more fascinating than the TV, or the Nintendo, or the little snake game on my cell phone. But they are just as captivated when I read a good book to them. It is an easy thing turn on the computer or a video game. It’s much harder to put a lot of thought and effort into capturing a student’s attention and imagination. The latter is much more rewarding and worthwhile.

  14. An interesting discussion flowing here.

    Regarding the question over the interpretation of the word scalable…

    Scalable implies to me that the resource can expand AND contract to meet whatever scale of student user there might be. It doesn’t at all imply access for all. Add to that, the reality that very few educational institutions are truly occupying themselves with making their learning free and accessible to ALL, and instead are very preoccupied with protecting “their” intellectual property and other’s copyrights… so I think David’s interpretation is not all confusing when all this is implied.

  15. As someone whose career in online education started at a community college and has always had a strong emphasis on access, I was very interested to read David Wiley’s post on his AERA experience and his promotion of access as a prime value. However, I’ve read and re-read the post in vain for something I can actually hang a hat on beyond agreeing that “Integrity that involves truly living out the principles of peace, freedom, love, and spirituality” is a good thing in general. But what about its specific application? It’s easy to imagine all sorts of groups (educational and otherwise) who would claim to hold the same belief — say, Patrick Henry College (http://www.phc.edu/) or Opus Dei — but whose values are far different from those I would want to “live out”. So the statement is too general to be very helpful.

    Is education a “universal and inalienable right” or is it a “system of oppression?” “Living out the principles of peace, freedom, love, and spirituality” is not a very helpful answer here either. On the one hand, making education more available is not automatically a good thing. To say that “We should speak of education as a universal and inalienable right” ignores the fact that education tends to be a one-way street as one of society’s ways of bringing its indvidual members into the fold, or of helping them find a place in the world. But education is also a means of a dominant culture attempting to impose its values. Perhaps, this is what the ’60s-esque comment that “youth (and many other individuals) are controlled and manipulated by systems of oppression. Our role, as educators and human beings, is to…unplug them from the system. Morpheus said, ‘This is a war. And we are soldiers'” is trying to get at. However, the statement creates a false dichotomy that is not helpful. What system are we talking about exactly? The one that most educators work in and depend on? Anything that keeps us from being free, spontaneous, loving? Personally, I have no desire to travel down that dead end path again of “us vs. the system.” But neither do I have the desire to see “education” thrust down the throats of one and all.

    So I cannot agree that talking about “scalability of instruction” is always a bad thing either. Certainly there are situations where instruction is suitable for large numbers but not for everyone. Automation of instruction is not an inherent evil either. Ironically, some proposals to make education more available (e.g., Alfred Bork’s Education for All) rely on automated instruction precisely because there the prospects of training enough teachers to meet the need are incredibly bleak. Heck, even the richest educational systems in the world (e.g., North American higher education) have a shortage of teachers with whom to form a “transformative bond of trust”; how else to explain those millions of students who will be attending large lecture classes tomorrow? I personally think that the instructor-student relationship is often overrated — I completed an entire graduate program without having a teacher “who I know cares and worries about me” and am quite content with the experience, thank you — I have found my models of “competent, passionate living” and “communities of meaningful practice” elsewhere. Still, I don’t understand the need to posit intelligent tutoring systems and their ilk as the antithesis of a solution rather than as part of a solution.

    I spend a good part of my professional life trying to make education more accessible to a variety of audiences. However, arguing “making education more available” is “the most pressing problem facing us” as a viable proposition requires a lot more concrete support. As one prominent educator (Howard Gardner, I believe) has pointed out, there is plenty of agreement that there is something wrong with our educational systems, but there is little agreement on how to make them right. Perhaps there are too few resources being devoted to making education more accessible relative to those being devoted to making education more effective (though in this day and age we are arguing about the relative size of crumbs in the larger scheme of things). But before advocating universal access to education, let’s consider soberly and realistically if we have any clue about what that means collectively, if indeed anything resembling a collective understanding exists.

  16. Stephen says:
    While some (maybe most) instructional technologists are focused on creating bigger and better printing presses, we live in a world where there are not enough pencils, and that it makes no sense to expend our efforts improving the printing press when the distribution of pencils is not such that it is possible to contemplate using it.

    Rory responds:
    Pencils may not be scalable, but the costs of pencil production are. It costs far less per unit to produce a million pencils than one. Bigger and better is cheaper and it makes pencils accessible in some of the most remote and poorest villages. I can remember when ballpoint pens were expensive. Now they are available to most people –that means increased accessibility. Cell phone production is also scalable. Remote villages in the poorest countries now have accessibility to the phone system.
    I cannot understand what you mean about improving the printing press – how would improving it hurt the distribution of pencils? Both distributing pencils and improving printing presses has in fact been happening throughout my lifetime. It makes eminent sense.

    Marion says
    It’s much harder to put a lot of thought and effort into capturing a student’s attention and imagination. The latter is much more rewarding and worthwhile.
    Rory responds: Rewarding for whom? Who says? If it is so rewarding why are so many kids preferring the video games. Classroom learning for the VAST majority of students most of the time is a task that they endure for perceived future benefit. Yes, sometimes it can be enlightening and rewarding, but so can digging ditches.

    Leigh says:
    Scalable implies to me that the resource can expand AND contract to meet whatever scale of student user there might be. It doesn’t at all imply access for all.
    Rory responds: Scalable can mean contraction, but there is no implication of this in the definition – the implication of using the word “scalable” is growth. Here is the google definition:
    The ability of a product or network to accommodate growth.
    http://www.jmr.com/support/glossary.html
    Scalability – historical example: banana production – bananas used to be only available for a few people at a certain time of year in tropical countries. With scalable agriculture nearly all of us can ACCESS a banana.

    TO All
    Our goal is open free access to education for all. This is IMPOSSIBLE unless we find ways to do this using scalable systems. With the SCALABLE production of computers and now cheap mobile devices we can now make educational opportunities ACCESSIBLE to billions of people who could not dream of this before. The paradox is that David’s or Stephen’s dreams for informal learning, mentoring and using one pencil or computer at a time is ONLY possible if we have scalable production systems.
    Scalable educational systems will also really come into their own when every learner has access to the Internet using an electronic device. That world is not that far away, now is it a wild dream. This is the world that the G1:1 group is preparing for through learning systems research: See: http://www.g1on1.org/

    All the best.
    Rory

  18. Lots of interesting stuff here. I think there are several issues floating around in here, and we’re not all talking about the same thing. Probably this discussion needs to continue a while for contributors to sort out when they are talking about the same thing, and when not. I particularly liked Rory’s points.
    1) The issue of “books vs video games/tv” is not about “value” or “worth” in my view, but more about the nature of the human mind, which feeds on stimulation. The stimulation of computer screen vs that of a book, the book will tend to lose.
    2) The term “education” also causes some confusion: some use it to mean “schooling” as opposed to real learning”. So David’s comment that ” making education more available” could be taken as a step backwards rather than forwards. I’m not clear what David means by “making education more available”. I have ambivalent views about the value of “education”, especially after reading John Taylor Gatto; do I really want to make THAT more available? Not really. Also, I live and work in a country which has a highly literate population, and where educaiton is available to all. The problem here is different, it is more that so many people have been through the system of education that they’re docile and numb, and have lost their curiosity. For them, going to school/class means doing what the teacher says, getting high grades or at least not failing (and bringing shame on themselves and their families).
    3) Finally, as Howard Gardner pointed out in a brilliant couple of pages in “Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice”, business people and educators often talk past each other in completely different languages: the business folk see it all in terms of scale, efficiency, recognizable standards and benchmarks, products; educators see a completely different landscape. It seems that is partly the problem in this discussion, too. The two groups, Gardner suggested, are not necessarily in opposition, but they need to stop talking past each other.

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