The End of Education
Neil Postman
Preface and Chapter 1
* Why doesn't education = schooling for Postman? (ix)
* Why is the "not always" so important for Postman? (ix)
* Do you understand the distinction between "ends and means"? (x)
* Explain what you think Postman means by opposing the terms "engineering" and "metaphysics"? (3)
* Can you think of some examples of Clarkson "narratives"? (5)
* What does Postman say are the purposes of narratives? (7)
* Do you think Postman is right when he says: "Without a narrative, life has no meaning"? (7)
* What's a "metaphor"? (8) See Darmok?
* What is the "offspring" of the science-god? (9)
* What's a "Luddite"? (10)
"The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth." - Niels Bohr (11)
* What happened to "The Civil War Experience" project? (12)
* What "story" did Thomas Jefferson help write? (13)
* When was, according to Postman, the term "ethnicity" first used? (15)
* What were schools for when Postman was growing up? (16)
* What kind of public does public schooling create? What kind do you think it should create? (18)
Chapter 2
* What, according to Postman, do "Einstein's followers . . . believe they have proved"? (20)
* What evidence does Postman offer to support his claim that American's "great story of liberal democracy has lost much of its luster"? (21)
* What is "deconstruction"? (24)
* Lincoln -- the Statue of Liberty -- Moses -- can you think of other examples of what Postman is clearly complaining about? (25)
* "There was a time when educators became famous for providing reasons for learning; now they become famous for inventing a method." What does this have to do with his "engineering vs. metaphysics" of Chapter 1? (26)
* What does Postman say is at the "heart of education"? (27)
* What is the "god of Economic Utility"? (27)
* What problems of "logic" does Postman point to regarding American schoolchildren's performance vs. other countries? (29)
* Can you argue with Postman when he claims, "Of course, well-paying, highly competitive jobs will be available, as always, to those with a high degree of competence in the uses of language"? (31)
* Why doesn’t Postman think we should train students to be "good readers [and we suppose, good writers?] of memos, quarterly reports, and stock quotations"? (31)
* What does Postman think of Clinton's approach? (32-33)
* What do you know about Christopher Whittle? (35)
**** Check out Edison Schools to see what Whittle's up to now.
Chapter 3
* Do you agree with Postman that people's belief in technology is like a "form of religious belief"? (38)
What do you make of Lewis Perelman's argument that "modern information technology . . . (has) . . . rendered schools entirely irrelevant. . . ." (38)
* Do you know anyone like "Little Eva" or "Young John"? (39)
* What does Postman mean by saying that new technologies, "like all important technologies of the past . . . are Faustian bargains . . . ." (41)
* What does Postman say Little Eva's real problem is? (42-43)
* Remember this phrase: "I am talking here about making technology itself an object of inquiry . . . ." (44)
* What's the important historical lesson Postman points to by introducing "Little Mary"? (47)
* How relevant is the poem (49-50) in light of the rush towards online education and, simultaneously, the "god of Economic Utility"?
* Do you understand Postman's distinction between his use of the term, "multiculturalism", and what he calls "cultural pluralism"? (50-51)
* "The purpose of myth . . . is to provide a model capable of overcoming a contradiction." (54)
* What does Postman mean when he states that the "task of the public schools, properly conceived, is to erase the hyphens or to make them less distinct." (57)
Chapter 4
* Who "doesn't" create the myths about public education? (59)
* What two "contradictory reasons for schooling" does Postman say we (Americans) believe in? (60)
· What do you think of those reasons?
* Why does Postman use a metaphor about a train? (61)
* What connection does Steven Spielberg have to Postman's argument? Captain Kirk? John Donne? (64-65)
* Would you like your children to go to school in Florida? They could go to Disney World and learn the story of Snow White, eh? (65)
* What's the "major theme" of the "fallen angel" story? (67)
* What does Postman mean by saying that science "is not even a 'subject' -- but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning"? (68)
* Can you explain Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty? (69)
Did this happened to you:
"All children enter school as question marks and leave as periods." (70)
· How about your Clarkson experience?
* Why is Postman talking about "argument"? (72)
* Confucius? Moses? Plato? Jesus? The Koran? Milton? Shakespeare? Voltaire? Hegel? Marx? MLK Jr.? "But which ones are the right answers?" (73)
* Who is E.D. Hirsch, Jr.? And why should you care? (74)
* What's Postman's point as he tells his Jewish joke? (pp75-76)
* What is "negentropic"? (77)
* What do you think of Postman's "definition" of "good"? (80)
· What would Socrates think of that definition?
* What did Mrs. Soybel think "made us human"? (82)
* Why do we talk to ourselves? (83)
* How can language be both the "vehicle" of thought and the "driver"? (83)
And who is this guy, Wittgenstein, anyway? If you want, check out these sites: Ludwig Wittengenstein and Ludwig Wittgenstein (83)
* Be sure you think about this next statement:
"Of course, language also has a social dimension." (85)
PART II
* What does Postman say is the "end" (that is, purpose) of this book? (91)
Chapter 5
* What do you think about the "fable" that Postman tells? (93-99)
* If Postman came to our class today and said, as he does on page 101, "It is not clear to me why the schools are so interested in such an objective", how would you respond? (101)
* Should Clarkson profs be trained in "Judo"? Why? (102)
* What familiar word does Postman mention on page 103?
* Think Postman is merely joking about the Educational Testing Service's influence? (104) What’s been happening lately in that regard?
* Have you any experience with "archeology" of the sort that Postman describes? (105-106)
* What do you think should be “basic” for high school graduates? For college graduates? How different do you think those “basics” should be? (106)
* What happened in Tennessee in 1925? What implications can you draw or derive from Postman's allusion? (107)
* Is Prof. Karis a Klingon? A Vulcan? A Romulan? Certainly not an Earthling? (109)
* The “solar system is not a fixed thing . . . .”? (110)
* Heraclitus? Lao-tzu? Seattle? What "connects" them? (111)
* "Every subject has a history. . ." (112) – Implications?
* William James: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures." (113)
Chapter 6
* What do you think of Postman's suggestion for improving the "quality of teaching overnight"? (114)
* Get rid of the textbooks?
Ø What "would replace them"? (115-116)
* Why would Postman make his students “honorary members of Accuracy in Academia”? (117)
* Teachers as "truth tellers" or as "error detectors"? Which is better? (120)
* Does everyone make errors? (121)
* Who were the Sophists? (122) And what were the “meta-subjects” they thought could “provide an adequate defense”?
IMPORTANT QUESTION – Do you agree or disagree with Postman’s claim that "all subjects are forms of discourse and that therefore almost all education is a form of language education”? (123)
* Why is it “not sufficient to know the definition of a noun, or a gene, or a molecule”? (123)
* What's a "metaphor"? (124) – Haven’t we seen that question before? See page 8, The End of Education. Or, recall Darmok? J
* Robert Maynard Hutchins – the “Great Conversation” (124)
“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”
- Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (110-111)
Ø If you were “king or queen for a day,” what changes would you like to see in “the classroom environment” at Clarkson? (125) Maybe you could pull a ‘switch’ with Tony Collins? J)
* How unusual do find you Postman’s perspective when he says:
"We would start with the premise that a textbook is a particular person's attempt to explain something to us, and thereby tell us the truth of some matter." (126)
Chapter 7
* What do you think about chapter 7?
* If you haven’t yet done so, take a look at the Edison Project? (137)
* Can you grasp why Postman thinks that “education as a subject of study is rarely taken seriously even in college . . . .”? (138) What do you think about that?
* Is Professor Karis hopelessly “ABCED-minded”? (141)
Chapter 8
* Why does Postman say that English is the most "multicultural language on Earth"? (145)
* What general principle might you glean from Postman’s discussion of Saxon vs. Norman words for “meat”? (146)
* What is "etymology"? (147)
* Do you agree with Jerome Bruner's "dictum"? Or not? (147)
* What do we call someone who speaks one language? (149)
* What do you think would happen if Clarkson imposed a foreign language requirement for graduation? (151)
* What does Postman recall about his eighth grade teacher's attitude toward "myth"? (153)
* Are there "truths" which are "different from those of science and journalism"? (153)
* IF Postman is right, and "truths change", then how do we know what to believe? How can we know what's "right"? (155)
* Define a "native informant". (159)
* Do you think having “museums” as a specific subject would be worthwhile? (166)
* Is Postman opposed to contemporary art and music? (167)
* What does Postman mean when he refers to "canons"? (168)
Chapter 9-Epilogue
* What's Postman's IMPORTANT point about "a" definition vs. "the" definition? What are the implications of this IMPORTANT point? (172)
* Why did Burns choose to use metaphors instead of similes? (173)
”Yes, poets use metaphors to help us see and feel. But so do biologists, physicists, historians, linguists, and everyone else who is trying to say something about the world.” (173-174)
Hmmmm – important implications of that if you buy what Postman’s saying?
* What sort of student are you? A sponge? A funnel? A strainer? A sieve? (174-175)
* Is Postman right? Are we all, to some degree or another, "unaware of how our ways of talking [that] . . . we are not in full control of our situation." (176)
* What is "smartness"? (177)
* REMEMBER THIS: “. . . the study of language as 'world-maker' is, inescapably, of an interdisciplinary nature, so that teachers are not clear about which subject ought to undertake it." (177)
* What did Korzybski mean by his term, "time-binders"? And what two "things" or "processes" help us do this? (179-180)
And what’s Heraclitus got to do with it?
* ". . . we must keep in mind that language does much more than construct concepts about the events and things in the world; it tells us what sorts of concepts we ought to construct." (181)
* The "tyranny of definitions"? (183)
* Glad you don't work in Prague? (185)
* " . . . there are hundreds of ways to study the relationship between language and reality . . ." (186)
* How is an "historical fact" different from a "biological fact"? (187)
* "It is obvious, then, that language education must include not only the serious study of what truth and falsehood mean in the context of a subject but also what is meant by a theory, a fact, an inference, an assumption, a judgment, a generalization." (187)
* The "rhetoric of knowledge"? (188)
Think hard about this next one – does Postman’s claim “match up” with your educational experience?
“The point is that knowledge is a form of literature . . . .” (188)
* Who is E.D. Hirsch, Jr.? And again why should you care? (189)
* How can technology education be a “branch of the humanities”? (191)
* What does Postman mean by having "a critical attitude"? (191)
* Be prepared to either argue against or agree with (in some detail) at least 2 of Postman's 10 principles. (192-193)
* What will Postman's student (one who passes this test) have learned that's "worthwhile"? (193)