Wenger and Turkle 2.07.08

Wenger had the right idea when she, in her introduction, penned the following:

“What if we assumed learning is a much a part of our human nature as eating or sleeping, that it is both life-sustaining and inevitable, and that—given and chance—we are quite good at it?”(p.3)

I am puzzled, because when did learning not be as natural as breathing? It takes a village to instill enough knowledge and skill in the new replacement individuals for any given “tribe”, herd, or community group. Learning, according to Wenger, is social participation. Dewey had it right also, that an organism transacts with its environment, giving, and taking according to ability and need.

Some learning transactions are community-building to ensure a place in the society. Some learning transacts to form an identity within the contextual environment that surrounds the being. Meaning-making is dependent upon the types of transactions an organism (well, humans only? Not sure if other animals make meaning, yet?) engages in…, and practice is a summation of all meanings in language to develop social frameworks…

All, as Wenger states, are deeply interconnected and mutually defined.

So, it begs the question, just when did education become separate from learning tribal practices needed for survival of the species? Tribal, meaning the social networks in practice that comprise human existence. When did learners become bad at it? Well, the bad learners did not survive to breed….

Heavy, you say? Not really what Wenger was getting at?

Not any more heavy than facing an evolution of identity in the huge communities that now populate the earth. What does it matter if the reflection of our identity is in the stream from which we scooped water in prehistoric times or in the computer monitor as we interact in our second life? Traditionalists who believe that humans are removed from other social beings and are not products of their environment perhaps are operating under a huge misconception…..Why is interfacing with a machine to find meaning (dependent upon the types of transactions an organism engages in…), any different than meeting new people face to face in downtown Manhattan and making meaning from that transaction?

Back to education.

My theory about when the change occurred is when literacy divided the have and have nots. Those who could, took control over those who could not. What went missing in this entire educational process is the notion that everyone in the tribe of mankind should learn to survive. What exists now is that information is doled out separate from social and cultural connections, leaving only those who can perform to pass through the literacy gates of the divide. An example in real English is that of my alternative students who, if they did not pass the 10th grade mathematics barrier, high school graduation and its equivalency was denied to them. As life progressed, less and less gates opened, dooming the individual to the “have not” side of the tracks. Learning to these tribal members was not connected any longer to survival or success. The village was denying entry.

Although the digital divide denies entry right now to meaning making via the cybertransaction , eventually most will catch up. Or not survive. Open content environments just shorten the miles and time required to gain access to the same information as the rest of the tribe. Tool for access or mirror of the world as it exists today?

MUDS like Second life are but one more dimension of the first life. No more a virtual self than the one face we present at dissertation defenses and the other face we put on a parties with peers.

I am still struggling with the cyber- identity thing but I am not as troubled as I was when first reading Turkle’s article. I will post more about communities of practice later, but this is my contribution for the week.