Volume 9 Issue 8  September 2005
 

The Renaissance

The Renaissance period between 1400 and 1600 (approx) was characterised by the transition from medieval European ideas about art, community, politics, architecture, science and religion to underlying concepts still recognised today in each of these areas.  This era gave birth to everything from the emergence of three-dimensional art, through to a more formalised scientific methodology, the availability of education for an upwardly mobile middle class, a greater understanding of our own biology, the expansion of the arts and an increasing appreciation of the rights of the individual.

But what opened up this break in social symmetry and set European society on a completely new course, exploring new opportunities, encouraging new combinations and intersections of previously segmented academic, sociological and artistic thought?

Science presents us here with a very interesting metaphor that is underpinned by two evolving scientific cornerstones that have developed over the past 30 years.

1. Broken symmetry: science has theorised that even a vacuum (a region where no atoms or molecules are present) has the potential to spontaneously create matter when key symmetries are broken.

2. Chaos theory: that out of apparent “complete chaos” can arise with disarming spontaneity, complex patterns that can occasionally be altered to an exponential degree by a tiny change in a contributing variable within the chaos.  Weather patterns are often used as an example of chaos theory because of the intangible numbers of factors that contribute to any weather event, with the real possibility that the flutter of a butterfly’s wing (a minor variable!) may be amplified (as it may contribute the tipping point air pressure to form the storm) on a scale that creates, as a final entity a storm of unparalleled magnitude.

Back to the beginning:

The Medici family[1], wealthy and well connected from their underwriting of the Vatican bank sponsored many of the Renaissance artists, thinkers and scientists who transformed the way people expressed ideas, concepts and emotions. Finance and connections were essential elements for the initiation of the Renaissance but other simultaneous events were also required in order to change the way in which people were able to combine previously disconnected concepts and knowledge bases in new ways.  Books were becoming increasingly popular in the Renaissance period and they too acted as vectors, making possible new combinations of ideas and creating a thinking and learning environment that challenged the way things had previously been done.

The first modern education paradigm, from which we inherited our present schooling system from was made possible by the technology of the book and was set against the backdrop of European Renaissance. This first paradigm didn’t just evolve, mature and flower in the European context but it from this context that many school systems today have derived their essence.

The second education paradigm is based around the information and communication conduit referred to as the Internet.  The scale of information and knowledge dispersed by the Internet coupled with the communication tools that allowed that information and knowledge to be published, discussed and debated, provided the genesis of the second education paradigm but the very power and staggering depth of Internet may possibly also be its nemesis. It is very easy for the human mind to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the available information when one takes to using Google to research any particular topic.  It is therefore essential that young people are provided with rich but not overwhelming resources which are then capable of fuelling the learning process within the necessary “cognitive capability framework” of the students who we are assisting in their journey.

Limiting the availability of resources so that the learner is not overwhelmed but at the same time not inordinately limiting access to resources is just part of the overall equation. Another aspect is to ensure that the resource base that is being provided, or being made accessible, makes use of effective learning media formats which will vary according to the concepts being pursued, the media literacy of the learner, and the particular media formats that match the learning style of the learner.

However, it is not enough just to supply a media rich resource environment. Learners require motivation as learning new concepts requires a lot of mental energy and effort. Mystery, intrigue and curiosity, combined with learning capability, motivation and feedback all help frame a healthy learning matrix.

 “Nouvelle Compréhension”

John Hattie and his research team, from the University of Auckland in New Zealand synthesised over 500,000 studies of influences on student achievement, and their effects on outcomes.  In his study John notes that effective feedback has the most significant “effect size”( in the range of 1.13)[2] of all possible influences .  The next most significant influence on student achievement was the student’s prior cognitive ability which is rated as having an effect size of 1.04.

Quite obviously if a school wishes to significantly increase the capability of its students, then providing them with effective feedback is the most powerful tool that teachers have available to them.

We are possibly now staring in the face of a second Renaissance which we will refer to as the “Nouvelle Compréhension”, (new understanding) a period brought about by a compilation of events that provide the human race with the potential to find a new set of solutions to complex global and local problems, extend our understanding of science and technology, and create new art concepts and ways of communicating ideas, emotions and concepts. But this “Nouvelle Compréhension” is mediated, initiated by and imbued with a rich/overwhelming media culture. Although we can take on a conscious understanding of the influence of the media, we are often unconsciously taking in imagery, text, video and audio messages which are not fully processed in a conscious sense (this would overwhelm us if we tried), and the media ends up providing unconscious building blocks towards our conceptual models without our conscious consent!

The Nouvelle Compréhension has several characteristics relating to the effects of media on this radical increase in capability, that we as educators need to be aware of.

• The “media rich” environment has customised almost every environment we enter, whether it be the home we live in, hotels we stay in, theatres we visit, shops where we make purchases (surrounded by imagery which reinforces our buying decisions), holiday destinations in third world countries that are clean, where food is in abundance . . . . . We have been unaware of the effect of the media on almost all our decisions, how we feel about ourselves, how we value others and how we are subtlety and not so subtlety influenced in our purchasing and social decision making.
• Whether we like it or not we have options, options and more options whenever we need to purchase a service, or a product. This was not always the case, and this is a new cultural issue (some think it is a curse!) that previous generations did not have to work through. “Now what cell phone company should I be with?” This can overwhelm people very easily as we do not have a lot of time to consider all options carefully and we end up almost always feeling we are being ripped off! This is especially true of young people. They are now making numerous decisions that is some cases overwhelm them and this applies in particular to those that put these decisions off (more a male trait than female), and then the backlog of non-decisions grows and grows and the subsequent frustration and stress follow shortly.  
  
  In a report released in Nov 2005

Teens turn to drugs, drink, sex to cope with stress

28.Nov.05 By Jonathan Thompson and Sophie Goodchild

LONDON - Dr Dylan Griffiths has spent more than 20 years healing the minds of troubled teenagers. But the British psychiatrist is shocked by what he is now facing on a daily basis. He is treating record numbers of disturbed young patients, unable to cope with the pressures of modern life, who are hooked on drink, drugs and underage sex, or who are so desperate they even contemplate suicide. [more]

 

• We do however have the capacity to modify our environment. This also is a new capability for those that “enjoy” this luxury. As is always the case additional “privileges” also carry additional responsibilities. We are quickly reducing all environments to “mediated environments” even those that are considered geographically and societally remote.  The world we inhabit becomes less and less real, more globally clean, democratic, and where good people always win and the bad get their just desserts and we struggle with anything we cannot control or modify to suit our needs (people close to us dying, getting unwell, being unable to afford a world trip this year . . . .). 
• We now know we are cultured and our culture affects how we see the world and how we respond to it. You only have to look at photographs taken in the 1800’s and observe the strained facial expressions and the stoic stature of those being photographed to realise their culture affected how they interacted with the world, but surprisingly, unless they were well travelled they would have believed that all people were of this disposition. That people in different region would have different values, attitudes and dispositions would not have been realised by those that only communicated with those sharing the same values, attitudes and dispositions. The development of the global village is brining our awareness of our own culture into sharp relief. Almost all previous generations were completely unaware of the culture in which they were embedded. Each person is cultured and yet this did not stop one generation from seeing clearly the shortcomings of the previous/next generation.

 

The end result of these is that almost all our decisions are either consciously or unconsciously affected by the media messages we constantly receive.  The Nouvelle Compréhension period sits within this pervasive environment and it is imperative that educators are aware of this and that students are taught to be media aware and media literate.

We have written much, in previous newsletters on the type and scale of change that this compilation of future events will generate. The outcomes will depend on the capacity of the education system, to recognise that the evolution of the second education paradigm presents educators with a unique set of opportunities and responsibilities that should never be underestimated.   

Broken Symmetry & Chaos

When we speak of a symmetry being broken we refer to the capacity of the Internet to evolve into a whole new universe of capabilities, where just 20 years ago (let’s not get too pedantic here; web with pictures has been around for less than 20 years), there was an apparent vacuum. The finances of the Medici family instigated the first Renaissance period in Europe and a combination of the work of

·        Louis Pouzin in France, and Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in the US in the 1970's developing the Internet.

·        The invention of the web by Tim Berners-Lee  and a small team at CERN during 1989-1994 while working at the nuclear research facility known as CERN ("Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire").

·        The invention of the web browser, now available at no cost to computer users.

·        The benevolence of millions of people who have put up on the Internet huge collections of information and knowledge that is available at no cost.

 . . . . . . . . are cumulatively initiating the Nouvelle Compréhension, the second Renaissance.

The second theory we introduced earlier was chaos theory.  Chaos theory is a set of elaborate mathematical principles that underpin much of what we observe every day.  Chaos theory provides us with a model that allows us to explain (mot necessarily understand) the extreme complexity that underpins everything from the growth of trees, the weather, economic growth and indeed much of what we consider to be “random” and often supposedly non-connected, disparate events such as your spring harvest festival.

The Internet is an example of chaos theory in action. It appears to be a completely random collection of resources whereas in fact its development is actually obeying complex descriptions and rules. What the web enables is the access to vast quantities of information the overwhelming nature of which is its greatest asset and its greatest limiting agent at the same time.  Small changes in the internet can have profound “viral” effects across the entire web network.

The web though is not just about information and knowledge; it is also about transport protocols (TCP/IP) to “move” this data/information to any other location that has web access.  Just as the first renaissance, based on book technology and the largesse of the Medici family, required a set of transport protocols which included ships, caravans, horses and the capability of people to walk from one town to the next, this Nouvelle Compréhension also requires transport protocols. The iterative nature of books (they can be added to/modified and republished), was paramount to the success of the first education paradigm and the Renaissance which recognised their value as excellent information and knowledge vectors, allowing (as an example) mathematical knowledge from the middle and near eastern regions to be transported to the European continent .   

In the first education paradigm the book was reasonably reliable as the knowledge and the technology that underpinned the core content of non-fiction works changed slowly. A book on bridge technology written in 1532 was still quite useful 100 years later. Books are effective vectors of information and knowledge when knowledge is evolving relatively slowly.  With knowledge in many sectors of the non-fiction realm now changing at a fantastic rate, the technology of the book is no longer an appropriate or efficient vector for knowledge. Books dealing with fiction should survive for some time to come (I still like to read books and I am reasonably convinced this is not just because I am an older person i.e. someone over 15 years old!).

As well as information/knowledge the web contains a variety of embedded communication tools that allow the information and the knowledge of web documents to be communicated via a range of different processes. These emerging communication tools include e-mail, chat, forums, IP telephony, blogging, podcasts, MSN/Yahoo integrated environments as well as video conferencing all of which can group people together and allow for the interplay of discussions about information and knowledge.  These communication tools can be extremely effective vectors in the sense that they allow discussion of ideas in an environment where distance is almost entirely negated as a barrier and they also form vehicles for informing anyone, anywhere about the location of particular information and knowledge. These tools allow previously disenfranchised groups to be involved in these discussions no matter how tall they are, where they live, how old they are and what their qualifications are.

The web now provides simplified publishing tools such as WYSIWYG editors, Blogs and more complex programs such as Front Page and Dreamweaver to create online content. These tools allow anyone, anywhere, anytime to publish and share ideas and thoughts. The speed of iteration of ideas has accelerated dramatically. 

What does all this mean?

With the Net and its underlying communication tools developing and maturing rapidly, we are seeing an explosion in the resources that enable anyone with access to the Net to have the potential to be lifelong learners, accessing information/knowledge, as well as providing them with the communication tools to share and learn from each other, no matter where the learners may be geographically located.  Of course it does depend on additional personal characteristics such as motivation, cognitive capability, persistence, as well as, unfortunately, their economic status. As the Net becomes available to more and more people and increasingly appropriate technology is being produced at lower and lower cost, more and more people are able to gain access to the tools and the resources that allow for knowledge building and the opportunity to understand their world, be creative and contribute more fully to their society.. 

We are sitting on the precipice of a global renaissance the “Nouvelle Compréhension” that is on a scale thousands of times greater than the first European Renaissance. The Nouvelle Compréhension is a global phenomenon. Its effects on society through the arts, sciences and humanities are as yet unqualified other than anecdotally and we are observing a huge rate of change and complexity in almost every aspect of our society. The Net came to public prominence just 10 years ago and many people now would struggle to carry out their lives without it but this is just the beginning.

Will it all be glorious and wonderful? Unfortunately not! The nature of being human carries with it a perchance for misusing the power of this environment. Emerging technologies being made available and implemented before the consequences have been fully explored and debated and this will challenge us with ethical and moral dilemmas that will split communities and these dilemmas will highlight wisdom as the most valuable attribute of all human traits. The Net will open up new opportunities and new dilemmas just as every technology before it has done; there is nothing new there but it is important that effective education and legal entities are put in place to minimise its negative effects and that as a society we focus on the benefits.

The “Nouvelle Compréhension” will happen at such a pace that many will wish for times past where things changed slowly and we had time to adapt at a pace we could cope with and even the most technology savvy wish for this at times but just as the European Renaissance eventually levelled out so will the “Nouvelle Compréhension” and we expect this to happen within the next 20-40 years at the very latest. Already we are seeing some technologies plateau in both capability and cost and some tools clearly establishing themselves and others fading into obscurity.

These are exciting but very challenging times and we need to be constantly taking time out to reflect on the advantages and the disadvantages of the opportunities we have before us, making decisions that reflect higher level outcomes than financial gain or speed of delivery. We are after all human and the core of our existence is not technology but rather our relationships with our fellow inhabitants and the knowledge that we hold only a brief tenure on this planet and what we leave behind may be a blessing to others or if we are not thoughtful and wise, a curse; better the former that the latter.

 

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[1] Of interest is the fact that it was the Medici family who also invented the concept of “limited liability” and also the first business to develop the concept of “franchising” in 1434.

[2] John Edwards describes effect size of 1.0 as meaning that there is

§      An increase of  one standard deviation in a result,

§      Student achievement is advanced by one year,

§      The rate of learning is increased by 50%,

§      A correlation between the variable being tested and student achievement of  0.5

Comments and suggestions to

Mark Treadwell

Teachers@work.co.nz

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