Tedious, Short-Sighted, Not as Funny as Colbert

Winner’s satire regarding the movement towards online education is packed with amusing one-liners, but lacking the overall vision of the bigger picture. Winner implies that online education will bring rampant commercialization to the field, resulting in a hyped and inflated sense of superficial understanding.

This is not necessarily the case. A great deal of education in America is publicly-funded by local citizens, including very vocal parents. It is (hopefully) preposterous to assume that we will ever have “Coca-Cola Presents… The Cell” with cellular structures renamed after different cola products. No one would tolerate that level of educational perversion, regardless of the pecuniary savings. The concept that education must be commercialized to incorporate technology seems fundamentally flawed.

Simply providing educational materials to students in a digital form does nothing to diminish their quality. On the contrary, online resources provide a means for wider availability, data cross-referencing, and information indexing. Furthermore, emerging information technologies (holography, immersive audio and visual content, etc.) promise a depth of education that far exceeds what is available from outmoded film strips and vinyl records.

The argument that online education diminishes educator/student interactions is quickly losing ground. High-bandwidth communication technologies are beginning to approach the fidelity of face-to-face meetings (the highest bandwidth communication). New technologies capture and convey the nuances of these interactions to each party. Online professors can see brows furrowed in confusion as easily virtually as they can in person.

Technology is not a diffuser of educational worth or a taker of education-jobs. Properly integrated, it can be an excellent asset. To use Winner’s elevator example: Yes, the child today who would have been an elevator operator for his entire life will not be able to be an elevator operator. Instead, he will have to be an electrical engineer or information technology specialist. It doesn’t sound to me like he is losing on that deal.

There were some “winning” (“and yes that is a pun on his name”) moments in the video. “Gemeinschaft education for gesellschaft prices” was clever. The T-Shirt as the alma mater elicited a chuckle, and the “Texas School Book Suppository” even got a laugh.

Winner’s faux presentation was accurate in one regard. His slogan “Lighten Up… Or Perish” touches on a very important point. Societies that do not change stagnate. We can not turn our backs on every new prospect because it is frightening or still under development. We must constantly search for and embrace technologies and ways of thinking that better humanity and our planet. Quite simply, cultures that do not change will die.