Beyond Effort and Cleverness: Technology, Language, and Community in Education

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of different models of education. The author, a teacher of humanities at Newark Academy in New Jersey, aims to move beyond some of the rhetoric about "progress" or rhetoric that implies there is something inherently right or wrong about different systems for organizing schools and classrooms, and encourages putting discussions about education in a fresh context while being alert to the possibility that there may be downsides with current education practices. The article discusses educational disruption in the 1970s and 1980s, implications of technology for students, challenges to the schools, and languaging and value mirroring. The author states that educators have a burden to deliberately develop a new rhetoric of education that moves beyond appeals to effort (asking the "impossible") and cleverness (metacognition). He suggests that educators begin to talk specifically about "community" metacognition. An education grounded in service to the community, partnered with an awareness of the welfare of the community, is essential because it focuses attention on the stress of the group, rather than the performance of the individual.