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A recent article in The Economist, “Learned Luddites,” described liberal arts instructors who refused to adopt MOOCs as “Luddites,” a term made famous in the 19th century by English textile workers who were so paranoid that machinery would replace their jobs that they took to the task of physically destroying the machines they used. To conclude there is a connection between what the Luddites did and the arguments against online learning is reaching, if not absurd, and devalues the discussion happening in academic departments nation wide.
In America, after the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the creation of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, emphasis was placed on math, science, and foreign language studies, as these three disciplines were deemed crucial to national security. Move forward 10 years and by the late 1960s one out of seven Americans was employed in the defense industry, military spending had risen from 1 percent to 10 percent of the gross domestic product, and corporations were increasingly profiting from an infusion of money from government contracts.
At the same time, high debt from domestic spending combined with outside competition from foreign markets was having an affect, and by the mid-1970s America had slipped into post-industrialism as jobs moved away from manufacturing toward more office based and service type employment opportunities.
The end result of shifting from assembly line to office tech, resulted in a college degree becoming a necessary component to a career, and as universities and community colleges began to accept more and more applicants, higher education began to trend course loads to part-time instructors.
Today, in 2013, a majority of those teaching in academia are working on a contingent basis. Tenure is nearly nonexistent, and liberal arts professors are being made to feel as though they are simply no more than an application, a helpmate, so to speak, that guides the student along as though they were a navigator steering a ship, following a mapped course not set by them, but by some far-off captain who serves as a default programmer for a higher purpose that is kept hush-hush until the time is right, a captain whose job it is to make sure the cargo arrives on time and without any scuffing from the occasional rogue wave.
At worst, more than a few professors feel they are becoming little more than a retention tool, a gimmick or novelty act whose entire future depends on whether or not one can “get with the program” of algorithmic evaluation, spreadsheet printouts, and constant barrage of software programs designed to make keeping track of grades easier, as if a pen and pad were inherently inferior, and all the while the academic is asked to maintain a classroom atmosphere that is not only educational but also so entertaining that even the most mind-numbing of subjects can compete against the fixative trance of the portable handheld device.
Ironically, the analog education one received before the Digital Age, an educational model that emphasized literature and writing, is admired for its fine attention to detail, as detail is considered to be hallmark of success. Yet that style of learning, though suitable for Fitzgerald and Stein, will not work in world where students are groomed as future customers and national security is commingled with corporate wants that drive the areas of study that schools find most lucrative.
It is pathetically sad to think that a classroom could be reduced to a rectangle screen on a distant wall, or thought to be comparable to that of a interior space where a qualified human stands as the moderator before eyes that are watching. A cold, sterile scene from Orwell's 1984 comes to mind in a world where the educator is 20 miles away and the students are considered close.
As a professor, I am not opposed to online teaching, but I do believe we are losing more than we are gaining from a technological hypnosis that has the potential to reclassify the teacher as a network administrator. I am not a lab rat, nor do I want the classroom considered a lab. Our culture is fascinated with language bewitchment and making the obvious appear novel. Yet at the end of the day the MOOC is still no more than a student interacting with a computer regardless how convenient or user friendly the experience has become.
If our embracing and use of technology becomes more important than our mission to teach, to meet in groups for discussion, or to sit one-on-one with a student seeking guidance, then not only should online education be critically evaluated for its unintended affects but also the very system itself that would interpret skepticism as a regress.
