Two audio clips from Neil Postman beautifully capture some of the ideas that animate this Towers of Babel project. (Please listen to the AUDIO, above.)
One of the key passages:
… But there are schools that have been animated by a transcendent spiritual idea which may be called a god with small ‘g’. Now I know it’s risky for me to use this word even with a small ‘g’, because the word has an aura of sacredness and is not to be used lightly. And also because it calls to mind a fixed figure or image. But it is the purpose of such figures or images to direct one’s mind to an idea, and more to the point, to a story. Not any kind of story but one that tells of origins and envisions a future; a story that constructs ideals, proscribes rules of conduct, provides a source of authority and gives a sense of continuity and purpose. A god in the sense I’m using the word is the name of a great narrative, one that has sufficient credibility, complexity, and symbolic power so that it’s possible to organize one’s life and one's learning around it. Without such a transcendent narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose. Without purpose, schools become houses of detention, not attention.
Schools and journalism have a lot in common.
For more details, please listen to the AUDIO, above.
Links to three (of many) books by Neil Postman:
