On Education
In 1969 and 1970 Postman collaborated with New Rochelle educator Alan Shapiro on the development of a model school based on the principles expressed in Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The result was the "Program for Inquiry, Involvement, and Independent Study" within New Rochelle High School. This "open school" experiment survived for 15 years. In subsequent years many programs following these principles were developed in American high schools, current survivors include the Village School in Great Neck, New York.
In a television interview conducted in 1995 on the MacNeil/Lehrer Hour Postman spoke about his opposition to the use of personal computers in schools. He felt that school was a place to learn together as a cohesive group and that it should not be used for individualized learning. Postman also worried that the personalized computer was going to take away from individuals socializing as citizens and human beings.
As an education theorist and writer, Postman is closely associated with other critics and commentators including John Holt, Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, George Dennison, Jonathan Kozol, Herbert Kohl, James Herndon, Charles E. Silberman, John Taylor Gatto, and others.
Read more about this topic: Neil Postman
Famous quotes containing the word education:
““We’ll encounter opposition, won’t we, if we give women the same education that we give to men,” Socrates says to Galucon. “For then we’d have to let women ... exercise in the company of men. And we know how ridiculous that would seem.” ... Convention and habit are women’s enemies here, and reason their ally.”
—Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)