By Mark Heydon
I recently returned from Japan — a whole month gig of chaperoning a visiting American student group that required only that I spend my time wandering the country, from Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima to Kagoshima, seeing the sights, sweltering in the heat and eating with sticks.
I was lonely and bored some of the time, wandering the streets with incomprehensible Google maps on my phone’s screen and Bach in the earphones. At other times, when I tried to mingle, to go “native” (which, of course, given among other things my American-in-shorts appearance, was absurd), I wandered around by myself deliberately trying to find what was strange, different and Facebook-able for the folks back home. I didn’t speak the language and, in all honesty, I wasn’t making much of an effort. I’m 62 years old and the possibility of my returning to Japan, despite the friendliness and welcoming of the people, was almost nil. What was the point? In short, I was acting like a teenager.
My attitude was hauntingly familiar. I was pretty sure I was fully plugged into Japan, but I wasn’t obeying the rules for true engagement with the country. I was aware, fascinated and had my eyes open for new stuff I might come across, but I wasn’t looking to mingle or willing to give up my thoughts on Japan or the Japanese to anyone who was Japanese. Was this my inner-student rebellion against all things difficult, avoidable or unusual? Was I being one of those tenth-grade, inarticulate, hunker down, just wait-out-the-nightmare trip through high school ‘til something interesting happens student?
Reluctant students are, as I was, alone, often language deficient, nonreading, self-contained, remarkably (perhaps ironically) similar to what technology leaders call “self-directed learners.” They float among our higher achieving students like tiny islands of desolation, earbuds wedged tightly in their ears, listening and talking to friends. Educators assume their deficiencies are caused by their reluctance to learn. Maybe they’re right, but which came first, the deficiency or the reluctance? And is their idea of technology a help or a cause?
Jose, a tenth grader in my second period class, is the size of a large panda and is often kidded by others as being one. His one desire in life: girlfriends. But Jose is gay and the relationship with his girlfriends concentrates on inclusion with the girls rather than the exclusion of other guys typical of romantic relationships. Nonetheless, he has learned to monitor the volatile moods of his small clique by constantly checking Facebook on his iPhone, which he uses as a kind of social seismometer. School filters block Facebook, and school days are excruciating for him. He’s cut off from his primary means of social security (we are out of reach of cell service here), so he fills the dead air with prerecorded sound and frets about his social standing.
What draws the reluctant Jose to the Internet, to Facebook and the like? He believes in privacy, that here in cyberland he is in control, that he owns his conversations both whom they are with and what they are about. Anyone with any experience in technology and Big Brother’s ability to spy on our every move knows that the belief is both mistaken and dangerous, but to the reluctant student who thinks that he is, in what seems to be a self-contradiction, simultaneously important among friends and anonymous to the world, the Internet is the ideal place to hang out. He is in control. It’s a world of his own making. This comfort with friends, however, turns back on itself by making the reluctant learner think and believe that his skills are adequate for the larger world, skills that otherwise work just fine with his friends. Are these skills deficient, though? What is the standard, his or ours?
Mia, a student in my sixth period, sees her choices framed in her desires, not her needs. “Who’d bother watching me? Why would anyone be interested in me?” she asks and, to her own credit, understands that she says to her friends, “I am here. You are watching me and I am watching you.” She, like Jose, does not need to communicate outside her circle if doing so doesn’t enhance her standing inside her circle. What does this mean? Reluctant students use technology for the pathos of social media, but it is hard for them to initiate its use for intellectual discovery. In short, they use technology to acknowledge their being human. Emotions guide their learning. And technology doesn’t help them if they “don’t feel like it.”
Apple has been successful at exploiting desire by humanizing its bits of metal and plastic. While Microsoft and other systems are cold with function and process, Apple has focused on such personal touches as making our friendships unhampered by time or place, indulging our whims of thought by making them mobile and ubiquitous — even designing friendly apps to remind us that the computer is not a machine. There is now little difference between a cuddly toy and the iPhone. Conversely, these attributes are also anti-social in many ways and not terribly useful for education. Yes, educators can get around most barriers and are using iPads and iTouch/iPhones in our classrooms, but this barrier-jumping causes some confusion in the student’s mind. School technology is annoying at best and intrusive for many students. We can almost hear Mia saying “Get your chalk out of my iPhone!”
Is the reluctant learner beyond the reach of academic technology? Hardly. Reluctant students want immediate and practical application of information. They just want it obvious, beneficial, and available. They want to use it. For themselves. Now.
We know that the object of our work in technology is not to make things easier, but to make things important. We remove the trivial. “Important” means making learning relevant, immediate, and ready to be used through making connections — student to information and student to teacher, sure, but just as importantly student to student, both for now and for the future. These reluctant students are students who will be working together when we others are moving out of the workforce. Our job is to move learning with technology from being “What can the technology do?” to “What does the student want?”
This class of reluctant students is the largest, fastest growing class of technology users. It is also generally unrecognized. It is characterized by members’ intuited belief that they are living in an anachronistic world in which the written word still holds sway but is fast giving up its hold to non-print, often non-verbal communication. And perhaps they’re right. The nuances and conciseness of verbal language, particularly print, are being replaced by the subtle requirements of visual discernment and ubiquitous audio-video availability. Reluctant students are waiting the old world out and leaving this shift in learning up to us, the so-called educators. Our only hope is to take education away from gadget distribution and make it technologically personal.
Japan was fascinating and overwhelmingly addicting in many ways. But as I wandered the streets of Kagoshima, I wondered if living here I would find it more interesting. Certainly I would have friends, obligations, familiarity and knowledge of what to see and where to go. But I would also have a sense of belonging, of thinking that I was part of what I was seeing, part of the history and culture, part of the lives of the people I passed in the streets. How could my small electronic box make me wiser, more involved, more plugged in? I wondered. I thought. And then it happened. I got my first “Facebook Friend Request” from my Japanese host. I was in.
About the Author
Mark Heydon is an English teacher and Tech Advisor at Shoreline Unified School District in Sonoma County and a Certified Chief Technology Officer as a member of the CTO Mentor Program Class of 2008. He can be reached at mheydon@shorelineusd.org.
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