Homogenization

Very few of us have contemplated more rigorously what is happening through media change than Jacques Ellul, who has sounded some chilling alarms. Without mass media, Ellul insists, there can be no propaganda. With them, there is almost nothing but. “Only through concentration of a large number of media in a few hands can one attain a true orchestration, a continuity, and an application of scientific methods of influencing individuals.” That such concentration is occurring daily, Ellul says, is an established fact, and its results may well be an almost total homogenization of thought among those with media reach… As the number of messages increases, the amount of information carried decreases. We have more media to communicate fewer significant ideas. (Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Neil Postmas and Charles Weingartner)

More means to communicate fewer ideas. Homogenization of thought. All this was written over 40 years ago in preparation to discuss the devolution of education to mere propoganda — mere training to support the power structures in place in our society.

I can’t help but notice that this basic description of propagandizing could be applied to our operative notion of public school education: in the name of “higher standards” and “preparing children to be workers in the global economy” (ideas present in almost any justification you find for the common core standards), we are reducing the number of significant ideas they are exposed to. It was empty to reduce education to technical training for a good job so you could make a lot of money. It’s emptier still to reduce it to technical training for a good job  so you can make a lot of money so your country will be competitive on the global economic stage. Our humanity is not defined by salary; still less is it defined by our usefulness to our economic and political institutions. (No great surprise that businesses and political entities may be the primary forces determining what constitutes education.)

What a contrast to the educational vision John Adams described:

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.  My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, Natural History, Naval Architecture, Navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

Adams envisioned a society in which increased security and development would bring a richer flourishing of the humanities. It seems the trends are going in exactly the opposite direction. Of course the reasons are more broad and complex than just the digital explosion. But technology has certainly accelerated the process. There are those who would argue that it is the great equalizer, giving everyone a voice. But without organization, political clout and money, your voice doesn’t count for much.