Marilynn Hawkins

Ann K. Nauman Ph.D.

EDF 607

April 29, 2004

Postmodernism

To understand what postmodernism actually is, modernism must be explained. Modernism is a movement during the time in history of the Enlightenment or the age of reason, through the age of industrialization and ending with the age of information. This time includes many discoveries in science, the age of exploring the globe, the industrializing of many nations, and the development of the nuclear era. Modernism would be the time in the history of our country through the middle of the 1900s or until after the two World Wars (Gutek, 2004).

Postmodernism is understood to be the Information Age (Gutek, 2004). This is the time in which computers became the modern tool in education. The reason they became a common tool is that computers became affordable for all to use. Computers could be used not only by industry and the military of this country, but the average American could own one for personal use. The view of the postmodernist's world is to leave the age of mass-production and assembly and move into the age of high technology where skilled workers are the norm. In education today, we know that there is a much greater need for students to graduate from high school with technology skills that can be used on the job. Postmodernism is challenging education to rise to a new standard in this knowledge.

It is believed that knowledge is socially constructed. It is thought by postmodernists that knowledge is not neutral, but that human interests influence it (Powers, 2002). The philosophy of postmodernism brings to the forefront the understanding that many paths exist to knowledge but the ultimate goal is to challenge the status quo and empower the powerless through education (Chartock, 2000). For example, some of the questioning that postmodernists have done is the investigation of the core curriculum in high schools of today. Postmodernists believe that the core curriculum reflects the "male-dominated, European-centered Western culture, which takes on an added capitalist dimension in the United States" (Gutek, 2004). They feel that the curriculum needs to reflect the beliefs of other groups of people such as--African, Asian, Hispanic, Native Americans, feminists, gays and lesbians, married and single persons. The testing that schools are doing today has come under question by these groups of people. Many of the concepts that are conveyed are thought to be scientifically objective, but in fact, they are thought by postmodernists to be really racist, and sexist in their language (Gutek, 2004).

Postmodernism even questions the curriculum in public schools, which they believe has been fashioned after the white, western culture of the male dominated society. They believe that curriculum in schools should not be organized and separated into disciplines of subject matter, but rather that it should be a fluid and flexible means of examining diverse groups of people who are of different social, political and economic backgrounds. Postmodernists want to question the assumptions that exist within the curriculum in schools that are officially accepted by the dominant group of people. They believe that the beliefs in schools should be changed to empower individuals or minority groups of people instead of those who already are the dominant power (Gutek, 2004).

Postmodernism is not only reflected in thought and language, but also in the world of art and architecture. Postmodern art and architecture are actually a combination of all styles of art including modern, but really comprise a movement away from modernism. For example, postmodern architecture can be the use of columns and arches along with neon lights or sign displays that add a new dimension to the architecture. Postmodern art moves away from the cold and boring modern style to new dimensions that engage the visual and imaginative minds of people of today (Preble, 1989).

To explain postmodernism even further we can look at two French philosophers who contributed many important ideas to the philosophy of postmodernism. These two leaders in this movement are Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Their ideas have contributed much to this movement in history.

Michel Foucault gave some insight into postmodernism by suggesting that the modern techniques that man uses in relating to people around them such as power and control helps them to fit into various roles demanded by society. Foucault believed that historical events in people's lives determine how these people grow and develop new philosophies toward their existence. For example, he believed that how people viewed insanity caused them to develop insane asylums. Focault tried to understand and explain how social forces in the world sent people into new directions. Prisons, for example, were built to house the criminals of society when buildings of concrete and iron were being developed. He believed society saw these buildings as a place that would hold the criminal and separate them from the mainstream of society. This was Focaults' idea of order in society. He believed that this order helped people to exercise their power and control. Power, which is imposed from without, not from within. This kind of power as Focault defines it is the way people conduct themselves in the society in which they live. Great care is given to change. When power is passed from one to another, change occurs. However, postmodernists feel that change does not necessarily lead them away from the status quo, but instead, that a change from the old way may lead them to a new power relationship that will control them in ways they did not expect (Ozmon and Craver, 2003).

Another philosopher who contributed to the development of postmodernism is Jacques Derrida. Derrida contributed by developing the method of deconstruction. Deconstruction deals with the ability to get inside of literature or texts or ideas to explore the different kinds of meanings that the words reveal. Derrida felt that language involved the differences reflected by the differences in people (Gutek, 2004). For example, if one tries to define or describe the meaning of a particular idea, he or she brings cultural influences and experience into the definition or description. If other persons try to define or describe the same idea, they will bring their experiences and cultural influences into the description. Because each person is different, the definitions will be different. What Derrida tries to explain is that there is no objective accounts in the way people describe ideas. This idea can be further explained in a postmodern picture book for children called Black and White (Macaulay, 1990).

Black and White, was written by David Macaulay and is a good example of how postmodernism has affected literature in this information age. This book is written with the new technology of today and illustrates four different pictures on each page. It is meant to look different and be read differently by different people. As Derrida proposed, different people reading the book will interpret the language of the book differently. For example, there are several understandings that this literacy of postmodernism conveys. One is that "all texts are consciously constructed and have particular social, cultural, political, and economic purposes" (Anstey 2002, 2). Another understanding is "there may be more than one way of reading or viewing a text depending on a range of contextual (social, cultural, economic, or political) factors" (Anstey 2002, 2). In other words, when different people read the text of the book Black and White, each is going to understand a different story according to his or her social, cultural, economic, and political bias. In fact, the same person, when reading the book at different times, may see a different story each time it is read. This difference is seen in postmodern literature and the same in the postmodern philosophy of education today.

With this difference in the multicultural classroom with individuals possessing their own view of literature and education, the teacher has a crucial role.

This crucial role of the teacher

· is to help students take personal and social responsibility for their futures (Ozman and Craver, 2003). They are also to help students develop an identity and a sense of an historical place in their lives. This is difficult with the large pluralistic classrooms in today's schools. However, teachers must be able to put their own passionate beliefs on the side and help their students discover their own. By doing this, the true meaning of pluralism can be grasped in education today (Jacobs, 2002). With the teacher playing the crucial role in helping students understand their cultural backgrounds, a strength of postmodernism would be the ability to empower students to understand their past and present experiences. With this clear understanding, they can then build clear goals for their future. However, a weakness of postmodernism is the culture identity crisis that focuses on the differences of each culture when the cultures must blend together to become one in a large and diverse nation of people (Ozmon and Craver, 2003).

There are many characteristics of postmodernism. The following deal with issues of: (1) forms of authority and knowledge, (2) concerns for the individual, (3) the material base, (4) view of history, and, (5) place of community and tradition (Lather, 161).

The postmodern view toward authority and knowledge values the team approach. For example, in the production of a play there is a director, a producer, a writer, a musician, technicians, and actors. The play begins and ends with many different talents of people and contributions to the final product (Lather, 1991). Postmodern education is indeed like the play where a student learns from many. Even the high schools of today have seven classes each day and seven or more different teachers each day. The students also learn many different technologies. For example, they may have graphing calculators in math, computer spreadsheets in Computer Applications, and textbooks teaching math reasoning in their physical science classroom. Then, after school, on the job, the student may use a cash register to figure math. In the process of one day the student will have to shift from one form of math education to another.

The postmodern view for the concerns of the individual is centered on the question of whether teachers should give instruction in the classroom for the average student. Should the teacher be concerned with the difference each student represents in the learning environment? For example, in the classroom of today one finds much diversity. One will find students of various races, sexes, and degrees of intelligence. For example, students who are listed as 504, special education, and regular education and the learning disabled, gifted, or behavior disordered breaks down the division of special education even further (Lather, 1991).

The material base can be described as the unlimited changing of information. This can be seen in our textbooks. Each author presents information and material in different ways. There are different styles of writing and reading. The postmodern view looks at information differently. The view is one of distrust of the final product of information. Therefore, there is less importance placed on the final product and more placed on the process of developing the final product (Lather, 1991).

The postmodern view of history is that there isn't just one history but many diverse histories. Educational technology has only begun to explore its histories. The postmodern view is that these histories are interdependent and interrelated in sophisticated and complicated ways, resembling less a history, and more a genealogy in a Foucauldian sense (Lather, 1991).

The place of community begins with McLuhan's "global village" concept and extends to a "multinational hyperspace." Each community develops educational technology to fit its own needs. However, the Internet has developed a worldwide community of users who use e-mail, data transfer, and information giving and receiving. (Lather, 1991) Marshall McLuhan has been considered to be a right-wing postmodernist. Both the right and the left believe in the ideas of truth and myths and both reject the modernist's beliefs regarding truth and myth. But when the left tends to expose these myths as the cover-up of power, the right chooses to use the myths in reconstructing political spaces. McLuhan proposed that nature was not independent of technology. He believed that nature was technology. He felt that the new media as he proposed technology to be was not a bridge to nature, but that it was nature (Havers, 2003).

Marshall McLuhan was one author who believed in mythical themes. He was a religious man and believed that a myth was anything that processed at a very high speed. His study of the media or "new media" as he called it, was the death of the print age. He believed that technology, with its high speed, was going to change the way people think and the way educators must educate (McLuhan 1995). This has certainly become true with the use of the computer and the Internet in the classrooms of today.

The postmodernists' view of ethics and moral standards is that there is no one set view of morals for all people. Postmodernists feel that society's values are determined by the society and that each person in that society is different in his or her own thought. The ethical values of the postmodern world is the difference between right and wrong, and must reflect the differences in each person's condition and the situation in which each person grew up. This is the postmodern view of accepting everyone in a society for who they are and where they have come from. However, the group must decide the values (Gutek, 2004).

The group did decide the values when the super bowl halftime show with Janet Jackson occurred. The silent majority finally spoke up against seeing the "R" rated halftime show. When the obscenities were thrust into the limelight and into the audience of mainstream America an outrage and outcry was heard. Janet Jackson went too far and was severely penalized by her actions during the halftime show.

In the postmodern world all who are members of the society must form the body of values and ethics. This is in contrast to metaphysics, which is the system of principles underlying a particular society. Simply stated, there isn't any set system of values and ethics that are the rule, but all persons involved set the rule (Gutek, 2004).

Many in history have rejected metaphysics and have instead accepted the truth of the scientific method. The modernists accepted the scientific method as being the only way to solve problems. Postmodernists believe, however, that the scientific method is really not objective, but is in fact biased toward the dominant group of people who share a commitment to the idea (Gutek, 2004). Postmodernists see education differently from the people who propose the metaphysical world and the scientific method. Rather than focus on the common traits of human nature and experiences, they emphasize the differences in race, class, and gender. (Gutek, 2004) One could say that the postmodernists view the world of education from the standpoint of what is politically correct.

Political correctness came into vogue in the 1980s as a way of behaving so as not to offend anyone. Certain words and slang expressions were seen to be politically incorrect. Those people who continued to use certain statements were labeled as racists and bigots. Political correctness became so popular and accepted by communities of people that it was viewed to be the accepted laws of society. Even in public schools political correctness has been discussed as the accepted behavior in dealing with children and each other.

With a focus on minority groups in America one must consider the racial representation of African-Americans in postmodern thought. There have been some resent discussions about the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. A statement was made that the time has come that undiscriminating racial unity has passed. There has been a break in the postmodern directions of the 1960s black cultural nationalism. It seems that the African-American intellectuals are now in this postmodern era, rejecting their identity politics of the 1960s black cultural nationalism (Dubey, 2002).

Postmodernism is not simply a body of thought. Postmodernism is in practice in art and architecture. In some ways it is easier to decide what postmodernism is not instead of what it is. As the author Robin Usher would say,

It could be best understood to be a state of mind, a critical, self-referential posture and style, a different way of seeing and working, rather than a fixed body of ideas, a clearly worked-out position or a set of critical methods and techniques. (Usher and Edwards 1994, 2)

Postmodernism, then, is a challenge to education--a challenge for people to see things differently. Education is in a constant mode of change. Education is in a sense the way in which children experience and question their position in the world, from their freedom to their oppression. Postmodernism is a new and refreshing way to look at the world and the place that we have in it. It is also entrenched in the educational research of today. Postmodernists are quite capable of keeping research an open field for the proliferation of knowledge in which science does not obstruct and close off people using it (Adams St. Pierrre, 2002).

From modernism to postmodernism, to political correctness, to multiculturalism, to the age of information, philosophers like Foucault and Derridia have looked at art, architecture, language and literature of our new age. Postmodernism is the trend of the future, but is not considered to be the future. Postmodernism is questioning the status quo and is changing education to fit a very divergent society in the United States and in fact the world of today. Students of today will have to look at the world in a new way. With technology and the increased skills that are needed in the workplace, teachers will have to be more diligent in teaching students to be prepared for the changing world in which they live. Postmodernism, like our society, is a combination of many different points of view and education will be forever changed because of it.

It is interesting to note that because of the focus on the individual in our postmodern world that there has been a certain kind of "class warfare" going on in our society. Perhaps this is a result of the challenge to the status quo in American society which is considered to be the white, male dominated society. It was since the Vietnam War and the movements during the 1960s by the young people of our nation that this "class warfare" began on a full scale. One might call it the clash between the liberals and the conservatives, they young and the old, the male and the female. This clash is evident even in our schools and classrooms. Because of the divergent population of students that are taught, educators sometimes walk a fine line when teaching students how to function in the workplace.

With the social movements of sexual harassment, division of church and state, feminism, special education, and physical violence, just to name a few, educators are finding less and less time for curriculum. Somehow among all this chaos and questioning in education, there is still strength in this divergent nation. Our children are much more accepting of each other. There is much more acceptance of the different races, sexes and special groups of students in our school population than ever before. Looking back at the 1970s integration movement, America questioned would it ever work? It has, and one definitely can say it was the right thing to do.

Even if one cannot identify with the postmodern movement in education, one can say that many parts of this movement are working for the good of mankind. However, the fear of focusing on the individual instead of the masses is a definite disadvantage in the postmodern movement. The "class warfare" problem does not need more focus, but less focus to keep our society and our schools healthy and progressing. It is the job of the educator to produce a well-rounded citizen who can be productive in the global society that we live in. It is possible that postmodernism in education will help to produce this citizen.

Works Cited

Adams St. Pierre, Elizabeth. "Science Rejects Postmodernism/Reply." Educational Researcher. 31.8 (2002) 25-30.

Anstey, Michele. "It's Not All Black and White: Postmodern Picture Books and New Literacies." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 45.6 (2002) 444-458.

Chartock, Roselle K. Educational Foundations An Anthology. 1st ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2000.

Dubey, Madhu. "Postmodernism as Postnationalism? Racial Representation in U. S. Black Cultural Studies." The Black Scholar. 33.1 (2002) 2-17.

Gutek, Gerald L. Philosophical and Ideological Voices in Education. 1st ed. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2004.

Havers, Grant. "The Right-Wing Postmodernism of Marshall McLuhan." Media, Culture & Society. 25 (2003) 511-525.

Jacobs, Walter R. "Learning & Living Difference That Makes A Difference: Postmodern Theory & Multicultural Education." Multicultural Education. 9.4 (2002) 2-11.

Lather, P. Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy Within The Postmodern. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Macaulay, David. Black and White. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

McLuhan, Marshall. Essential McLuhan. BasicBooks, New York, New York, 1995.

Ozmon, Howard A. and Samuel M. Craver. Philosophical Foundations of Education. 7th ed. Ohio: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2003.

Powers, Thomas F. "Postmodernism and James A. Banks's Multiculturalism: The limits of Intellectual History." Educational Theory. 52.2 (2002) 209-222.

Preble, Duane. Artforms. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers Inc., 1989.

Usher, Robin and Richard Edwards. Postmodernism and Education. 1st ed. London: New York: Routledge, 1994.