_______________ EDUCATION IN THE ETHER BY VICKY PHILLIPS (01/20/98)

Vicki Phillips' article, "Education in the Ether," would have been more convincing if she had presented Internet education as an alternative for students, instead of as a better representative of the liberal arts ideal. For her students, those facing obstacles preventing them from matriculation to a traditional campus, or for those who simply prefer not to attend, taking courses over the Net sounds like a wonderful option. It isn't necessarily better than on-campus education, though, and it fails to be the Platonic ideal. As Phillips points out, the "traditional factory model" of education -- straight lectures to and testing of unmotivated students -- fails to meet the Platonic ideal, but it's questionable that an Internet education as she presents it meets that standard, either. Plato's works and dialogues define the Socratic method, questioning students to reveal ideals but, more importantly, to train their reason, the assumption being that, with properly trained reason, students could come as close as their abilities would allow to seeing the ideals in their pure forms. Memorizing lectured material and regurgitating it back on tests doesn't train one's reason, which is why the "traditional factory model" falls short of teaching in the Platonic sense. Bulletin boards for lectures and chat rooms for intellectual exchange aside, studying over the Internet is the traditonal factory model in electronic form, not a new breed or improved model of Plato's and Socrates' method. Sure, her students write their responses to the material and her questions in forums that allow for dialogue and understanding, but that environment happens on campuses regularly in the nation's liberal arts colleges and universities as well. Teachers on campus give short lectures to clarify the issues under consideration; pose questions to their students that promote analysis, reflection, and critical thinking; and assign essays and papers to test the development of their reasoning. The type of education Phillips describes in her article isn't unique to the Web. (In fact, I've seen syllabuses from Internet courses that perfectly mirror the traditional factory model, where students get the course outline and lectures off the Net, order the standard texts from the bookstore and take the same exams as students on campus via the Web.) Phillips' article is more a demonstration of the differences between good and bad teaching, not on-campus and Internet learning. -- Joseph Lawrence Pillow Jr. The article by Vicky Phillips on the virtues of distance-learning courses was one of the most biased and ill-conceived essays I have read in the debate about virtual versus real classroom instruction. Her comment that textbooks are "mere memory tools," an instructional device that Plato would never use, reveals one of the flaws in her pedagogy. Had Ms. Phillips consulted any textbook on Plato, she would realize that her interpretation of Plato as essentially a philosopher who emphasized debating skills (assumed the equivalent of critical thinking by Phillips) over content, is inaccurate. Socrates and Plato opposed the position of the Sophists, who offered their services to anyone willing to pay for instruction. Sophists taught the art of rhetoric, that is, how to debate any issue; questions about right or wrong are irrelevant. The realists, Socrates and Plato, believed there were discernible truths, obtained through questioning, study and intuition. Are we simply to accept students' tuition payments, listen to them argue and send them a diploma, without providing them with a foundational body of knowledge with which they may form an educated opinion? -- Curtis Bostick Southern Utah University SALON | Feb. 3, 1998

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