Brin, Page, Bezos and Wales?

What do the founders of Google (both of them), Amazon and Wikipedia have in common? Like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, Jean Piaget and Hilary and Bill Clinton before them, they all had early Montessori schooling.

Sergei Brin and Larry Page both attended Montessori schools. Indeed, they both credit their Montessori education for much of their success. It was the Montessori experience, they claim, that made them self-directed, allowing them to think for themselves and pursue their real interests.

Jeff Bezos's mother tells of his single-mindedness at his Motessori school, being so absorbed in the tasks he chose that they had to drag him off to give him a change. This same self-directed, single-mindedness was a feature of his Amazon adventure.

Jimmy Wales was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. Although not home-schooling, it was close as he was taught in a class of four by his mother and grandmother, who ran the school. The school was significantly influenced by Montessori methods and he had the freedom to study what he liked on his own terms.

Note that all three have made significant contributions to increasing access to self-directed knowledge and learning.

Google: first MOOP (Massive Online Open Pedagogy)

Seek and you will find

As a kid I never imagined, when watching Star Trek, that I really would have a little device on which I could ask any question, and it would almost certainly give me a meaningful answer. Science fiction came true and I have one next to me now and its main tool is Google search. Google search is probably the most profound pedagogic shift in the history of learning, not a game changer but a previously unimaginable shift towards universal access to anything, anytime from anywhere.

Montessori kids

Brin was born in Russia and educated in the US, Page is from Michigan. Like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, Jean Piaget and Hilary and Bill Clinton before them, they both attended Montessori schools. Indeed, they both credit their Montessori education for much of their success. It was the Montessori experience, they claim, that made them self-directed, allowing them to think for themselves and pursue their real interests.

They only met in 1995, at Stanford, yet their business, Google, famously based on a spelling error (Google should have been Googol), has become one of the most significant global businesses of our times. The company floated in 2004 and is run as a triumvirate of Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergei Brin.

Most potent, pedagogic, productivity tool ever

As the world’s most successful search engine it has become an indispensable tool for learning and research. It’s a way of learning that has touched almost everyone in the developed and increasingly developing world. Search has transformed the way we search for information and has changed our very relationship with knowledge, making a significant contribution to the very idea of what needs to be learnt and newer. It is, arguably, the single most powerful, pedagogic, productivity tool we have ever seen.

Google – game changer in learning

Google's mission is to ‘organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Specialist searching of text, images, video, books, blogs, academic papers, news, and maps, has given the ordinary user unparalleled access to knowledge stored across different media.

Their mathematical approach to search problems at Stanford led to a search engine that ranked sites by popularity. In addition, the more we search, the greater the data Google has and the better their search engine becomes. As their scalable model looked at links, so the larger the web became the better their engine became.

It is the speed and efficiency of such search that has accelerated our ability as learners to identify relevant knowledge. Learners of all ages and abilities see the web as a useful source of knowledge. Of course, Google also relies on knowledge bases such as Wikipedia, Journals and many other sources to deliver content.

Researchers, from schoolchildren with projects to advanced researchers in educational institutions, now find Google an indispensable tool. As online access to research Journals and scholarly knowledge bases increases, so search has become an indispensable tool.

Google tools and learning

Google Education provides a rack of useful tools for education. Thie rapprocah is to provide productivity tools, not content. Gmail has given users a free email service with substantial amounts of storage. Google Calendar provides individual and shared calendars. Google docs, shared documents. Google+ collaboration and hangouts. Google translate for languages. Google Scholar is even more precise in its intention.

Google Earth and Google Maps are astonishing tools for learning and research. Blogger, owned by Google, provides free blogging software to tens of millions of bloggers. YouTube is the world’s greatest, searchable repository for videos, now a mainstream source of content for learning. These promise to put even more power in the hands of learners, freeing us from the traditional limitations of paper-based libraries and physical ‘places’ of learning.

Outsourced memory

When most knowledge is easily searchable the need to learn and memorise knowledge starts to recede. Indeed, in the corporate world, it is clear that modern managers rely less on knowledge and more on skills. Memory is, in a sense, outsourced, placing less of an emphasis on rote learning and memorisation.

Many argue that this is also true of schooling, where the traditional model has been rote learning and memorisation, as opposed to critical thinking and other skills. Teaching students how to search may be as powerful a skill, as teaching them to read and write. Indeed, Google have a free course that does just that.

Google may also have altered our general idea of what constitutes knowledge. You have to learn to see knowledge as varying in quality and certainty, distinguish different sources in terms of their reliability. On the other hand, some suggest Google search has made us fickle, lazy and fragmented in our learning.

Digital Maoism

Google has its detractors. Jared Lanier warns against ‘digital Maoism’ aided and abetted by Google, that may take the wisdom of the crown and turn us all into slavish followers or tribal groups. The subterfuge is that Google monetises your search data and is “selling people [their advertiser-targetable personal identities, buying habits, etc.] back to themselves“. He goes further in his latest book The Fate of Power and the Future of Dignity claiming that the financial crash and future economy may be undermined by techno-utopianism, where we unwittingly submit to becoming become advertising fodder. These are interesting arguments and well worth noting but they tend to ignore the simple pay-off, that I gain more personally than I risk. Most people seem happy to give up their search data to get such a fee, powerful and useful product in return.

Googling the future

Google are so ambitious and have so many projects on the go that it is difficult to predict where they are heading. Now that they have tentacles into every online and offline person, organisation and place on the planet, including the planet itself, it seems likely that they will move beyond search through an expanding suite of tools to become your personal assistant for almost everything you want in life – knowledge, shopping, jobs…. However, it’s hard to see where Google X’s projects, supervised by Brin, such as the driverless car and Google Glass fit in.

Let’s not forget that Google gave us the Android mobile operating system, a welcome alternative to the closed world of Apple and a strategy one that seems to be paying off. Apple’s walled world is at odds with Google’s open world and in the long term my money’s on Google. Look out for Android games consoles, such as the Ouya. Android’s important as it eats into the OS market with phones, tablets and laptops like the Chromebook.

Conclusion

Page and Brin have created a toolset that has already revolutionised access to knowledge. Their organisation continues to revolutionise learning and to ‘organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. The scale of this task is enormous and on-going. It is truly an example of technology making a huge impact on the nature, future and efficacy of learning, a truly momentus pedagogic force. Search as a Massive Open Online Pedagogy (MOOP) is something that is was around before MOOCs and will be around long after MOOCs are gone. It’s long-term effect on learning is irreversible and profound.

Csikszentmihalyi – Go with the flow…

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee), Professor of Human Development and Education at theUniversity of Chicago, has contributed a background learning theory that has real implications for the way we see learning in practice. His concept of ‘flow’ postulates mental states of optimal performance where we are ‘in the flow’. This, he thinks, applies to sport but also many cognitive tasks such as programming, writing and, importantly, learning. He asks us to take the experience of flow into consideration when designing and delivering formal and informal learning. This is a concept of some importance in the design of simulations and online learning.

Flow

Csikszentmihalyi has gathered huge amounts of data on mental states through spontaneous surveys. A randomly, beeping watch triggers people into reporting how they feel. This has fuelled his research into optimal experiences and ultimately to his core concept ‘flow’. Linked to creativity, happiness and satisfaction, he sees ‘flow’ as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." It is sometimes described as being in the ‘zone’ or ‘groove’.

Intimately linked to recent positive psychology research, he has explored many aspects of flow in practice. For example, his examination of 90 creative people across a wide range of disciplines was explored in in 'Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention'. He has also applied his ideas to business and sport.

Flow and learning

In his essay ‘Thoughts About Education’ he points to the huge gap in education between the ‘dismal reality and expectations’. He sees most research as being misplaced, lacking a focus on motivation. The main problem is not that people can’t learn, it’s that they don’t want to. His focus on intrinsic motivation searches for ways to make learning more enjoyable and satisfying. 

Again he points to states of consciousness where learners have a flow experience, enjoyable in the sense that it felt like being carried away by a current, like being in a flow. These experiences become intrinsically rewarding and sought after, learners then become hooked, and they become autonomous learners leading to a ‘lifetime of self-propelled acquisition of knowledge’. 

He also notes that a major constraint on people enjoying what they are doing is being conscious of a fear of how they appear to others and what these others might think. This mitigates against theory which pushes group learning or contexts in which the learner may be exposed to the judgements of others.

The features one experiences when in the ‘flow’ are compete involvement and focus along with a sense of being outside of life. It induces a sense of internal clarity along with an intimate reflective knowledge of your own performance. People often report that they don’t feel time passing. An important aspect of flow is doing something you know is achievable. You walk the line between being too anxious and being bored (echoes of Vygotsky's theory of proximal development). Ultimately this leads to a sense of serenity and intrinsic motivation that pushes you on to experiencing more of this ‘flow’ experience.

Csikszentmihalyi has worked with Kevin Rathunde comparing Montessori and Traditional Middle Schools in the areas of motivation, quality of experience, and social context. Using Csikszentmihalyi’s sampling method Montessori students reported a significantly better quality of experience in their academic work than traditional students. Montessori students also perceived their schools as a more positive community for learning, with more opportunities for active, rather than passive, learning.

Influence

Motivation, as an issue was squeezed out of educational theory by behaviourism then a focus on defined cognitive skills. Csikszentmihalyi is one of the few psychologists who have a concrete theory, based on large samples of empirical data, that points towards a solution to this problem.

Bibliography

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996). Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1998). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life. Basic Books.

Page & Brin – Google search… G Suite and many other tools for teaching and learning…

Larry Page and Sergei Brin met at Stanford, in 1995, yet their business, Google, has become one of the most significant global businesses of our times. Their search engine has transformed the way we search for information and has changed our very relationship with knowledge, making it a significant contribution to learning. As the world’s most successful search engine it has become an indispensable tool for learning and research.

Education

Brin was born in Russia and educated in the US, Page is from Michigan.

Like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, Jean Piaget and Hilary and Bill Clinton before them, they both attended Montessori schools. Indeed, they both credit their Montessori education for much of their success. It was the Montessori experience, they claim, that made them self-directed, allowing them to think for themselves and pursue their real interests.

Google Search and learning

Their mathematical approach to search problems at Stanford led to a search engine that ranked sites by popularity. Their scalable model looked at links, so the larger the web became the better their engine became. Famously based on a spelling error (Google should have been Googol), Google's mission is to ‘organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Specialist searching of text, images, video, books, academic papers, Universities, news, maps and prices, have given the ordinary user unparalleled access to knowledge stored in different media. It is the speed and efficiency of such search that has accelerated our ability as learners to identify relevant knowledge. Learners of all ages and abilities see the web as a useful source of knowledge. Researchers, from schoolchildren with projects to advanced researchers in educational institutions, often find Google an indispensable tool.

Google Scholar is a free, search service for scholarly literature. It contains most academic journals, books and other academic literature. Search is weighted towards citations and the ability to choose a citation format is a strong feature. Other search for images, news and so on have also been useful in education.

Google tools in Education

G Suite is a cloud-based set of educational tools, launched in 2006. It includes Gmail (email), Hangouts (comms and collaboration), Calendar, Drive (storage), Docs, Sheets, Forms and other tools for shared resources and collaboration. As ac loud-based solution your data is stored securely and backed up effortlessly. Tens of millions use the service in education. Blogger provides free blogging software to tens of millions of bloggers and there is a large community of education and training bloggers. This has proved useful in, for example, CPD (Continuous Professional Development).Google Books, Google Earth, Google Translate and Google Assistant are just some of the free services that have also contributed to education.

Google and digitisation

Google’s work to digitise the contents of some of the world’s great libraries is also contributing to the storage and dissemination of knowledge. The aim is to make the contents of books (text and images) searchable and available, while being sensitive to the ‘in and out of print’ issues along with the ‘copyright and public domain’ restrictions. They are looking at millions of books available over and above the existing Google Books program with publishers. This takes Google beyond searching to the creation of online resources for searching.

Criticism

Google’s presence in schools has been seen as a way of getting their brand into the heads of younger people, for future exploitation. There is also the issue of tax avoidance where, by not paying fair amounts of tax in many countries, notably the notorious “double Irish” loophole to avoid paying tax in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, has come under fire. A similar arrangement exists in Singapore for the Far East. Thomas Picketty has described this literally as the ‘theft’ by one country from many others.

Influence

Page and Brin have created a toolset that has already revolutionised access to knowledge. Their organisation continues to revolutionise learning and to ‘organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. The scale of this task is enormous and on-going. Few organisations now have the tools and financial muscle to make it possible. It is truly an example of technology making a huge impact on the efficacy of learning.

Why so few women in 2500 years of learning theory?

In presenting my talk on 2500 years of learning theory and theorists, and my series of 260 learning theorists, a question  I often get asked is 'Where are the women?’ True, they are proportionally absent. This is not because of any conscious or unconscious exclusion on my part. The answer is stunningly simple. Women from the Greeks through the Middle Ages, up to the 20^th century were largely excluded, not only from being educators but also being educated. It is a extraordinary story of exclusion.

The dominance of religion and the fact that the dominant, global, religious leaders were all men, as were their zealot educators, meant that women were largely ignored as educators and theorists on learning throughout the Middle Ages. The Reformation certainly helped with its push towards universal schooling but the exclusion of women from the very structure of educational elites across many religions, still meant institutional exclusion. We still live with an antipathy, as we know, by certain religious factions, towards the education of women.

Renaissance

Even the Renaissance did little to improve the matter. Hypatia of Alexandria, a Neo-Platonist, is said to appear on Raphael’s School of Athens but there is an interesting backstory to her appearance. The funder, a Bishop asked, “Who is this woman in the middle?” “Hypatia, the most famous student of the School of Alexandria,” replied Raphael. “Remove her. Knowledge of her runs counter to the belief of the faithful! Otherwise, the work is acceptable,”. So he disguised her as the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere I. The story, apocryphal or not, illustrates the Church’s antipathy towards women as educated intellectuals.

We had to wait until the Enlightenment to hear women’s voices. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was certainly the most original and radical (see my views here). Her attack on Rousseau’s attitudes towards the education of women resulted in a well reasoned defence of the education of women alongside men, for the sake of their own intellectual autonomy, not as Rousseau claimed (see my views here), for the pleasure of men. However, even here, her recommendation that the poor be excluded at age nine, shows a less than generous spirit towards educational equality. Maria and her father Richard Edgeworth’s Practical Education was a deep and practical guide to education that recognised hte autonomy of the leaner but also emphasised practical education. Ada Lovelace can be added to these early thinkers having realised that computation was important.

The astounding fact is that women were almost entirely excluded from formal education, its institutions and even as teachers. This was cultural and legal with girls either excluded from the process of education or, if included, steered towards the domestic and social skills they needed as a wife and mother. The very notion of what it meant to be ‘educated’ was very much a male concern across two millennia. It was not until the 20^th century that a semblance of equality in education, opportunities in teaching and research became possible. Columbia University dod not admit women into undergraduate Degree courses until 1983!

The 20^th century saw drastic changes, politically in terms of the right of women but also in the world of learning. The post World War 1 era saw large numbers of teachers emerge after the carnage of the war. Universities, colleges and teaching were opened up to women, as were opportunities to get degrees and positions in higher education.

Maria Montessori (my views here) was one notable example of a woman who had a real, practical and long-lasting impact on schools and schooling from 1909 in her Montessori Method, which has open classrooms, a looser approach to teaching, more self-directed but still a strong emphasis on method and materials. Her methods certainly seemed to help Page and Brin of Google. Margaret Donaldson, who worked with Piaget and studied Vygotsky. Vicky Colbert was another who founded a schools movement in South America called Escuela Nueva.

We should not assume that just becuase a theorist is a woman, they are right. Katherine Briggs and daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, neither of whom had any training in psychology, set out to design their test and worked with the HR manager of a local bank, Edward Hay to take a smattering of Jung and turn it into a pyramid scheme. Rita Dunn and her husband Kenneth Dunn created a learning styles phenomenon in the 1970s. There are the psychoanalysts Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.

We had the pioneering study of racism from Mamie Clark, Elizabeth Bjork on memory, Judith Harris on personality, Carol Dweck on growth mindset,,

This struggle and the role of women in education is examined in detail by Jane Roland Martin (my view here), who saw the role of women in education as an unexamined topic. For the actual role of women in education across the ages she recommends we look not at established institutions but in more general literature and popular sources. She rightly states that the very concept of women, reflected in the academic bias in subjects, as opposed to the practical and vocational, the emphasis on schools, schooling and the ghettoisation of women into professions such as teaching and nursing. This wide set of perspectives was needed, she thought, in research into the role of women.

A heroine of mine is Jennie Lee, whose work literally created the Open University. A working class woman, daughter of a miner in Scotland, probable had more impact on Higher Education than any other person in the UK. Barbara Kellerman is a brilliant scholar on leadership.

In the psychology of learning I covered Elizabeth Bjork, Judith Harris and the fascinating group that included Gloria Gery, Victoria Marsick, Karen Watkins and Alison Rossett around informal learning and performance support. There are many others.

There's Mary Immordino-Yang, Lisa Feldman-Barrett on emotions and memory, with very different views. Judith Butler on queer theory and her arch critic Camille Paglia. Also Linda Darling-Hammond on teaching and schools.

More recently we have Jane Hart on learning tools, Ruth Clark on online learning and Daphe Koeller on MOOCs.

Online learning?

More recently, in online learning, one could also say, ‘Where are the women?’, especially on the technology side of the online learning delivery. This is to be explained by the dominance of male figures in the founding and building of large, dominant tech companies. The reasons for this are complex, even rooted in education itself, where girls are subtly discouraged from taking STEM subjects. On the non-technical, side of online learning it is very different, where both learning and online learning is much more gender balanced and there are many women experts and practitioners who are active on technology based learning.

There are few areas of human endeavour where women were so studiously excluded than in learning theory and practice. This was a process of deliberate exclusion but also because philosophical (Greeks), religious and even Enlightenment views, such as Rousseau, placed women in a secondary role. Even well into the 20^th century women had to fight for recognition and that fight is far from over.

Conclusion

I have written articles on 31 women who have played a significant role in learning theory and practice; Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Ada Lovelace, Maria Montessori, Margaret Donaldson, Vicky Colbert, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Linda Darling-Hammond, Isabel Myers, Katherine Briggs, Rita Dunn, Mamie Clark, Elizabeth Bjork, Judith Harris, Jane Roland Martin, Carol Dweck Gloria Gery, Victoria Marsick, Karen Watkins, Alison Rossett, Barbara Kellerman, Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, Mary Immordino-Yang, Lisa Feldman-Barrett, Jennie Lee and Jane Hart, Ruth Clark, Daphne Koeller.

What I have never done is claim this is an exhaustive or even representative list. I write about people I read, admire and sometimes do not admire. Many in this list remain largely unread and unknown to many. I have little time for Myer-Briggs and Feldman-Barrett's theory of emotions but it is important to include those who have been influential rather than just right. My real interest is in the nature of learning, not gender. Nevertheless, the story is definitely one of quite extreme exclusion and of interest in itself.

7 ways women are ignored in education from Jane Roland Martin

Jane Roland Martin is a remarkable woman as she widened up educational theory in line with those such as Dewey and Illich. yet her real contribution is in the many issues around women in education. Her views are inclusive but above all expansive.
1. Women ignored

She saw the role of women as a largely unexamined issue in education. Women had for centuries been excluded from access to education but even recently, ignored in teaching, schooling, higher education.

2, New sources

As women have been denied access to education, excluded from education, educational institutions and the vehicles of educational theorising, she recommends that we must look to wider sources for the views, in magazines, pamphlets, more general literature and the wider media landscape.

3. The educational ideal ignores women

The definition of education itself, Martin claims, has neglected women. Work by women and work about women are often ignored, with the role of women in education hugely under researched and understood. This, she thinks, distorts and misrepresents reality. The very idea of an educated person or educational ideal must take women into account. 

4. Spectator knowledge

Martin excavated, in an anthropological manner, hidden assumptions and problems within education, especially the curriculum of fixed cultural subjects and knowledge, as well as male cognitive perspectives, at the expense of other disciplines and real-world knowledge and skills. She saw curricula and institutions, that focus largely on ‘spectator’ knowledge, as promoting a one-sided view of education. In particular she came to focus on gender through feminism.

5. Education to include domestic context

For Martin, the school as home should be far more relevant to life outside of school, especially the domestic environment of the home. It needs to draw back from a curriculum that focuses largely on ‘spectator’ knowledge. The role of mothering, issues around the ghettoisation of women on professions such as teaching and nursing, as well as the insensitivity to women’s often difficult role at work and at home, led her to a radical stance on taking action across a broad front to rebalance the educational system, in response to this analysis. 

6. Multiple Educational Agency

Yet the education debate so often focuses solely on schools and schooling. Dewey and many others have downplayed the role of school in the development of young people. For Martin this narrow and obsessive emphasis on schools and schooling may result in cultural miseducation. Parents, family, community, church, youth groups, sports clubs, the media, internet and other institutions, even the education of animals, have played roles in education long before schools and schooling were common. Martin has an expansive view of learning as a process of Multiple Educational Agency. To focus just on schools, which are notoriously difficult to change, is to ignore the very many other opportunities to educate

7. Learning happens everywhere

Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all-pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. The idea that education is a fundamental aspect of life that lasts for the whole of one's life underpins her entire re-evaluation.

Criticism

Critics have claimed that her work is so general that it is difficult to either object or test. Others claim that her widening education to include, for example animals, is taking the inclusivity idea too far. Others, while agreeing with Martin’s descriptive work, have argued that Martin’s prescriptive recommendations around the reconstitution of education are either impractical, simply reinforce inequalities or replace them with new ones. Her work certainly aroused debate and passions.

Conclusion

Martin may not be regarded as the only or even leading voice of feminism in education but her reputation as a dogged researcher, determined to re-establish historical wrongs and implement future rights is unarguable. The re-evaluation of Plato, Rousseau, James, Wollstonecraft, Montessori, Beecher and Gilman is one contribution. Stimulating feminist and gender debate and research is another. Widening the view of education beyond schooling is another. Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all-pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. This was Martin’s great achievement, simply opening the world of education up to a much wider set of perspectives around gender, women and what it is to educate and be an educated person.

Bibliography

Martin, J. R. (1985). Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Martin, J. R. (1992). The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Martin, J. R. (1994). Changing the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Martin, J. R. (2000). Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women's Hopes and Reforming the Academy. New York: Routledge.

Martin, J. R. (2002). Cultural Miseducation: In Search of a Democratic Solution. New York: Teachers College Press.

Martin, J. R. (2011). Education Reconfigured: Routledge.

Martin – Women in education, a story of exclusion…

Jane Roland Martin saw the role of women as a largely unexamined issue in education. Women had for centuries been excluded from access to education but even recently, ignored in teaching, schooling, higher education and in views of what it is to be educated. Martin excavated, in an anthropological manner, hidden assumptions and problems within education, especially the curriculum of fixed cultural subjects and knowledge, as well as male cognitive perspectives, at the expense of other disciplines and real-world knowledge and skills. In particular she came to focus on gender through feminism. 

The educational ideal

The definition of education itself, Martin claims, has neglected women. Work by women and work about women are often ignored, with the role of women in education hugely under researched and understood. This, she thinks, distorts and misrepresents reality. The very idea of an educated person or educational ideal must be gender-sensitive. As women have been denied access to education, excluded from education, educational institutions and the vehicles of educational theorising, she recommends that we must look to wider sources for the views, in magazines, pamphlets, more general literature and the wider media landscape. The wider role of women in mothering, raising children and in caring professions is also largely ignored but is, in reality, a huge part of the educational landscape. This was Martin’s first great achievement, simply opening the world of education up to a much wider set of perspectives around gender, women and what it is to educate and be an educated person. 

Reconceptualising education

For Martin, schools should be far more relevant to life outside of school, especially the domestic environment of the home. It needs to draw back from a curriculum that focuses largely on ‘spectator’ knowledge. The role of mothering, issues around the ghettoization of women on professions such as teaching and nursing, as well as the insensitivity to women’s often difficult role at work and at home, led her to a radical stance on taking action across a broad front to rebalance the educational system, in response to this analysis. There are the more obvious issues around gender tracking away from technical subjects and direct discrimination in Higher Education. Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all-pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. The idea that education is a fundamental aspect of life that lasts for the whole of one's life underpins her entire re-evaluation.

Multiple Educational Agency

Parents, family, community, church, youth groups, sports clubs, the media, internet and other institutions, even the education of animals, have played roles in education long before schools and schooling were common. Learning happens everywhere. Yet the education debate so often focuses solely on schools and schooling. Dewey and many others have downplayed the role of school in the development of young people. For Martin this narrow and obsessive emphasis on schools and schooling may result in cultural miseducation. Martin has an expansive view of learning as a process of Multiple Educational Agency. To focus just on schools, which are notoriously difficult to change, is to ignore the very many other opportunities to educate.

Criticism

Critics have claimed that her work is so general that it is difficult to either object or test. Others claim that her widening education to include, for example animals, is taking the inclusivity idea too far. Others, while agreeing with Martin’s descriptive work, have argued that Martin’s prescriptive recommendations around the reconstitution of education are either impractical, simply reinforce inequalities or replace them with new ones. Her work certainly aroused debate and passions.

Influence

Martin may not be regarded as the only or even leading voice of feminism in education but her reputation as a dogged researcher, determined to re-establish historical wrongs and implement future rights is unarguable. The re-evaluation of Plato, Rousseau, James, Wollstonecraft, Montessori, Beecher and Gilman is one contribution. Stimulating feminist and gender debate and research is another. Widening the view of education beyond schooling is another. Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. This was Martin’s great achievement, simply opening the world of education up to a much wider set of perspectives around gender, women and what it is to educate and be an educated person.

Bibliography

Martin, J. R. (1985). Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Martin, J. R. (1992). The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. 

Martin, J. R. (1994). Changing the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Martin, J. R. (2000). Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women's Hopes and Reforming the Academy. New York: Routledge.

Martin, J. R. (2002). Cultural Miseducation: In Search of a Democratic Solution. New York: Teachers College Press.

Martin, J. R. (2011). Education Reconfigured: Routledge.

Wales – Wikipedia and knowledge…

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia and Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. It was philosopher Larry Sanger who first proposed the use of wiki technology to create an encyclopaedia in 2001, and Wales created a wiki used for collaborative editing before submission to Nupedia for peer review. Wikipedia then became the dominant force and has grown into the largest and most used wiki on the web, a vast encyclopedia built, edited and policed by its users.

Education

Wales was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. Although not home-schooling, it was close as he was taught in a class of four by his mother and grandmother, who ran the school. He had the freedom to study what he liked on his own terms. "Education was always a passion in my household ... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life." There are parallels with the Montessori schooling of Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who conceived and founded Google.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a huge knowledge base, or encyclopaedia, that has been created by its users, who can publish and amend without having to download special software. Other users, who correct errors, oversee the accuracy of the content. In addition it allows users to see edit histories and discuss these issues. Realistically, it recognises that knowledge is sometimes not absolutely certain and will be subject to debate and discussion.

Since founded in 2001 it has grown into one of the largest and most used knowledge sources in the world. With millions of articles in over 200 languages, tens of thousands of registered users and thousands of articles added every day; it is one of the most visited sites on the web.

Its remarkable achievement was not only to produce the world’s largest and most popular knowledgebase but to do it through a model that was truly innovative. Previous paper and CD-ROM encyclopaedias, like Microsoft’s Encarta, were produced at great cost by teams with targets and sold to customers to recoup that cost. Wikipedia came along and relied on volunteers who did this for free, relying not on corporate recognition but peer reputation, as writers and editors. This low cost model allowed Wales to offer this wonderful online service for free. It showed that people were willing to create and share for the public good.

There has been some debate about the reliability of Wikipedia but a blind-trial research project published in Nature in 2005 found little significant difference between it and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its dynamic nature with thousands of new articles appearing every day, along with search capability, links, edit trails and discussion groups makes it a very different type of resource when compared to print periodicals. Its crosslinks, oinks to external resources, transparency on edits, along with discussions also make it different from print repositories of knowledge. 

Wales philosophy to knowledge capture and sharing is what he describes as anti-credentialist, “To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.... You can't coast on your credentials on Wikipedia.... You have to enter the marketplace of ideas and engage with people."

Wikipedia in education

Although derided by many academics and teachers for being inaccurate, it has remarkable levels of use by teachers and learners. On top of this it has been used for assignments, such as editing articles. In practice, however, it is mostly used as a reference tool. Its consistent layout, with a general introductory paragraph, linked index and headings, is appealing to those who want to find things quickly. The fact that it is searchable, cross-linked and provided bibliographies and citations is also useful.

Wikis

The web now has a plethora of wiki applications including; wikidictionary, wikinews, wikibooks, wikilaw and so on. In addition, wiki technology is being used to revolutionise the way in which we capture, create, publish and update knowledge within organisations. Wikis are becoming common within corporations as a method of knowledge management. Their bottom-up ethos appeals to those who see knowledge emerging from expertise within an organisation, as opposed to being handed down from single authorities.

Influence

Wikipedia is one of the world’s most accessed websites. Google even scrapes from Wikipedia biographies to feature as sidebar profiles. It has, in effect, become the world’s de facto standard for knowledge searches. Wales has flipped the traditional publishing model of; expert writes, everyone else pays. In Wikipedia, everyone writes and no one pays. This is a radical shift in publishing and a radical shift in the way knowledge is being made available on the web, and elsewhere. As a learning resource, it is truly one of the modern wonders of the web.