The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning

by James Paul Gee

Overview

One of the first champions of the positive effects of gaming reveals the dark side of today's digital and social media

Today's schools are eager to use the latest technology in the classroom, but rather than improving learning, the new e-media can just as easily narrow students' horizons. Education innovator James Paul Gee first documented the educational benefits of gaming a decade ago in his classic What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Now, with digital and social media at the center of modern life, he issues an important warning that groundbreaking new technologies, far from revolutionizing schooling, can stymy the next generation's ability to resolve deep global challenges. The solution-and perhaps our children's future-lies in what Gee calls synchronized intelligence, a way of organizing people and their digital tools to solve problems, produce knowledge, and allow people to count and contribute. Gee explores important strategies and tools for today's parents, educators, and policy makers, including virtual worlds, artificial tutors, and ways to create collective intelligence where everyday people can solve hard problems. By harnessing the power of human creativity with interactional and technological sophistication we can finally overcome the limitations of today's failing educational system and solve problems in our high-risk global world. The Anti-Education Era is a powerful and important call to reshape digital learning, engage children in a meaningful educational experience, and bridge inequality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230342095
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/08/2013
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James Paul Gee has been featured in a variety of publications including Redbook, Child, Teacher, USA Today, Education Week, The Chicago Tribune, and more. He was formerly the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is now the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University.  He is a founder of the Center for Games and Impact at ASU which orchestrated a national conversation on games and learning for the White House Office of Science and Technology. Described by The Chronicle of Higher Education as "a serious scholar who is taking a lead in an emerging field," he is the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Orwell's Question: Why Are Humans So Stupid? 1

Part I How to be Stupid

2 Short-Circuiting the Circuit of Human Reflective Action 11

3 The Limits of Human Memory 21

4 Mental Comfort Stories 29

5 Lack of Context 39

6 Lack of Experience 49

7 Pitfalls along Our Search for Status and Solidarity 59

8 Words Gone Awry 67

9 Lack of Agency 75

10 Institutions and Frozen Thought 85

11 Fact-Free Stories That Sound Good 95

12 Imagined Kin 103

13 Lonely Groups of One 113

14 When Not to Trust Experts 121

15 Evading Knowledge 133

16 Flight from Complexity 141

Part II How to Get Smart Before it's Too Late

17 Inclusive We: How We Can All Get Smarter Together 151

18 Big Minds, Not Little Minds 159

19 Mind Visions and New, Better Worlds 167

20 Synchronized Intelligence: Getting Our Minds and Tools in Synch 171

21 Interlude to Forestall Possible Misunderstandings 191

22 Getting Smarter Before It's Too Late 197

References 217

Index 237

Editorial Reviews

A compelling case for reframing methods of teaching and learning.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Jim Gee is one of the great thinkers of our time. His book, The Anti-Education Era, explains how we can all become smarter. His description of synchronized intelligence and why affinity spaces make for powerful learning should radically change how we think about education.” —Allan Collins, author of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

“Jim Gee is a great thinker. The book's concept of the future of education as collective, powerful, effective groups combining multiple brains enhanced by technology around the world— what he calls affinity spaces, and capital M 'Minds'— is both original and brilliant.” —Marc Prensky, author of Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom

“This book is a wonderful meditation on what it means to be an educated adult in a 21st-century, why this goal is critical to our future as a species, and what technologies can and cannot do to help us achieve the goal of an educated citizenry. It is a powerful antidote to the prevailing belief that more technology, and more STEM courses will save our economy and our planet.” —Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap

From the Publisher

This book is a wonderful meditation on what it means to be an educated adult in a 21st-century, why this goal is critical to our future as a species, and what technologies can and cannot do to help us achieve the goal of an educated citizenry. It is a powerful antidote to the prevailing belief that more technology, and more STEM courses will save our economy and our planet.

author of Creating Innovators and The Global Achie Tony Wagner

Jim Gee is a great thinker. The book's concept of the future of education as collective, powerful, effective groups combining multiple brains enhanced by technology around the world-- what he calls affinity spaces, and capital M 'Minds'-- is both original and brilliant.

author of Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest Marc Prensky

Jim Gee is one of the great thinkers of our time. His book, The Anti-Education Era, explains how we can all become smarter. His description of synchronized intelligence and why affinity spaces make for powerful learning should radically change how we think about education.

author of Rethinking Education in the Age of Techn Allan Collins

Thinking about thinking in education and the digital age. The subtitle suggests that the primary focus of the book would be the roles technology can play in the classroom. Gee (Literacy Studies/Arizona State Univ.; What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2003) has a larger agenda, as he gives ancillary consideration to the technology involved and instead takes a broad look at ways of thinking and learning. He weaves over the line between the ills and the benefits of technology, finding examples of rapid collaboration and increased agency through online forums, social media, webcams video games, search tools, virtual worlds and similar connections. At the same time, he considers the shifting relevance of traditionally defined expertise as noncredentialed "amateurs" leverage the Internet to produce expert-level work. Gee's anecdotal stories are worthy examples of "thinking outside of the box"--e.g., the project to make modifications to the popular game The Sims in an effort to use it to simulate the life of a poor, single mother. The prevailing tone around these anecdotes, however, leans toward a frustrated lecture about these innovative ideas being the exception to the rule. For the most part, it seems, we have become a culture of nincompoops with the cognitive tools necessary to become smarter, but we're either misusing them or disregarding them. "Do we have the will to save ourselves?" asks the author in conclusion. "Will we each sink in our own boat, however large or small it is, or will we bail water together in a journey to a better future?" Gee makes a compelling case for reframing methods of teaching and learning, but the pedantic tone may put off some readers.

Kirkus Reviews