User:Robbie/rmcc narrative bio 2pp: Difference between revisions
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<p>Simultaneous with the book’s publication, I received tenure, and within the domain of Ortega’s influence, the work brought recognition from writers like Jacques Ellul and Salvador de Madariaga. A short-lived high-point, I found difficult to move beyond. I began to drift, uncertain what should come next, seeing life as a public intellectual an improbable dream. I reflected on political and educational thinking from Rousseau forward and explored how modes of communication and material life affected personal and collective self-formation, but found it difficult to establish public or professional interest in my work. In a school of education, many professors and students perceived my thinking to be tangential, too distant from the actualities of public schooling.</p> | <p>Simultaneous with the book’s publication, I received tenure, and within the domain of Ortega’s influence, the work brought recognition from writers like Jacques Ellul and Salvador de Madariaga. A short-lived high-point, I found difficult to move beyond. I began to drift, uncertain what should come next, seeing life as a public intellectual an improbable dream. I reflected on political and educational thinking from Rousseau forward and explored how modes of communication and material life affected personal and collective self-formation, but found it difficult to establish public or professional interest in my work. In a school of education, many professors and students perceived my thinking to be tangential, too distant from the actualities of public schooling.</p> | ||
<p>Should I have moved elsewhere? Perhaps, but with tenure among colleagues I liked in a major university in a great city I loved, I stayed put, committed to turning my youthful commitment to study into a full theory and practice of education. In life, a persistent question can become a quest: < | <p>Should I have moved elsewhere? Perhaps, but with tenure among colleagues I liked in a major university in a great city I loved, I stayed put, committed to turning my youthful commitment to study into a full theory and practice of education. In life, a persistent question can become a quest:</p> | ||
<blockquote>Can each person find within their actual circumstances resources requisite for pursuing comprehensive, life-long, voluntary study? Can each, grasp actual opportunity to study as fully as they will find worthy what their vital concerns compelled them to devote themselves to?</blockquote> | |||
<p>Through the 1970s, my essays addressed these and related questions. I properly published a few, among them, “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1971_place_for_study.pdf Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction]” (1971). Others, like “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1973_universal_voluntary_study.pdf Universal Voluntary Study]” (1973), “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1976_problems_to_predicaments_hew.pdf From Problems to Predicaments]” (1976), and “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1977_imperative_of_judgment.pdf The Imperative of Judgment]” (1977), I circulated as not quite finished manuscripts. My experience broadened through a year of solitary immersion in the milieu surrounding Frankfurt’s Goethe-Universität (1973-74), and through a wholly different whirlwind as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington (1975-76).</p> | <p>Through the 1970s, my essays addressed these and related questions. I properly published a few, among them, “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1971_place_for_study.pdf Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction]” (1971). Others, like “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1973_universal_voluntary_study.pdf Universal Voluntary Study]” (1973), “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1976_problems_to_predicaments_hew.pdf From Problems to Predicaments]” (1976), and “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1977_imperative_of_judgment.pdf The Imperative of Judgment]” (1977), I circulated as not quite finished manuscripts. My experience broadened through a year of solitary immersion in the milieu surrounding Frankfurt’s Goethe-Universität (1973-74), and through a wholly different whirlwind as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington (1975-76).</p> | ||
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<p>As the decade ended, I felt fully committed to my quest to make universal, voluntary study actually feasible for all, but I had formed deep doubts that I could do much about it as a scholar and critic, doubts I expressed in “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1979_dynamics_decline_education.pdf The Dynamics of Decline: Why Education Can No Longer Be Liberal]” (1979). I had become primed to change the course of my quest significantly, and I became a historical materialist of sorts, bent on making digital technologies serve everyone as an affordable, effective place to study.</p> | <p>As the decade ended, I felt fully committed to my quest to make universal, voluntary study actually feasible for all, but I had formed deep doubts that I could do much about it as a scholar and critic, doubts I expressed in “[https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1979_dynamics_decline_education.pdf The Dynamics of Decline: Why Education Can No Longer Be Liberal]” (1979). I had become primed to change the course of my quest significantly, and I became a historical materialist of sorts, bent on making digital technologies serve everyone as an affordable, effective place to study.</p> | ||
<p>In 1983, I became chair of Communication, Computing, and Technology in Education, a department at TC. In that move, I organized the [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1999_ilt_strategic_plan.pdf Institute for Learning Technologies] (ILT) in 1984, directing it until 2002. I secured substantial funding through numerous proposals, among them — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1991_the_cumulative_curriculum_project.pdf The Cumulative Curriculum Proposal] (1990-91), which spawned two large projects — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1992_dalton_risk_renewal_y1_full.pdf The Dalton Technology Plan] (1991–1996) and [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1996_the_eiffel_project.pdf The Eiffel Project ](1996–2001). We won over $20 million in grant competitions and supplemented that with equivalent matching effort from diverse organizations. We implemented high visibility projects to prototype advanced resources enabling study by means of the emerging Internet in New York City schools, public and private, and in Columbia University. </p> | <p>In 1983, I became chair of Communication, Computing, and Technology in Education, a department at TC. In that move, I organized the [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1999_ilt_strategic_plan.pdf Institute for Learning Technologies] (ILT) in 1984, directing it until 2002. I secured substantial funding through numerous proposals, among them — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1991_the_cumulative_curriculum_project.pdf The Cumulative Curriculum Proposal] (1990-91), which spawned two large projects — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1992_dalton_risk_renewal_y1_full.pdf The Dalton Technology Plan] (1991–1996) and [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1996_the_eiffel_project.pdf The Eiffel Project ](1996–2001). We won over $20 million in grant competitions and supplemented that with equivalent matching effort from diverse organizations. We implemented high visibility projects to prototype advanced resources enabling study by means of the emerging Internet in New York City schools, public and private, and in Columbia University.</p> | ||
<p>Proposals I wrote said little about how cognitive research could enhance instruction and lot about how historical innovation could improve conditions for study. I addressed how cultural and educational transformations emerging with digital technologies are uncertain and unpredictable | <p>Proposals and reports I wrote said little about how cognitive research could enhance instruction and lot about how historical innovation could improve conditions for study. They secured funding, but had no effect on the course of educational proactice. The historical inertia of educational systems persists as emergent innovations transform cultural actualities, degrading their effectiveness. In many proposals, reports, talks, and essays, I addressed how cultural and educational transformations emerging with digital technologies are uncertain and unpredictable. Among them, two extended essays, [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1996_the_eiffel_project.pdf Power and Pedagogy] (1992) and [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/1999_the_educators_manifest.pdf The Educators Manifesto ](1999), and the pedagogical rationale for a huge public-private collaboration attempted on the eve of the dot-com crash, [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2000_smart_cities_new_york_full.pdf Smart Cities — New York: Electronic Education for the New Millennium] (2000) still deserve attention. </p> | ||
<p>Over the past 20 years, I’ve concentrated on scholarship and technical initiatives “for their own sake.” In [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2005_homeless_intellect.pdf Homeless in the House of Intellect] (2005), I explored how the academic study of education might have a place within the ongoing historical transformation of higher education. In [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2012_enough_mcclintock.pdf Enough: A Pedagogic Speculation] (2012), I criticized present-day thinking about education and public life from an imagined perspective, far in the future, when enough — neither too much nor too little — would have supplanted the acquisitive drive for more as the basis for exercising judgment and legitimating authority. Subsequently, I published an extended essay — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2017_formative_justice_with_annotations.pdf Formative Justice] (2017) — that brings the speculations put forward in Enough more concretely into the contemporary context.</p> | <p>Over the past 20 years, I’ve concentrated on scholarship and technical initiatives “for their own sake.” In [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2005_homeless_intellect.pdf Homeless in the House of Intellect] (2005), I explored how the academic study of education might have a place within the ongoing historical transformation of higher education. In [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2012_enough_mcclintock.pdf Enough: A Pedagogic Speculation] (2012), I criticized present-day thinking about education and public life from an imagined perspective, far in the future, when enough — neither too much nor too little — would have supplanted the acquisitive drive for more as the basis for exercising judgment and legitimating authority. Subsequently, I published an extended essay — [https://rmcc4.com/pdf/2017_formative_justice_with_annotations.pdf Formative Justice] (2017) — that brings the speculations put forward in Enough more concretely into the contemporary context.</p> | ||