Virginia Dicken-Gracen

Book Report

In her 2011 book, Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change, Keri
Facer calls readers to reconsider some of the popular ways we have been taught to imagine the
role of educational institutions in the future. She points out that the future is far from a
predestined inevitability and the changes we will face moving forward are not simply market-
related but are also about how we see ourselves and our society. When we consider the
relationship between technology and society, Facer believes we must consider them
simultaneously and take a more complex view of how they influence one another, co-
producing one another in a variety of socio-technical formations.
A question that pervades Facer’s book is one that predates any of our modern
technology debates: What is the role of education? Some people believe that education
should focus on preparing learners for their role in the formal economy. Schools should teach
marketable skills that will form children into future workers. Many criticisms of
contemporary education and calls for technological reforms in schools center around this view
of the role of educational institutions. Facer takes a different view of education, however, and
it is far from new. She comes from the school of thought (pun intended) that educational
systems develop people, not simply workers, and prepare learners for life in a particular
society. These systems can also reflect and promote particular social values, reinforcing or
challenging injustices and inequalities.
There are two main arguments that Facer builds through her book in order to guide our
thinking about socio-technical changes. First, she argues that local physical school buildings
can and should continue to provide a unique space for adapting to a changing world. It will
be in these spaces that we can interact across generations, encounter diversity, and think
through the impact of our choices. Second, Facer argues that the school need not simply adapt
to changes (technological and other) but can be a community partner in guiding those
changes. Schools can be places of talking about and testing ideas about how our communities
and our world might look in the future.
Facer is not ignorant or naïve about the radical shifts that have led to others to call for
eliminating the local, physical school. She understands that we have unprecedented access to
information, ranging from the informal education of YouTube “how to” videos to the formal
education of distance-learning classes. She also understands that the traditional school
classroom has not been the best learning environment for all students. It is within her
understanding of these issues that she builds her case for maintaining local, physical schools
and rethinking their roles and their processes. Schools, she believes, will evolve as they
respond to five specific changes.
First, schools will evolve in the context of changing intergenerational relationships
(Chapter 2). The roles of adults and children and the relationships between them have always
been specific to certain times and places, and our technology changes are bringing about
specific shifts that will influence our understanding of education. For instance, children find
themselves teaching adults about new technologies and explaining new storylines in media.
Educational structures that seek to return to an “ideal” of unidirectional instruction with
children receiving information from adults who are the real owners of society. Facer argues
that a viable vision for the future might be one in which children and adults are seen as co-
conspirators, collaborators in solidarity with one another.
 Second, schools will evolve in the context of the networked individual (Chapter 3).
Our understanding of who we are as people and what it means to be human is shifting. We
outsource our memories for facts and experiences to devices. We allow ours movements and
purchases and interactions with others to be tracked by impersonal data collectors, all day
every day. Schools will need to think about how they evolve in light of this. Children can no
longer be viewed as independent entities but rather part of ever-present and far-reaching
networks of knowledge, resources, relationships, risks, and more.
Third, schools will evolve in the context of new conceptions of knowledge (Chapter
4). What does it mean to know something in the changing landscape of information access?
What type of curriculum can provide children with the tools they need for interacting with
ever-changing knowledge systems? Facer argues that educators should not seek a single,
unified, global curriculum but should strive to ensure children develop discernment,
multiliteracy, and responsibility.
Fourth, schools will evolve in the context of growing inequalities (Chapter 5). Facer is
concerned about schools that might seek only to prepare students to take their place in an
increasingly polarized and unsustainable world in which only a small group of the elite will
prosper. She argues that schools could instead be places where people – children, teachers,
and other community members – come together to imagine futures for their society, including
sustainable economic development and work futures that students help to develop.
Fifth, schools will evolve in the context of being actors in democratic debate (Chapter
6). As we live in an increasingly “networked public,” schools can provide students and others
in the community with resources for being engaged citizens. They might promote tools such
as citizen journalism and open interpretable data for decision-making. On the other hand,
they might promote relationships of surveillance and control. Depending on how they
respond to changes, schools can encourage or inhibit dialogue, debate, and democracy.
In reading this book, I was encouraged by Facer’s overarching vision that schools need
not simply be tools for preparing students to engage with the changing future society but can
be an active part of guiding those changes and forming that society. In my own teaching, I
struggle when I hear students acknowledge (with welcome honesty) that they are simply in
my class because they must pass it with a certain letter grade in order to graduate and get their
desired job. Their experience seems far removed from my personal experience of enjoying
learning for its own sake. Trying to force that particular value, however, seems futile. My
enjoyment of learning comes from a particular family background, a particular personality
structure, and a particular history with books and unique schooling opportunities. Facer’s
model provides me with a new framework that I hope to take into my future teaching: My
class can be more than just an item on your checklist of tasks to complete in order to become
a marketable employee. My class can be an opportunity to explore what kind of workplace
you will form, how you will choose to interact with colleagues and clients, how you will use
and create new technologies, and how you will participate in and preserve democratic
structures. Even more, my class can be an opportunity to actively engage now, not just
prepare for future engagement. Thinking of my classes this way will require serious
restructuring of my curricula. I currently teach very different subjects, ranging from Health &
Health Services classes to Science and Gender & Women’s Studies classes. Each of them has
the potential to benefit from reconsideration in light of Facer’s ideas.
Finally, forming this report in the spring of 2020, I would be remiss if I did not address
the current COVID-19 response as it relates to this book. At the start of her writing, Keri
Facer explains that her arguments have nine underpinning assumptions. Interestingly, most of
her assumptions have been brought into new light in the current pandemic and educators’
response to it.

1) Significantly increased computing power will be available at significantly reduced cost,

available on demand.

In the pandemic response, we have seen a dramatic example of how much computing
power is currently available in our homes. This does not apply to every home equally, of
course (see #9 below), but as work and classes have moved to online tasks completed from
home, cheap or free devices have been shared with people across the globe, and Internet
Service Providers have made their service available at reduced cost for many families.

2) There will be a shift towards ubiquitous computing and the merging of digital and
physical artefacts.

As I recently went for a “two-week stock-up” trip to the grocery, I marveled at how
much the physical world of the supermarket has merged with the digital world. In
practicing social distancing, I chose to use the store’s phone-app scanning. Each grocery
item was scanned by my own phone and placed into my own bag. At the end of my trip,
my phone communicated with the payment machine, and I then used my Fitbit wristband
for touchless payment.
In another example of the merging of digital and physical artefacts, the “maker
culture” has stepped up to address some of the time-sensitive needs of the COVID-19
response. People, mostly women, around the world have started sewing cloth masks using
patterns found online. Others with access to 3-D printers have started creating plastic
components for these masks and sharing their designs online.

3) Rich audio-visual communications allowing easy communication at a distance will

become taken for granted by the large majority of people.

I don’t know if we are yet to the point where “the large majority” have access to rich
audio-visual communications, but in the past few weeks, nearly every church in my own
social network has begun meeting online using audio-visual technologies. Many classes
are being taught through WebEx or other two-way video communication. My own family
of origin recently sat down for a “family dinner” across the miles using Zoom. Doctors
are conducting an unprecedented number of telehealth visits. Elderly nursing home
residents are meeting their newborn grandchildren and great-grandchildren via FaceTime.
This world event may not indicate that the “large majority” can take such communication
for granted, but it certainly highlights how far spread the technology has become.

4) We will increasingly take it for granted that we are working and living alongside
increasingly sophisticated machines.

In addition to the increased role of communication technologies in our homes, the

COVID-19 response has seen an increased use of machines to deliver food and other
 necessities. There are discussions about increasing the use of machines for medical visits,
especially to diagnose virus cases, decreasing the risk to medical providers. Factories are
being re-configured to produce protective equipment they were not originally designed to
create.

5) Networks remain an important metaphor for personal, social and institutional capital.
I have seen a dramatic increase in discussions about “networks” in the past few weeks.
We are being encouraged to stay in touch with our social networks, to assess the
institutional network capacities of our schools and workplaces, and to examine the
network of political relationships that is influencing the pandemic response.

6) Biosciences will produce unpredictable breakthroughs but important new stories about
ourselves.
In addition to the obvious biosciences involved in the diagnosis and treatment of
COVID-19, the crisis has brought to light an increasing conversation about novel uses of
body-data. Fitbit and other fitness trackers have been proposed as a means of tracking
viral spread, as they collect biological data on hundreds of thousands of individuals each
day. Educational technologies have developed that use eye-tracking software and retinal
scans to increase the security of testing and surveillance of students. Conversations about
neuroscience and the frontal lobe development have been popular on “pandemic
pedagogy” social media groups, with educators considering what we know about the
adolescent brain and how it might inform remote instruction in this time.

7) Population is ageing globally.

Age has been a major consideration in the COVID-19 response and its socio-technical
implications. While the virus is riskier for older adults, children are more likely to be
asymptomatic carriers. With both a generally aging population and many older adults
caring for young children, these demographic factors played a large role in the decisions to
close down school buildings, many for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. At
the same time, older adults are not “digital natives,” and this is a group that has had to
rapidly adapt to new technologies to stay connected in the middle of this crisis.
The relationship between age demographics and the co-production of society and
technology can be clearly seen in how churches have responded to COVID-19. I count
among my friends and family nearly two dozen clergypeople, most of them 25-45 years
old. Nearly all have suddenly been asked to put their understanding of newer
communication technologies to use for the church in ways that had previously been
resisted by their congregants, who skew much older. The power dynamics in the churches
– who leads meetings, who determines which methods will be used, who is called first–
has suddenly shifted in a way that might not have happened without the current crisis
(simply due to higher number of older people in the church).

8) Energy, mineral resources and climate warming will remain significant issues.
The question of whether we will seek to create collective or national responses to the
worldwide issues of energy and climate change might be informed by how the world is
responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, we have seen that the United
 States, under its current leadership, will not work collaboratively with others to form a
strong and effective response to a global challenge.

9) We are starting from a base of radical national and global inequalities.

Indeed, the current pandemic has revealed serious inequalities both within our country
and around the world. Some of these are specifically related to technology. For example,
families without multiple computer devices and a strong home internet connection are
challenged to find ways for everyone to work and learn from home. Those without health
insurance cannot make good use of telehealth visits. Ventilators and other medical
technologies are being given to the highest bidders. Incarcerated people - overwhelmingly
people of color, the poor, and the mentally ill – are held in risky environments. Low-wage
workers are either laid off or required to work in high-exposure workplaces, while many
more middle- and upper-class workers shift to home-based work using computers, smart
phones, and the Internet.

In summary, the foundational assumptions Keri Facer made in 2011 about upcoming socio-
technical changes appear to be fully warranted. Had I read and reviewed this book just two
months ago, my appreciation for her insights would have been quite different than they are today
in the middle of this pandemic. Over the next few months, as the insights of Facer’s book and
the lessons of the current moment in world history settle in, I know I will be engaging in serious
reconsideration of my own pedagogical/andragogical approaches and what they mean for our
socio-technical future.
 References
Facer, K. (2011). Learning futures: Education, technology and social change. London:
Routledge.