Signs of the New York Times

Thomas Carlyle’s piece “Signs of the Times” seems as if it could have been directly transposed from a recent New York Times Op-Ed article discussing the dangers and slippery slopes of technological advancement. He writes, “These things (alluding to the 19^th century “Age of Machinery”), which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.” He criticizes the institution of education, which he claims has become mechanized with the use of “Lancastrian machines” and instruction based in standardized learning, as opposed to process evaluation and dialectical discussion. With the advent of “industrialized” education, Carlyle argues that the system’s result is not the “communing of Wisdoms” and the “perpetual variations of means and methods;” instead, it only emphasizes the utilitarian significance of universal skills and knowledge in order to contribute to commercial society. Education, Carlyle points out, is no longer regarded as the spirit of liberal culture. It’s now a business.

Even in 2013, this topic is as relevant as it was Carlyle’s day. The heated issue of state standardized testing and the use of computer software programs to grade student writing relates directly to the piece’s argument, that learning is becoming mechanized, and critical thinking is simply a filibustering technique. Of course, the lines are blurred with the integral incorporation of technology in the classroom, so we have to accept the fact that educational advancement now must go hand in hand with mechanical aids, as Carlyle also notes. “An individual must make interest with some existing corporation.” Given this truth, the divide between standardized learning advocates and liberal educators widens, and we’re left with two very distinct parties regarding the issue of the American education system.

And very much like the ambivalent qualities of privacy and energy in the city, which we discussed in class last week, technological advancement in education has its positive and negative aspects. I’m not too ignorant to realize that standardized evaluations of efficiency and aptitude do relate somewhat to the success rates of schools, teachers, and individual students. But I also acknowledge that these are not the only tools that we can use to advance the learning process and predict patterns of new wave instruction. More important, education needs to become less bureaucratic and systemized so that we don’t have to rely solely on these standardized, mechanized templates. Teachers should have the ability to choose his or her own methods of instruction while following curriculum, and administrators should provide their educators the opportunities to teach as they find most productive.

As Thomas Carlyle says, “There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless grinding collision of the New with the Old.” But it is in this exact struggle where we find compromise, and we must recognize that this concept expands beyond the writer’s 19^th century readership. Technology has advanced society and has made things easier for us all. Still, we can’t ignore our history, as “the discourse of reason” manifests itself from ideas past, present, and future.