This transformation occurs in teacher-student dichotomy as well. For Paulo Freire, the Brasilian educational theorist, there is a teacher-student in the classroom, a teacher who learns and a student-teacher, a learner who teaches. That way teacher-student dichotomy could be completely abolished. Freire’s ‘banking concept of education’ takes the student as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. Locke’s ‘tabula rasa’ becomes the ‘banking concept’ and both of them handle the student’s mind as an emptiness to be filled, a ‘fill-in-the-blank’ test. Hopefully with the symbiosis of teacher and student this void is reciprocal. The movement towards symbiosis in every dimension has begun as Kurokawa believes:
“The symbiosis of humankind and nature, the symbiosis of intellect and emotion, the symbiosis of science and technology and art, the symbiosis of commerce and culture, the symbiosis of public and private...the symbiosis of different cultures, the symbiosis of work and play...” (Kurokawa:45)
We can playfully add to this list, the symbiosis of knowledge and information, the symbiosis of creativity and innovation. When knowledge is decentered, the outcome is information, and when creativity is applied it is called innovation. Modernist certainty undermined, the consequent uncertainty pervaids knowledge which is constantly changing. Knowledge without having fixed references is open to multiple interpretations. Information can be called hyperknowledge, borrowing Jean Baudrillard’s term ‘hyperreality’.
Hyperreality is the product of Information Age where something becomes information when it is assigned a Saussurrean significance through the processes of signifier and signified. Their blend, signification, namely information, finds its way in the mind of the receiver by some cognitive agent. Philosophers who prefer to think about knowledge with different sets of analytical tools, may dismiss the scientist’s computer programs, feedbacks, flowcharts loaded with information. If knowledge is for the elite, information is for the common. Information need not have any meaning in order to be communicated. Information yields knowledge, knowledge requires truth, information may require it as well. This fact reconciles knowledge with information, the elite with the common, modernity with postmodernity, the whole with the fragment. The symbiosis of knowledge and information is possible since both depend on truth altough “information is after all a valuable commodity” in Fred I. Dretske’s opinion. Who cares if information may not provide us with any meaning at all? We can tell what a computer is, without telling what it means.
“Information is a commodity that, given the right recipient is capable of yielding knowledge”. (Dretske 1999:47)
While student’s mind is a ‘bank account’ to be filled by education, it is also a commodity. Information loaded student mind is twice commodity, given the right recipient, it is capable of yielding creative and innovative knowledge. Our thesis statement to make a symbiosis of information and knowledge, creativity and innovation turn out to be valid in line of this logic. As Dretske observes:
“What we learn, in terms of both content and amount, is limited by the information available. It is moreover a commodity, that can be transmitted, received, exchanged, stored, lost, recovered, bought and sold. In terms of what it can do and what can be done to it, this is the sort of thing we are referring to when we talk about information.”.
A traditional answer to the question of knowledge is that, it is a form of justified true belief. What if beliefs can be false and the truth may not be believed any more? Then in an easy way we can support the idea that knowledge is information produced belief since education as an organization sets its agenda for learning and knowledge building. Quoting from the Knowing Organization ( How organizations use information to construct meaning, create knowledge and make decisions):
“The result is fresh knowledge that leads to innovation in the form of new products and new competences. When it is time to decide a strategy or a course of action, decision makers need to know which elements are most important to the organization, what options and capabilities are available and how to disentangle a complex web of factors and contingencies to make an acceptable choice.” (Choo Chun Wei 1998: 25)
‘The knowledge creation process’ can be utilized in manufacturing creative and innovative students capable of a symbiosis which uses the right amount of information and knowledge as ingredients. One way to extend communication and information services is to allow markets to work. Information service should be available to the entire population. New technologies and new business models must be revised for narrowing gaps in educational institutions since “ access to and use of communication and information services present major inequalities among and within countries” as The World Bank acknowledges (2006:41)
Ayten Suvak
(To be Continued)
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