Let us be Luddites, not pigeons.
‘Luddite Sensibilities’ and the Future of Education
A Luddite Pedagogy/Practice/Sensibility is about wresting technology from the control of institutions and giving it to individuals. It’s about using technology for liberation instead of domination.
What Luddites refused to accept was not technology as such, but the form technology takes when corrupted by social relations of domination rather than liberation.
@jmbroad
Luddites are imagined as the “counterrevolutionaries” of the Industrial Revolution and as such the enemies of science and technology. The name “Luddite” is used as a pejorative to dismiss anyone who frowns at technology, anyone who’s perceived to be clinging to tradition over “progress.” But the Luddites have been unfairly maligned, I’d say, as this group of late 17th / early 18th century English textile workers — skilled, technical workers — were not opposed to machines despite their famed machine-smashing. What they opposed were the exploitative practices of the textile factory owners — that is, the emerging practices of capitalism. The Luddites’ tactic of what historian Eric Hobsbawm called “collective bargaining by riot” was used by workers in other industries as well.
‘Luddite Sensibilities’ and the Future of Education
Recall, the Luddites emerged in the economic devastation of the Napoleonic Wars — they wanted jobs, yes, but they wanted freedom and dignity. As we face economic devastation today, we need some solidarity and perhaps even a little sabotage. We can look at ed-tech as something to smash knowing that what we aim for are the systems of violence, exploitation, neoliberalism, mechanization, and standardization ed-tech that demands.
This requires more than a Luddite sensibility. It requires a Luddite strategy. And for us, I’d say, it is time for a Luddite pedagogy.
A Luddite pedagogy is not about making everyone put away their laptops during class — remember those days? Again, Luddism is not about the machines per se; it’s about machines in the hands of capitalists and tyrants — in the case of ed-tech, that’s both the corporations and the State, especially ICE and the police. Machines in the hands of a data-driven school administration. Luddism is about a furious demand for justice, about the rights of workers to good working conditions, adequate remuneration, and the possibility of a better tomorrow — and let’s include students in our definition of “worker” here as we do call it “school work” after all.
A Luddite pedagogy is about agency and urgency and freedom. “A Luddite pedagogy is a pedagogy of liberation,” Torn Halves writes in Hybrid Pedagogy, “and, as such, it clashes head on with the talk of liberation peddled by advocates of ed-tech. According to the latter, the child, previously condemned to all the unbearably oppressive restrictions of having to learn in groups, can now be liberated by the tech that makes a 1:1 model of education feasible, launching each and every child on an utterly personal learning journey. Liberation as personalization — here the Luddite finds something that ought to be smashed.” A Luddite pedagogy doesn’t sneer when people balk at new technologies; it doesn’t assume they won’t use them because they’re incompetent; it finds strength in non-compliance.
A Luddite pedagogy is a pedagogy of subversion and transgression. It is a pedagogy of disobedience and dismantling. It is a pedagogy of refusal and of care. It is — with a nod to Jesse’s opening keynote — against models and against frameworks (quite literally, Luddites smash frames). It is wildly undisciplined.
Let us be Luddites, not pigeons.
‘Luddite Sensibilities’ and the Future of Education
Everyone Needs a Properly Equipped Toolbelt to Get Through Life
Luddite sensibilities don’t reflexively reject technology. Technology is liberating rather than dominating when used to equip our individual tool belts.
Phones and tablets and especially laptops are essential tools for navigating modernity. Instead of being banned, they should be baked into the learning experience using toolbelt theory, workflow thinking, differentiated instruction, and Universal Design for Learning.
Everyone Needs a Properly Equipped Toolbelt to Get Through Life
Tools matter though. They are the most basic thing about being human.
They matter most for those who lack the highest capabilities.
And everyone needs a properly equipped Toolbelt to get through life.
Workflow Thinking
Through workflow thinking, technology can be used to reclaim agency and push back against institutions.
In this way, we want to emphasize that workflow thinking can be a personal reevaluation of the capital-minded, deskilling focus of workflows in industry or business contexts.
A lens of workflow thinking pushes against this, instead asking “What are the component pieces of this work?,” “How is this mediated?,” and “What might a shift in mediation or technology afford me in completing this?” In short, we see workflow thinking as a way to reclaim agency and push against institutionally purchased software defaults.
We also offer workflow mapping as a complement to workflow thinking. Where workflow thinking imagines new composing possibilities, workflow mapping instead looks backward, asking how practices and preferences accrete over time.
Workflows, however, aren’t about tools used in isolation or in perfect test conditions. Rather, a workflow is a habituated, mediated, and personal means of accomplishing something.
Writing Workflows | Chapter 1
Hear me out a bit before the future comes around.
Technology is at its best when serving toolbelt theory, workflow thinking, and niche construction and at its worst when serving behaviorism, “efficiency“, and techno-solutionism.
Hear me out a bit before the future comes around. – Stimpunks Foundation
Ed-tech combines the dismal ethics of tech, Silicon Valley, and market fundamentalism with the dismal ethics of behaviorism and the deficit model and mainlines it all into public ed.
Hear me out a bit before the future comes around. – Stimpunks Foundation
What if love said: Hear me out a bit before the future comes around
“As If We Existed” by Solillaquists of Sound
A Tactical “How” of Third Wave Luddism
Tactical components of a third wave Luddism:
- indie ed-tech
- workflow thinking
- toolbelt theory
- domain of one’s own
- Small “b” blogging
- campfires in dark forests
- rhizomatic community
- Punk, hacker, DIY, bricolage, remixing, constructionism, pastiche ethos
Resources
- Toward a Luddite Pedagogy
- Inspiration from the Luddites: On Brian Merchant’s “Blood in the Machine” | Los Angeles Review of Books
- ‘Luddite Sensibilities’ and the Future of Education
- Whose interests do teaching machines serve? — Civics of Technology
- Toward a Luddite Pedagogy in the “Age of AI” w/ Charles Logan | Human Restoration Project | Podcast
- Should We Be More Like The Luddites?
- Learning About and Against Generative AI Through Mapping Generative AI’s Ecologies and Developing a Luddite Praxis
