A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall Mcluhan
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Culkin, J. M. (1967, March). A schoolman's guide to Marshall McLuhan. The Saturday Review, 51-53, 70-72. Retrieved from http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1967mar18-00051 A SCHOOLMAN'S GUIDE TO MARSHALL McLUHAN By JOHN M. CULKIN, S.J;, director and the schools. One thing is (_'ertain: world happens to be the present. Mc of the Center for Communications, ll is hardly a time for educators to plan Luhan feels that very few men look at Fordham University. with nostalgia, timidity, or old formulas. the present with a present eye, that they Enter Marshall McLuhan. tend to miss the present by translating it He enters from the North, from the into the past, seeing it through a rear DUCATION, a seven-year-old as Universitv of Toronto where he teaches view mirrol'. The unnoticed fact of our sures me, is "how kids learn English a·nd is director of the Center for present is the electronic environment E stuff." Few definitions are as sat Culture and Technology. He enters with created by the new communications isfying. It includes all that is essential the reputation as "the oracle of the elec media. It is as pervasive as the air we a who, a what, and a process. It excludes tric age" and as "the most provocative breathe ( and some would add that it is all the people, places, and things which and controversial writer of this genera just as polluted), yet its full import are only sometimes involved in learning. tion." More importantly for the schools, eludes the judgments of commonsense The economy and accuracy of the defi he enters as a man with fresh eyes, with or coutent-01iented perception. The en nition, however, are more useful in lo new ways of looking at old problems. He vironments set up by different media cating the problem than in solving it. is a man who gets his ideas first and are not just containers for people; they We know little enough about kids, less judges them later. Most of these ideas are processes which shape people. Such about and considerably more are summed up in his book, influence is deterministic only if ignored. than we would like to know about stuff. His critics tried him for not There is no inevitability as long as there In addition,learning, the whole process of for delivering these insights inU11derstand their most is a willingness to contemplate what is mal schooling is now wrapped inside luciding Media. and practical form. It isn't always happening. an environment of speeded-up techno cricket, however, to ask the same man Theorists can keep reality at arm's logical change which is constantly in to crush the grapes and serve the wine. length for long periods of time. Teachers fluencing kids and learning and stuff. Not all of McLu is nu or tru, but then and administrators can't. Thev are clos The jet-speed of this technological revo again neither is all of anybody else. This eted with reality all day long. In many lution, especially in the area of com article is an attempt to select and order instances they are CO··prisoners with elec- munications, has left us with more those elements of �lcLuhanism which . tronic-age students in the old pencil box reactions to it than reflections about it. are most relevant to the schools and to (_'ell. And it is the best teachers and the Meanwhile back at the school, the stu provide the schoolman with some new best students who are in the most trou dent, whose psyche is being programed ways of thinking about the schools. ble because they are challenging the for tempo, information, and relevance l\kLuhan'spromise is modest enough: system constantly. It is the system which by his electronic environment, is still "All I have to offeris an enterprise of in has to come under scrutiny. Teachers and being processed in classrooms operating vestigation into a world that's quite un students can say, in the words of the on the postulates of another day. The usual and quite unlike any previous Late Late Show, "Baby, this thing is cold war existing between these two world and for which no models of per bigger than both of us." It won't be worlds is upsetting for both the student ception will serve." This unexplored ameliorated by a few dashes of good "The environments set up by different media are not just containers for people; they are the processes which shape people. The,·e is no inevitability as long a� there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." -Fujihira (Afo,,kme.\ er). -White (Monkmerer). £.'*1£11 o:rut9 f autffaul attyonatllan Jtlium fmtm•tt tlbfuos omn, no1tut ottittttr1\lu1tr.l9ottovona� t�aa ftli9faut.ilihgcbattJauibualtt. Jftinoirauirronat\,llsi.lauill tlicm JOucritfanl�mrun omttrc_tc.lOua:, l)ro.pfJJbfua tt_qfo mant!lmandria dam rtauftotins Jfgot�fts autf ftaboiu�aptlttitnruta1rouliicuq; fuoot:tt rgolo4trar?Et£ abJltttemru: 1:11lf tiiq;ttficialln uibno dbi. I ocut9 tCf rqco ronama.s?tbauill bona:an faulpatmnfuum.1'intqtabrii. Jflt -Culver. The changing media: Egyptian hieroglyphics, a page from the Gutenberg Bible, and the television monitor "The individual's modes of cognition and perception are influenced by the culture he is in, the language he speaks, and the media to which he is exposed. Each culture provides its constituents with a custom-made set of goggles," will or a little more hard work. It is a the establishment whose wav of life is thing. The medium's the thing. McLu question of understanding these new predicated on the postulates he is ques han makes the truth stand on its head to kids and these new media and of getting tioning.The establishment has no history attract attention. Why the medium is the schools to deal with the new elec of organizing parades to greet its dis worthy of attention derives from its tronic environment. It's not easy. And turbers. other three meanings. the defenders of the old may prove to His medium is perhaps more disturb Meaning number two stresses the re be the ones least able to defend and ing than his message. From his earliest lation of the medium to the content. preserve the values of the old. work he has described his enterprise as The form of communication not only For some people, analysis of these . "explorations in communication." The alters the content, but each form also newer technologies automatically im word he uses most frequently today is has preferences for certain kinds of mes plies approbation of them. Their world "probe." His books demand a high de sages. Content always exists in some is so full of shoulds that it is hard to gree of involvement from the reader. form and is, therefore, to some degree squeeze in an is. McLuhan suggests a They are poetic and intuitive rather than governed by the dynamics of that form. more positive line of exploration: logical and analytic. Structurally, his If you don't know the medium, you unit is the sentence. Most of them are don't know the message. The insight is topic sentences-which are left undevel neatly summed up by Dr. Edmund Car penter: "English is a mass medium. At the moment, it is important that oped. The style is oral and breathless we understand cause and process. The and frequently obscure. It's a different All languages are mass media. The new aim is to develop an awareness about kind of medium. mass media-film, radio, TV-are new print and the newer technologies of "The medium is the message," an languages, their grammars as yet un communication so that we can or nounced McLuhan a dozen years ago known. Each codifies reality differently; chestrate them, minimize their mutual in a cryptic and uncompromising aphor each conceals a unique metaphysics. frustrations and clashes, and get the ism whose meaning is still being ex Linguists tell us it's possible to say any best out of each in the educational plored. The title of his latest book, an thing in any language if you use enough process. The present conflict leads to illustrated popular paperback treatment words or images, but there's rarely elimination of the motive to learn and of his theories, playfully proclaims that time; the natural course is for a culture to diminution of interest in all previous The Medium the Massage-a achievement: It leads to loss of the title to exploit its media biases.... " sense of relevance. Without an under calculated to drive typesetters and crit It is always content-in-form which is standing of media grammars, we can ics to hashish andls beyond. The original mediated. In this sense, the medium is not hope to achieve a contemporary dictum can be looked at in four ways, co-message. The third meaning for the awareness of the world in which we the third of which includes a massage of M-M formula emphasizes the relation live.We have been told that it is the prop importance. of the medium to the individual psyche. erty of true genius to disturb all settled The medium alters the perceptual habits ideas.McLuhan is disturbing in both his THE first meaning would be better of its users. Independent of the con medium and his message. His ideas chal communicated orally-"The medium is tent, the medium itself gets through. lenge the normal way in which people the message." The medium is the thing Pre-literate, literate, and post-literate perceive reality. They can create a very to study.