A NEW CURRICULUM FOCUSED ON THE NEEDS OF THE FUTURE

“What questions, issues, concerns, knowledges need to be central?” (66). Gunther Kress opens up the piece by positing this “new question for English,” in the context of a learning atmosphere that is saturated with “vast political, social, economic and technological changes which characterize the present” (66). The debate is this: should English emphasize practical issues (i.e. spelling, syntax, speech), or should it provide a curriculum of ‘culture’ (i.e. ethics, aesthetics, values)?

“The landscape of communication is changing fundamentally” (67). Emphasis on language alone will not do: we need to produce “culturally valued texts” and provide “access to participation in public forms of communication” (67).

Semiotics: The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics.

Because the present curricula (based on current theories) is suggested to have its base in the “convention and use” of creativity, future curricula may be based on “innovation, on constant transformation and change” (67). **Perhaps devise, not a new curriculum, but a new set of directives/theories as are influential in/fundamental to the new curriculum.

“Capacity for innovation will be the required and the most highly prized commodity…coming together of elements – economic…” (67).

“The visual is becoming more prominent in many domains of public communication” (68). Language’s range is expanding to the visual, written communication is losing its “unchallenged central position” (68). The shift is from: “temporal-sequential logic of spoken (and written) language” to: “spatial-simultaneous logic of the visual.” This leads to a “fundamental challenge of the form” (68).

Side note: What effect will the fusing of disciplines have on innovation and/or the new curriculum? The present educational landscape is mired with prejudice and unnecessary competition between the disciplines. One discipline thinks itself to be more “important” or “useful” than all of the others, based on particular current cultural ideologies, and therefore each individual remains trapped within his/her own set of rules, his/her own consciousness of the world, of what matters. Something is lost as we have not yet tapped our potential (much less exhausted it). How will innovation open things up? Are we looking at a floodgate effect?

“Contemporary semiotic processes…to be used” (68). This is represented by the fact that even now we cannot be content to rely on written text alone, on speech alone. We are already, to a certain degree, very much dependent upon visual and audio modal elements for the large scale dissemination of information. We are becoming adapted to semiotic images. Ex: crosswalk, bathroom signs (also attributed perhaps to the merging of cultures/languages).

The visual expansion of communication is manifested, for example, in the news media (apparatus – is this term used correctly here?). From: “newsreader”/reading to: “presenter”/presentation – fundamental differences here (implicit/explicit)?

“The central elements of information…are visually mediated” (69). New modes are becoming significant (“These changes are not in themselves new”) (69).
1.    sound
2.    body
3.    aerobics industry
4.    jogging industry
5.    roller-blading industry
6.    televisual entertainments industry
How is Kress using the word “industry” here?

Side note: In the future, perhaps there will be a shift in the visual media, one that will present information that was once given as “text on the screen,” as spoken by a really sexy pair of lips. The fallback, for the hearing impaired for instance, will be textual information. Hearing loss will largely be a limitation of the past (with advances in technology and a shift in value from textual to an amalgam of visual/audio giving the justification for the import of resources into advocate scientific research). What would it be called?

Kress consistently returns to the four main elements: social, political, economic, technological (a compass of sorts).

Usualness = “naturalness” = regulation (layout of a book, stiff military collar & that of the white collar worker). How will this change fashion and other industries, customs? We speak in a language that is our own, meaning that largely, we express ourselves in terms and contexts that have been afforded to us by society as normal. The parameters we use for projecting images of the future are framed by the world as we see it now (ex: stiff collar, text, layout of a book: any other examples of this?).

“Communication has always been multi-semiotic” (70).
“…A nearly unshakeable commonsense” (70).
What is this “post-structuralism” that Kress speaks of on 70? What are the two modes Kress speaks of on 72?

We write in syntactic and conceptual terms (science textbook example). “The position of clauses in the hierarchy [of arrangement within a sentence] is an indication of its ontological, representational and communicational significance” (73). In the first science textbook example, emphasis is placed on place and space (73). Language is the means for carrying all info. In the context of the illustration: the image is completely subordinate to the written text. Nevertheless, its presence illustrates that some information is better communicated via visual image.

Side note: In the future which tasks will be specialized by which modes of communication? Why?

“…Far reaching social changes which have deeply altered relations of power” have changed the relation of the author to the audience (ref page here).

“Writing is oriented towards action and event. Visual is oriented towards the display of elements and their relations” (76).

Side note: For response: put an image up first, have classmates look for a few moments, then move on to the text which explains the image. This can either show how a) the image is explained by the text, or b) the text wrongly explains the image. Study the memory and reaction of the students when given false information. Does this say anything about how we digest images? Does this say anything about how we digest written text? Does the sequence (i.e. image before written text/written text before image) make a difference in how we digest information? Reverse the order (text first, then image). The point of the exercise is to show how “empirical reality is both the anchoring and the grounding of the abstract, theoretical” (77).

How can I link this to another article? The following comes to mind: with regard to student text, the shift in power will give a new axis to groundbreaking work. Student text will be instrumental in devising new inventions that affect the flow of information. Will these trends upset the axis of power that currently exists? Find the article that discusses this shift (student text undermining the elite class hold on information…)

“The remaking of the resources is an effect both of the demands of particular occasions of interaction, and of the social and cultural characteristics of the individual maker of signs” (84). What resources is Kress talking about here? “representational resources…” (84).

The remaking of the resources reflects: 1. individual interest. 2. broad socio-cultural trends. The change is “shaped and guided by the characteristics of broad social factors, which are individually inflected and shaped” (84). “The sign is the expression of the maker’s interest through the motivated expression in apt form of the meaning of the sign-maker” (84).

The new theory is represented: “use is replaced by transformation and remaking” (84). The action of the individual in this theory is “that of the changing of the resources: using existing resources in the guiding frame of the maker’s interest” (84).

The focus is shifting from mechanics to creativity; from stabilization to innovation. Just as the theory changes from use to transformation, the system of critique must also change. It no longer has analysis as its focus. The intellectual is no longer necessarily the critic (as this institution is no doubt built upon ‘privileged’ ideological systems). It also has to do with history, which forms and thus ultimately reinforces these same systems.

Designer (creator): uses current resources to reshape and change the system.
Critic (user): uses current resources to either justify or discredit the system?

Curriculum and pedagogy constitute the “design for future dispositions” (87-88). The point: it provides the means to transform ourselves into social humans.

SOURCE

Kress, Gunther. "English at the Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in the Context of the Turn to the Visual.” Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Eds. Hawisher, Gail E. and David A. Jolliffe. Logan, UT : USU Press, 1999. 66-88.