Education and Its Discontents

Education and Its Discontents: Teaching, the Humanities, and the Importance of a Liberal Education in the Age of Mass Information, by Mark Moss, is an exploration of how the traditional educational environment, particularly in the post-secondary world, is changing as a consequence of the influx of new technology. Students come to the classroom or lecture hall expecting to have their habits and tastes, gleaned from the online world, replicated in an Educational environment. Faculty who do not adapt face enormous obstacles, and faculty that do adapt run the risk of eroding the integrity of what they have been trained to teach.
Students now have access to myriad of technologies that instead of supplementing the educational process, have actually taken it over. Issues that run from plagiarism to the erosion of the humanities are now rampant concerns in the post secondary world. Behavior issues, YouTube videos, cell phones, and the incessant clicking of the computer keys are just a few of the technologies altering the educational landscape. Moss discusses that it is now not only how we learn, but what we continue to teach, and how that enormously important legacy is protected.
Education and Its Discontents: Teaching, the Humanities, and the Importance of a Liberal Education in the Age of Mass Information, by Mark Moss, argues that education has changed and the supremacy of the book and the lecture is now open for debate. What has been gained over the last five hundred years is now susceptible to the vagaries of technology, which compel us to question their continuing relevance.

Mark Moss received his doctorate in history of education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Currently, he is a writer and consultant living in Toronto. This is his fifth book.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Chapter One: Black Board Jungles
Chapter 3 Chapter Two: That's Just Too Much Information
Chapter 4 Chapter Three: "It Isn't What It Used To Be"
Chapter 5 Chapter Four: Streaming Video?
Chapter 6 Chapter Five: The Sanctity of the Educational Space
Chapter 7 Chapter Six: "What, No Overhead?"
Chapter 8 Chapter Seven: Rethinking Censorship in an Age of Desensitization
Chapter 9 Chapter Eight: "Where Do I Go? Why Am I Here?"
Chapter 10 Chapter Nine: Selected Notes on the History of Higher Education
Chapter 11 Chapter Ten: High School Confidential
Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven: Why Computers and Web-Based Technology are Good
Chapter 13 Conclusion