The Judgment of Thamus

The new National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Administrators will be (were ...depending on when you are reading this) published in June of 2009. Standard 2 states, "Establish a Robust Digital Age Learning Culture: Create, advocate for, and sustain an educational culture that values and rewards a rigorous, relevant digital-age education for all students," and Standard 5 states, "Model and Advance Digital Citizenship: Model and advance digital citizenship by developing and implementing policies, acting with integrity, and facilitating understanding of social, ethical and legal responsibilities by all stakeholders."

In his book, Technopoly, Neil Postman references a story told by Socrates about Thamus. King Thamus entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions for the King and Thamus inquired into the use of each of them. When it came to writing, Theuth declared, "Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both wisdom and the memory."

To this, Thamus replied, "Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function."

"Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection not for memory."

"And as far as wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society."

The judgment of Thamus warns that the pupils of a new technology will develop an undeserved reputation for wisdom. Those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence. Those who have control over the workings of a particular technology accumulate power and inevitably form a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge made available by the technology.

Harold Innis provides us many historical examples of how a new technology "busted up" a traditional knowledge monopoly and created a new one presided over by a different group. There are winners and losers and it is interesting that on many occasions the losers, out of ignorance, have actually cheered the winners, and some still do.

For four hundred years school teachers have been part of a knowledge monopoly created by the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word has. Are we now witnessing the breakup of that monopoly? Is there something perverse about school teachers being enthusiastic about what is happening?