By Ananya S Guha
We have to separate the ‘bad’ news from the ‘ good’ news. Much in the manner of economics, good news must drive out bad news like good money driving out bad. Bad news is unhealthy for society and knowledge transmission. Information is something else sometimes indistinguishable from misinformation. But the challenge is knowledge transference- transferring information to knowledge. But if the basics are wrong, that is information, then we have a society bereft of knowledge and thriving on rapacity, passion to incite and divide people. Using knowledge and information towards divisive ends spells doom for society. Hence information which is wrongly propagandist is today dubbed as ‘fake news’ which the double edged sword of technology is aiding and abetting. Man’s ingenuity in garbling and distorting information has reached a new high nay a new low.
The problem begins when we are out to malign: individuals, communities, those who we regard as adversaries. Yet technologically a globalised world meant a border less world on the face of technology where human barriers are broken withstanding nationalities and races. Yet the preposterous fake news can break the most minuscule of societies and herald worst acts of criminality. Social media forces which initially brought the world into an unified cosmos has now fallen a prey to invidious actions of defamation, maligning and instigating people towards false information.
Yet the antidote lies in education. Education can channelise technology in creating alternate colleges, universities and classrooms. These can question fake news and dismantle them by illustrating to the public their pernicious and ill effects. These institutions on the internet and without walls will have the social responsibility of edifying and instructing on the two sidedness of the Internet. We have the MOOCs courses both in India and abroad. They have a positive role to play in the years to come. They must divert human attention from the frivolities of the Internet to its seriousness as digital repositories of solid information, knowledge and wisdom where knowledge is intellectual property of communities world wide.
Knowledge transference would then mean a knowledge paradigm right from the young to the old. This will be our endeavour to create more ‘ classrooms’ worldwide out of space, time and place. Good knowledge will drive out bad knowledge and alternative models of education will be created. The internet must be used more and more for education and less and less for personal and political aggrandizement, yet randomly picking up information on the internet and passing it off as knowledge. The over dependence on students and maybe even teachers to ‘ cut and paste’ is dangerous because basic texts and the sanctimonious printed word is forgotten if not ignored. Alternate forms of knowledge must be created in classrooms and discussion forums by combining the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the new. We are at the threshold of the new age but we cannot let go the old as well. When Caxton invented the printing press it marked a revolution in science and technology. Now with the internet, publishing has taken a new dimension. Books are both ‘soft’ and ‘ hard’. So are journals and magazines. Alternate learning and teaching is now multi dimensional. The you tube has uploaded lectures on conceivably every subject. But we have to be discriminating about choice. Similarly we have to be cautious about news and how we disseminate it. This is not only judicious choice but also social responsibility.
The challenge also lies in classrooms and pedagogy. What will the teacher teach if she/ he finds that students don’t attend classes because they are cock-sure of finding everything on the internet. After all there is good old Wikipedia. Knowledge transference then poses the biggest challenge. Is the teacher then a facilitator and teaching roles changing? Teaching is an art and self expression of the immediate, The student is a responder to that expression. If everything is ‘ available’’ then what is the need of the teacher? Alternate classrooms are not a form of separatism but of integration. A teacher and student must integrate nuances of knowledge from best sources of technology: print, radio, television and the internet where learning and teaching is through mediated manifestations of technology. The alternate now will be the old and the new, the ancient and the modern. The four walls of the classroom will never change but there must be radical changes within it. This radicalisation will be a social transformation spreading from education in the formal sense to a general one affecting news, views and the media. The print technology and the internet must come together in new ways to create new sources of knowledge and not only information. Editorials in newspapers should still play transformational roles. Similarly good texts must be referred to in classrooms. Modern technology will be a means to an end; to learning, not an end in itself.