Education
Back to School.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Forever young.
In a letter to Sheila Watson, McLuhan writes that the Bloomsbury group – Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Maynard Keynes, and the rest – was a “child cult.” They celebrated the virtues of youth and were determined never to grow up.
Sensible people, of course, then and now, have always thought such ideas are selfish, irresponsible and ultimately dangerous. But today such ideas, arguably, are viewed with even greater hostility. Parents seem determined to do everything they can to get children to grow up as fast as possible. Marshall, of course, has other ideas.
Marshall McLuhan (September 20, 1965, age 54). Forever learning.
It is impossible to learn without embracing a cult of the child. To learn you must be like a child. You must look at the world without pretension. Children are born with a hard wired formula for learning. That formula, as I wrote Sheila, is to allow oneself “the freedom to play and probe.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 324.
For your information, here is a question.
Marshall McLuhan (1960, age 48/49). The question is:
Why should the sending or receiving of a telegram seem more dramatic than the ringing of a telephone?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). The sending or receiving of what?
Anyone who has sent or received a telegram can attest to the truth of McLuhan’s observation.
Unfortunately, many of the readers of this blog may find the truth of McLuhan’s observation difficult to grasp because they have never sent or received a telegram. It is also possible that they have never heard a telephone ring dramatically. Which raises the question: What is today’s dramatic equivalent of the telegram? I suspect that the answer is: there isn’t one. Which raises another question for your information: Is the history of media impossible?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 150.
How to set an exam.
Marshall McLuhan (1969, age 57). Are you ready?
At the beginning of this seminar on communications I said that you were to choose 3 books out the 30 on the reading list and that they will be the subject of your final exam. No doubt you have been wondering what form this exam will take. Wonder no more. It’s time to sit and deliver. Have you got a pencil and paper? Very good, you will have thirty minutes. Write down three questions on each of the books you have read.
Me (July, 2010, age 58). A brilliant solution
Fred Thompson, who was a student of McLuhan’s at Toronto in the year after he returned from Fordham in the academic year 1968/69, talks about this exam in his contributions to the books Who Was Marshall McLuhan and Marshall McLuhan: The Man and His Message.
Certainly, McLuhan chose a brilliantly eccentric and efficient way to set an exam. A more direct approach would certainly have required a much longer exam with questions on each of the 30 books on the reading list. Almost certainly the questions the students’ came up with revealed much about their understanding of the books they had read and the form of the exam sends the clear message that he believes the questions are more important than the answers. But, it is doubtful if a university professor today would be allowed to set such an exam either by their department or their students.
As a test of your understanding of Marshall McLuhan and his work come up with three questions about him. Here are mine:
(1) What did he mean by “the medium is the message?”
(2) What can we learn about McLuhan from the portrait Wyndham Lewis drew of him?
(3) “What if he’s right?”
Now, what do you think? Are the questions more important than the answers?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan, 1994, pp. 178.
George Sanderson and Frank Mcdonald, eds., Marshall McLuhan: The Man and His Message, 1989, p. 135.
I just don’t understand.
Marshall McLuhan (1960, age 49). Try the Coleridge method.
People can be a great mystery. Why do they think what they think? Or do what they do? The key is to understand them. But how? As I have often told my son Eric the Coleridge method (see his Biographia Litteraria) is most efficient. To find out what someone knows start with what they don’t know and work from there.
Me (July, 2010, age 57). OK, let’s try it.
Eric McLuhan notes that “Going the other way, it can take you as long (or nearly) to learn a man’s knowledge as it took him. Life is too short!”
What does this method tell us about Marshall McLuhan? There are two things McLuhan often professed ignorance of: small talk and numbers. What do these areas of ignorance tell us about what McLuhan knew? The absence of small talk implies the presence of big talk, suggesting that McLuhan was comfortable in the world of abstractions. The blank in numbers suggests, perhaps, that McLuhan’s explorations in understanding media were qualitative rather than quantitative. That is when he said TV had changed the world he was not saying it had changed a great deal because of TV. He was simply saying it had changed. He implied that it may have changed a great deal, but he had no way of telling how much.
What do you think? Is the Coleridge method helpful in understanding McLuhan?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, p. 242.
Working with others.
Marshall McLuhan (October 8, 1966, age 55). What a day!
I spent the day with George Leonard, who is a Senior Editor at Look Magazine. We talked without interruption from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. about the future of education. Quite frankly education isn’t what it used to be since the coming of TV. George is going to write up our conversation and the article will appear in Look. I can’t wait to see the expression on the face of the Dean of Graduate Studies when I show him my latest publication. He’ll be apoplectic.
Me (July, 2010, age 57) Which raises questions
“The Future of Education: The Class of 1989,” appeared in Look (February 21, 1967) as an article jointly written by Marshall McLuhan and George B. Leonard. But, as Leonard explains in his memoir, “Jamming with McLuhan, 1967,” McLuhan had nothing to do with the writing of it. Leonard says that he enjoyed the intellectual experience of working with McLuhan. But after writing only one other article – “The Future of Sex” – Leonard decided to end the partnership. In short, Leonard thought he wasn’t getting the credit he deserved. He was doing the hard work of writing and a good deal of the thinking, but readers were assuming the ideas were all McLuhan’s.
Are unequal partnerships of this type destined to fail? How much of the writing of the later McLuhan – particularly in his co-authored work – is actually McLuhan?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, pp. 227-230.
Where do you get your information?
Marshall McLuhan (Fall 1953, age 42). Books!
“Marshall, must you spread your books throughout the house?”
“No, Corinne, but it serves me to do so. It reminds me of what I have read. Also I like to pick a book up and dip into it every now and again to add to and refresh my memory. Having them about me this way is a great help.”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Books!
While McLuhan enjoyed talking to people, Philip Marchand says he got most of his information from books. On average, says Marchand, McLuhan read 35 books a week, which seems like a lot, even for a university professor. I get most of my ideas for this blog from books, but not exclusively from books. On average, though, I cannot say I read more than two books a week. (May be – like McLuhan – I should skim more.)
Where do you get your information? How many books do you read in a week?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989 p. 179.
What’s wrong with Google?
Marshall McLuhan (March 3, 1959, age 47). Another breakthrough!
You have no doubt noticed that the first thing we do with a new invention is to use it in old ways. It is not a coincidence that the automobile was originally called “the horseless carriage,” the railroad “the iron horse,” and, at least in Britain, the radio was known as “the wireless.”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Google may be leading us down memory lane.
Whether or not Google is being used in old or new ways, it is as McLuhan taught extending or enhancing some part of us, but what? Some months ago, Julien Smith blogged about how Google was making it unnecessary to remember things. And as a result, he suggested, we may be losing our power to remember. Who starred in that movie? Who wrote that book? How did that old song go? Don’t worry about it. Google it!
In artificially extending our memories the technology may be weakening our natural powers to remember. This is a concern. But it may also be that Google is doing more than our memory work for us; it may be leading us down memory lane. With it we can remember more than we ever could, and, as a result, find ourselves more interested in recovering old ideas than discovering new ones. This may be a greater concern.
What do you use Google for? The old or the new?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews. Edited by Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines, 2003, p. 2.
Is this the apocalypse?
Marshall McLuhan (June 30, 1960, age 48). We have opened a door to a new world.
I have the uncomfortable feeling that I’m the only one who senses that something dramatic and unprecedented has happened. As I wrote in my Report on Understanding New Media, which was commissioned by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, “We are in great danger at the present of sacrificing the whole of our western culture with its unconscious bias based on alphabet and printing.”
Corinne said if I get this wrong I’ll come off like the boy who cried wolf. Perhaps, but I’m no boy and this is no ordinary wolf. When so much is at stake how can I remain silent.
Me (July, 2010, age 57). We are still waiting for the future to arrive.
An unnamed reviewer (L.H.) acting for the National Association of Educational broadcasters advised the group that they should exercise “caution in interpreting and generalizing … [the] results [of McLuhan’s report.” Caution is still being exercised. Nicholas Carr may be convinced that “Google is making us stupid,” but it is doubtful if anyone is losing any sleep over the subversion of our culture by electric media that McLuhan said was taking place some fifty years ago. Perhaps, at long last, we should be.
As I have said before the death of western culture appears to be a very long and circuitous process. Are you worried? Should we remain silent?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan. Report on Understanding New Media. 30 June 1960, preface p. 8.