Neil Postman

{{short description|American media theorist and cultural critic (1931–2003)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Neil Postman

| image = Neil Postman.jpg

| alt =

| caption =

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth date |1931|03|08}}

| birth_place = New York City, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2003|10|05|1931|03|08}}

| death_place = New York City, U.S.

| other_names =

|notable_ideas =

| education = State University of New York at Fredonia
Columbia University

| occupation = Writer, professor

| spouse = Shelley Ross

| children = 3, including Marc

| subjects = {{hlist|Media ecology|Media criticism|cultural criticism|education}}

| period = 1959–2003

}}

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers and mobile devices, and was critical of the use of personal computers in schools.{{Cite news|last=Staff|date=12 Oct 2003|title=LATimes.com|newspaper=LA Times|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-oct-12-me-postman12-story.html}} He is best known for twenty books regarding technology and education, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1970), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).

Biography

Postman was born to a Jewish family{{Cite web |last=Zaretsky |first=Robert |date=2024-10-01 |title=A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn't heed his warnings |url=https://forward.com/culture/659406/neil-postman-amusing-ourselves-to-death-40th-anniversary-jewish-prophet/ |access-date=2025-05-03 |website=The Forward |language=en}} in New York City, where he spent most of his life.{{cite web|url=http://thevillager.com/villager_28/ateacherslife.html|title=A teacher's life: Remembering Neil Postman|work=The Villager|access-date=November 20, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171018193853/http://thevillager.com/villager_28/ateacherslife.html|archive-date=October 18, 2017|url-status=dead}} In 1953, he graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia and enlisted in the military but was released less than five months later.{{Cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Neil-Postman#ref1198654|encyclopedia=Britannica|title=Neil Postman|date=October 2023 }} At Teachers College, Columbia University, he was awarded a master's degree in 1955 and an Ed.D. (Doctor of Education) degree in 1958.{{cite news|author=Wolfgang Saxon|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/obituaries/09POST.html|work=New York Times|title=Neil Postman, 72, Mass Media Critic, Dies|date=October 9, 2003|accessdate=January 8, 2022|url-access=subscription}} Postman took a position with San Francisco State University's English Department in 1958. Soon after, in 1959, he began teaching at New York University (NYU).

In 1971, at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education, he founded a graduate program in media ecology. He became the School of Education's only University Professor in 1993, and was chairman of the Department of Culture and Communication until 2002.

Postman received an honorary doctorate from Brigham Young University in 2000. [https://www.deseret.com/2000/8/8/19522577/2-682-to-get-degrees-at-byu/ 2,682 to get degrees at BYU], Deseret News. August 8, 2000.

Postman died at age 72 of lung cancer at a hospital in Flushing, Queens, on October 5, 2003. At the time, he had been married to his wife, Shelley Ross Postman, for 48 years. They had three children and were longtime residents of Flushing.

Works

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?7-1/life-career-neil-postman "Life and Career of Neil Postman", January 14, 1988], C-SPAN}}

Postman wrote 20 books and more than 200 articles in academic and popular publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Time, Saturday Review, Harvard Educational Review, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stern and Le Monde. He was the editor of the quarterly journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics from 1976 to 1986. In 1976, Postman taught a course for NYU credit on CBS-TV's Sunrise Semester called "Communication: the Invisible Environment".{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19760919&id=aGRNAAAAIBAJ&pg=3453,5145996|title=Sunrise Semester begins 13th Season|date=September 19, 1976|work=Lakeland Ledger|access-date=May 11, 2013}} He was also a contributing editor at The Nation. Several{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} of his articles were reprinted after his death in the quarterly journal, ETC: A Review of General Semantics as part of a 75th anniversary edition in October 2013.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/i24761802|title=ETC: A Review of General Semantics|volume= 70|number=4 |date=October 2013|journal=The Information Environment|pages=468–479|author=Neil Postman |url-access=subscription}}

On education

In 1969 and 1970, Postman collaborated with the New Rochelle educator Alan Shapiro on the development of a model school based on the principles expressed in Teaching as a Subversive Activity.{{cite web|url=http://www.joshkarpf.com/3i/proposal1970.html|title=3I Program: Proposal, 1970|work=joshkarpf.com}} In Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Postman and co-author Charles Weingartner suggest that many schools have curricula that are trivial and irrelevant to students' lives.{{Cite journal |last=Wardhaugh |first=Ronald |date=1970 |title=Review of Teaching as a Subversive Activity|journal=The School Review |volume=78 |issue=3 |pages=429–434 |issn=0036-6773 |jstor=1084165|doi=10.1086/442921}} The result of Postman and Weingartner's critiques in Teaching as a Subversive Activity was the "Program for Inquiry, Involvement, and Independent Study" within New Rochelle High School. This "open school" experiment survived for 15 years and in subsequent years many programs following these principles were developed in American high schools; current{{when|date=January 2022}} survivors include Walter Koral's language class at the Village School{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/education/12village.html | work=The New York Times | title=Profile Rises at School Where Going Against the Grain Is the Norm | first=Winnie | last=Hu | date=November 12, 2007 | access-date=April 6, 2010}} in Great Neck, New York.

In a 1973 address, "The Ecology of Learning", at the Conference on English Education, Postman proposed seven changes for schools that build on his critiques expressed in Teaching as a Subversive Activity.{{Cite journal|last=Postman|first=Neil|date=April 1974|title=The Ecology of Learning|journal=The English Journal|volume=63|issue=4|pages=58–64|doi=10.2307/813650|jstor=813650}} First, Postman proposed that schools should be "convivial communities" for learning rather than places that try to control students through judgment and punishment. Secondly, he suggested that schools should either discard or dramatically change grading practices that lead to competition in school rather than an attitude of learning. He also proposed getting rid of homogeneous groupings of students that reinforce social and economic inequalities, standardized tests that promote competition and permanently kept student records that are used to punish and control students. Proactively, he suggested that industries and professional schools, rather than K-12 schools, should develop criteria for selecting students and that schools should focus on civic education that teaches students their rights as citizens.{{Cite journal|last=Postman|first=Neil|date=1974|title=The Ecology of Learning|journal=The English Journal|volume=63|issue=4|pages=58–64|doi=10.2307/813650|jstor=813650}}

Later in his career, Postman moved away from his work in Teaching as a Subversive Activity with the publication of Teaching as a Conserving Activity.{{Cite web|title=Teaching As A Conserving Activity|url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1252046.Teaching_As_A_Conserving_Activity|access-date=22 November 2021|website=Goodreads}} In it Postman calls for schools to act as a counter to popular culture dominated by television and highlighted the need for an emphasis on literacy education.{{Cite web|last=Postman|first=Neil|date=1979|title=Neil Postman – Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979) Interview|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nbH4Zubpiw&t=2847s|access-date=22 November 2021|website=Youtube}} Postman also argued for the need of teachers to separate themselves from students in dress and speech, offering an alternative role model for children. Postman was concerned with the degradation of the culture caused by technology and saw education as a means of conserving important cultural ideas.

In a television interview conducted in 1995 on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Postman spoke about his opposition to the use of personal computers in schools. He felt that school was a place to learn together as a cohesive group and that it should not be used for individualized learning. Postman also worried that the personal computer was going to take away from individuals socializing as citizens and human beings.From interview from PBS on MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (1995).

''Amusing Ourselves to Death''

One of Postman's most influential works is Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In Amusing, Postman argued that by expressing ideas through visual imagery, television reduces politics, news, history and other serious topics to entertainment. He worried that culture would decline if the people became an audience and their public business a "vaudeville act". He also argued that television is destroying the "serious and rational public conversation" that was sustained for centuries by the printing press. Rather than the restricted information in George Orwell's 1984, he claimed the flow of distraction we experience is akin to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

''Technopoly''

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?31627-1/technopoly Booknotes interview with Postman on Technopoly, August 30, 1992], C-SPAN}}

In his 1992 book Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, Postman defines "technopoly" as a society which believes "the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts".

In a C-SPAN interview, Postman described Technopoly as "the tendency in American culture to turn over to technology sovereignty, command, control over all of our social institutions."{{Cite web|url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?31627-1/technopoly|title=Technopoly |website=www.c-span.org}}{{Rp|page=51}}

Postman argued that the United States is the only country to have developed into a technopoly. He claimed that the U.S. has been inundated with technophiles who do not see the downside of technology. This is dangerous because technophiles want more technology and thus more information. However, according to Postman, it is impossible for a technological innovation to have only a one-sided effect. With the ever-increasing amount of information available, Postman argues that: "Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems."{{Cite book |last=Postman |first=Neil |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gYrIVidSiLIC |title=Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology |date=2011-06-01 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-79735-3 |pages= |language=en}}{{Rp|page=80}}

Postman was not opposed to all forms of technology. In Technopoly, he agrees that technological advancements, specifically "the telephone, ocean liners, and especially the reign of hygiene", have lengthened and improved modern life. {{Rp|page=7}} In his words, this agreement proves that he is not a "one-eyed technophobe".{{Rp|page=7}}

In Technopoly, Postman discusses Luddism, explaining that being a Luddite often is associated with a naive opposition to technology. But, according to Postman, historical Luddites were trying to preserve their way of life and rights given to them prior to the advancement of new technologies.

Selected bibliography

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?153953-1/building-bridge-18th-century Presentation by Postman on Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, December 1, 1999]}}

Television and the Teaching of English (1961).
Linguistics: A Revolution in Teaching, with Charles Weingartner (Dell Publishing, 1966).
Teaching as a Subversive Activity, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1969).
"Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" – speech given at National Convention for the Teachers of English (1969)In [https://web.archive.org/web/20190112221016if_/http://media.usm.maine.edu/~lenny/Bullshit/crap_detection.pdf this speech], Postman encouraged teachers to help their students "distinguish useful talk from bullshit". He argued that it was the most important skill students could learn, and that teaching it would help students understand their own values and beliefs.
The Soft Revolution: A Student Handbook for Turning Schools Around, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1971).
The School Book: For People Who Want to Know What All the Hollering Is About, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1973).
Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk: How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to Do About It (1976). Postman's introduction to general semantics.
Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979).
The Disappearance of Childhood (1982).
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985).
Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education (1988).
How to Watch TV News, with Steve Powers (1992).
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992).
The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (1999).
MacNeil, R. (Writer/Host).Visions of Cyberspace: With Charlene Hunter Gault (July 25, 1995). Arlington, Virginia: MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.

References

External links

{{wikiversity|Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change}}

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051028143846/http://www.neilpostman.org/ The Neil Postman Information Page]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100130235325/http://www.bigbrother.net/~mugwump/Postman/ Neil Postman: Collected Online Articles]
[https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Neil+Postman,+defender+of+the+word.-a0112901675 Neil Postman, Defender of The Word] by Lance Strate
[http://www.scottlondon.com/insight/clips/postman.mp3 Discussion on Technology] with Scott London (MP3)
{{C-SPAN|1181}}
[http://techrig.blogspot.com/2015/03/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil.html Summary of the book Amusing Ourselves to Death]
[http://www.culturalfarming.com/Ethnography/Neil_Postman.html Comparative Postman: 1985–2010], 30min. media compilation illustrating the critical merits of technological determinism 25 years later – by Cultural Farming.
{{Internet Archive film clip|id=openmind_ep1091|description="The Open Mind – Are We Amusing Ourselves to Death?, Part I (1985)"}}
{{Internet Archive film clip|id=openmind_ep1092|description="The Open Mind – Are We Amusing Ourselves to Death?, Part II (1985)"}}
{{Find a Grave|173609220|Neil Postman }}
[https://collegequarterly.ca/2004-vol07-num01-winter/kompf.html The Legacy of Neil Postman, College Quarterly Winter 2004 – Volume 7 Number 1]