Technologies of Learning and Alphabetic Culture: The History of Writing as the History of Education

Abstract

'The history of education is the history of writing'. Thus began, a decade ago, an earlier reflection upon the power of writing and the extent to which educational practices — that is, technologies of teaching and learning — have been involved throughout writing's history in generating writing's power. 'The History of Education and the History of Writing', was at once too long and as yet unable to theorize the precise way in which educational practices constructed ways of knowing and forms of power within the history of 'the Logos'. Any reading of writing's history has to confront the predisposition to concentrate on the technology-in-itself. Indeed, perhaps the greatest problem confronting a new reading of writing's history like this is the difficulty in unlearning such deeply-engrained presuppositions: particularly since there is an important truth in the 'medium is the message' position.