| The aspects of educational institutions and the systemic practice of education are the product of 2 distinct features of education. The first is the institutional practice of a chosen philosophy of education. The second is the technologies that have afforded the facilitation of information production, consumption and distribution-essential processes of education. Taking advantage of major reform opportunities in educational practice, made possible by an emerging digital information system, the current trend in education tends to relinquish the long tradition of philosophy of education and embraces the cultivation of a reflective and productive citizenry through education. However, by looking at the ways in which the technologies of their time constrained or enabled the imaginations of our most influential philosophers of education (Plato, Rousseau and Dewey), we will better understand how real technologies and ideal philosophies are necessarily related. With such knowledge, we may inform our educational reform alternatives with the goal of developing a democratic citizenry through education. In no way, is this dissertation meant to provide specific recommendations for educational reform, though the Digital Dante case study illustrates some possible reform alternatives. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate the ways in which technology and philosophy, educational institutions and industry and K--12 and higher education are all necessary players in the goal of creating a new form of civic education. |
