Education dilemmas in the digital era: philosophical approach

Modernization of education can be thought of as an addition or replacement of traditional “meaningful” learning practices with new interactive learning programs. Today, education is significantly different from the classical one, which was based on humanities and, above all, philosophy [12: 47-77]. Its principal subject was a teacher. The result depended on their knowledge and talent of teaching. After all, education is not only about acquisition of information, but also about transformation of a student. An existential encounter with the teacher radically changes student's life. However, in order to give advice on emerging problems, teacher must be in constant contact with the student, and conversation should not be reduced to testing.

In his work “On The Future of Our Educational Institutions” F. Nietzsche called for returning from the professor, as a state mouthpiece, to the teacher, as a leader, who forms and improves the human nature. Unfortunately, today teacher in this higher sense seems to be the last romantic in the university that now functions as an educational service enterprise. A kind of reminiscence to the Greek “paideia” is “care of the self” reconstructed in the works of M. Foucault and P. Hadot. Lecturing has ceased to be the basis of learning, and as a result, there is no need in talented lecturers who inspire students to solve fundamental problems of social importance. Wikipedia makes lecturing an unclaimed service.

Many thinkers, writers, and artists in Europe and in Russia understood the task of education wider and deeper than politicians. For instance, Wagner, who conceived a project of a national theatre that aimed to change people spiritually. Nietzsche, though at odds with Wagner, continued his project by other means. His “Zarathustra” was conceived as a new gospel, rejecting the morality of ressentiment, or resentment. Many figures of national culture considered it their task to change the world through books, theatre, music, painting and cinema. They accepted the revolution because they wanted to continue a political upheaval by re-educating body and soul, which they understood to be a backbone of the old system. Unfortunately, bureaucracy did not perceive the people's initiative and suppressed it in every possible way. Liberal democracy also reassures the left-wing intellectuals that stay in the forefront of the ideology of protest movements and revolutions. Its task is seen in production of knowledge and other cultural values, which are regarded as a commodity. If we take into account new social technologies, then we need to consider that unity today is provided not by literature and art, but by media. In place of aesthetes, artists and critics come art and cultural managers. Manipulating numbers, charts, ratings, finances becomes more important and more highly paid than the ability to create works of art. Art's claims to authenticity become ridiculous in face of cynical economic demands and excessiveness of public preferences. Consumerist approach to culture led to the development of art industry and show business. In fact, the purpose of culture is to be a symbolic immune system for both human and society, and not to serve a mere entertainment [10: 172-196].

Education community see digital society as something heartless and formal. These critics have pointed towards the reduction of teaching and learning within national policy-making to matters of `delivery', with the role of the teacher reduced simply to one of delivering the means with which to digitally learn and, conversely, the role of the student often reduced to one of passive consumer of tightly defined, controlled and bounded forms of official curricular `knowledge' [17: 33]. It is displacement of quality by quantity, victory of number over letter. It is domination of bureaucracy and technocracy. In response, arguments are made against moralization and humanization. Morality and human rights often lie in source of a protest. Balancing these one-sided assessments, we can assume that society is a complex system that does not obey human aspirations. Since history is “pragmatical”, i.e., events depend on goals and values, it is necessary to reconstruct the ways of connection between human and technology.

Modern high culture is experiencing a global crisis caused by the change of mediums. This is, firstly, a twilight of book era, caused by new electronic and computer technologies and, secondly, a crisis of humanism generally and of classical education in particular. Following the post-industrial today, we step into information and digital society. New computer technologies make it possible to radically modernize an education process, and these opportunities are being implemented before our eyes. Schoolchildren and students are reading less books and getting more information on the Internet.

Digitalization is an inevitable, natural stage of knowledge development [14: 178]. There is so much information that it is easier to rediscover than to find it. Of course, a good bibliographer can find literature on topic better than a search engine, and a text translated by a qualified human translator is better than machine translation. The Internet is like a giant dump, in which it is impossible to find something really important. Information is a junk. Unfortunately, 90% of the books stored in libraries are not used either. On scientific councils we still can distinguish good dissertations from bad ones, but it is not clear what criteria guides a machine when it selects information. It seems to have no distinction of important and unimportant, or even true and false.

Obviously, erudition of a professor is inferior to the Internet. Today, there is so much information that no one can keep it “in mind”, so there are no universal scientists. Hence the creation of automatical proccessors, translators, search engines. There is a project to create a “theory of everything” that can be built with this kind of machines. Digital technologies cause a negative reaction among humanities scholars. They indicate that in such a way we lose understanding, creativity and other higher human abilities. This caused a surge of research interest to the techniques and practices of classical education [6]. Without excluding the need to preserve them, it is worth looking at digitalization positively and using digital and computer technologies for the benefit of human. It is obvious that they open up opportunities for education of the masses. Screen culture does not necessarily lead to new barbarism, it opens wide access to world culture and thus promotes humanization, not savagery of the people.

Information society is a new stage of technological development, which affects not only the means of communication, but is also accompanied by profound anthropological and social transformations. It is impossible to understand how modern media works by methods that have developed on the basis of book culture [20 : 166]. New techniques of educational process form not only thinking, but also emotional, voiitional, valuable acts of consciousness and even psychosomatic states. It is not only video technology and neuro-linguistic programming, but also all sorts of drugs that suppress some and stimulate other affects and abilities of the students. Education involves an ordinary, healthy student. Meanwhile, there are a large number of people with disabilities. They can be included in the education process thanks to digital technologies. Successes of pharmacology allow to cope with mental problems, for example, with increased affectivity, or aggressiveness. In perspective, it is possible to obtain drugs that improve memory and even creativity.

Neuroscience seeks to control brain activity, which, according to cognitive scientists, determines what humanities scholars call thinking. Returning to the meaningful practices of understanding is not considered to be justified. In fact, these euphoric speeches are not confirmed. Brain signaling activity controls, so to speak, lower reactions, and understanding of meaning is a creative ability [19 : 91-112]. Gene technofogies wlll allow to get rid, for example, of a gene of egoism if it, of course, exists. But even in this case we are not talking about development of traditional pedagogy. On the contrary, new problems will arise. If there are genes for language, intelligence, creativity, freedom, then all these can be controlled. So, it turns these qualities into the opposite. Therefore, genetic engineering is not safe. However, all discoveries meet such problems, and this is not a fault of science and technology, but of the cave thinking of those people who use scientific discoveries to achieve their selfish goals.

New discoveries in cognitive sciences have upended conventional notions about the process of acquiring and transmitting knowledge. Genetic engineering and a fantastic project to re-construct a person make you think about the consequences. As long as they promise to improve people's cognitive abilities, there is no doubt. A new trend - that is protection of animal rights - allows you to predict a project of breeding intelligent non-human animals, i.e. animals with a human-like brain [7]. If inteliigent animal, for example, aee beed for the needs of production or for humane reasons, then there is a problem of training them. Intelligent animals can and should be educated. Since the task of philosophy is to predict a nature of the future revolution in education, it is worth imagining what it could be [21]. Ths depends on what beeed and for what purpoees we eeek to receive. The slave was a talking thing, a property of a master and had no rights. And if animals have soul, then the situation changes. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that in pursuit of cheap labor capitalism will use them in its own way. If an animal replaces proletariat, will it not become a subject of world spirit, i.e. of history?

Success of new gene technologies, work on creation of artificial intelligence mean stepping into posthuman, posthumanistic phase of human development [16 : 95]. Human s a product not only of natuee, but also of technology With the development of civilization - artificial and technical, social and symbolic reality - we have heard fears about the loss of morality (Rousseau), alienation from the generic essence of human (Marx), the "forgetfulness of Being” (Heidegger). Today we are talking about a new, unheard-of threat. New digital technologies discard previous ideas about human qualities [5].

Recognizing the shortcomings of both human nature and social organism, however, it is necessary to check the consequences of posthumanism. What are we afraid of? Intelligence can be developed on an inorganic basis, replacing the body with prostheses, though frightening painful operations, but forever eliminates diseases. As for emotional experiences, perhaps it would be better if some of them did not exist. It is enough to read novels so that to be horrified by the perversity of human feelings. Advances in new gene technologies provide a chance to get rid of a number of painful experiences, phobias, phantasms, which infected the human consciousness, responding to violence from society with more dangerous perversions. One-sided development of culture generates many negative consequences. Society is filled with unsatisfied desires, envy, thirst for revenge.

The task of intellectuals is to develop and offer to society such technologies of education and humanization of people that would make unnecessary ways of manipulating people practiced in the modern "managed society”. According to G. Lipovetsky, modern society is moving away from insouciance of postmodernism [8]. He noeed deciine in ^n^pl^^y^m^^nt, rising unempfoyment, deciine of education. At the same time, in the halo of anxiety, consumer fever only intensifies. Young people choose profession taking into account the future needs of labor market, hence the continuity of education and retraining. Marriages are becoming longer, investments in children are increasing. People from their youth are concerned about the future pension. Health care becomes an obsession. Prevention, medical examination, early detection of diseases are aimed at reducing risks and increasing life expectancy. All this suggests that future is becoming very relevant for our contemporaries. People no longer live in one day, modern individualism is burdened and limited by temporality. If earlier companies regulated only working hours, now leisure time has also received economic value. While class contradictions decrease, existential tension is growing. There are more problems and less time to solve them. Hence the constant stress, fatigue, mental disorders. Laziness, carelessness, entertainment are in the past. Discipline, organization, responsibility have replaced them.

According to P. Sloterdijk, restoring warm and close relationships between people can save society [18]. On the contrary, according to N. Luhmann, functional relationships connect people much stronger than personal relationships [11]. The latter can not be a mainstay of large superhuman state machines at all. They form fa mlly organisms and small moral and spiritual communities based on friendship and trust. At the same time, society, as a viable superorganism, is not a result of violence or bureaucratic organization, but grows on the basis of human competencies, which are the most important factor of socialization. Trust and justice, as J. Habermas argued, suggest the formation of a free public that controls the work of institutions from economic to political [3]. A. Pa pa kosaas wrote an Interesting work that shows how problems, usuaHy related to the department of morality, are effectively solved through social organization [13].

Social reality resembles a city where modern skyscrapers coexist with ancient buildings. New forms of life sooner or later transform and subdue traditional ways, but the new does not become total, because there are always territories not covered by capitalism. If we should suggest tactics of modern social transformations, we could advise to fight for expansion of such territories, not to concede them to market and commerce. The true way to be is to fight for the preservation of human relationships.