HOW TO LEARN BETTER
Our second issue focuses on the relationship between learning and war. We fight for a life worth living and we learn to survive. Live young, die smart.
Sigmund Freud’s Study in Vienna, 1938. (photographed in Jean Miro Library Barcelona, January 2013)
A matter of Access 2: Teleshopping for Star Trek-light uniforms for the good house wife (TV screenshot in Lüneburg, April 2013)
A matter of Access 1: Police officers in Tehran ripped satelite dishes from roofs in an attempt to block residents from watching Persian-language satellite broadcasts by opposition parties. A maccabee beer can is rigged as an improvised explosive for Israeli military training purposes. In Broomberg and Chanarin (2006). Chicago. London: Steidl.
INTRODUCTION
WHO OWNS THE LEARNING?
Everywhere – education! Tested and contested forms of learning are available all over the net and discussed and published across platforms and communities. Education reached the global market and from there, our bedrooms. Learning is now a question of access and getting some. The roles of teacher and students are continuously reviewed. Educational institutions are critically remade. Long established ideas of education reenter the discourse with new urgency. Everything is changing yet the same concerns and convictions still apply. This issue is concerned with learning and war. Learning in odd spaces, under unusual circumstances and learning when there is not much left to learn. Learning as a strategy for survival, criticality, and preparation for the future. Daring to learn, daring to live. Learning as an anti-aging treatment and a future with or without conflict.
C One of my students once said that competition is fun. If you’re on the winning side, I thought. To me grading can become a brutal matter (a battle field). Exams, scores, quizzes, ratings, everything is being tested. What you’re worth comes in rich data sets. What does grading actually say?
A Without a grade, how do we know education ever happened?
C We measure things and then they become real and controllable, less of a threat. We learn things to own them and to own things is to have power.
A To join the military, you take a standardized test called
the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. This determines what branch of the U.S. military you can be eligible to serve in. It tests skills in math, word knowledge and paragraph comprehension. Only the highest scorers can enter the Coast Guard, while those with lower grades can join the Army and Navy. I suppose patrolling open waters requires the highest intelligence. The military also uses video games to attract and train soldiers. Immersive virtual realities are effective learning environments to simulate foreign landscapes and existential conditions.
C So the military installs knowledge-based hierarchies
to control what is learned and to standardize learning towards war.
ONE AT A TIME bettazine.tumblr.com
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Could you feel that when you were small, you were learning about life through the lens of war?
There is a global generation of jobless youth who are graduating into the financial collapse and have prepared for jobs that no longer exist. They have entered a productive void.
C No, I was too little - but in retrospect and when I
C That makes me wonder about the nature of motivation.
visited Cuba I discovered similarities. There was a oneway kind of education I remembered. Education as propaganda, one kind of history that was taught—but after the wall came down, this was overwritten on the spot. It was very confusing to learn that knowledge can expire. How about you?
We both have taught classes of students who were privileged and over-saturated with resources. It was hard, if not impossible to motivate them.
A Necessity is the best teacher.
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I remember never comprehending the Cold War, except as simple visuals. I knew there was a big wall, people on either side, and that where you lived in relation to the wall determined whether you were free to travel.
C I didn’t understand much either, but I was too much in it. Regardless I loved to learn whatever was offered to me.
Summer Evening by Hans Baluscheck, 1928 Oil on Canvas. The city is Berlin and the City is between two wars (found in Berlinische Galerie, 2012)
Tel Aviv, Israel Irony 9 High School (opened 2011) 7
North Korea High school (location & opening date unknown) 8
Tehran, Iran Alborz High School, founded by American missionaries (opened 1873) 9
Ramallah, West Bank Boys high school (opening date unknown)
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Ramadi, Iraq Army Corps of Engineers sponsored school (opened 2009)
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things first and then we have to learn how to survive their innovation.
platforms offer the one-size-fits-all education. But how does this shape society? People have increasing access to education and yet, are increasingly unemployed.
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Jalalabad, Aghanistan Canadian sponsored school (opened 2010)
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A We have the internal battle. The military learns new
C Perhaps because it’s all radically formulaic. Online
Newtown, USA Sandy Hook Elementary School (attacked 2012)
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that when I get depressed, I chose to learn something. Not only do I distract myself from sadness, but it seems, focusing on something unfamiliar and getting curious is stimulating. Instant satisfaction, the learn-drive is an intrinsic motor.
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C Learning itself is a means of survival. I once told a friend
Call of Duty. Players from countries all over the world participate in this dedicated learning space, taking sides in the Cold War and a future war in 2025. In comparison, more than 90% of the millions of students in open online classes drop out. I’ve dropped out of 100% of the classes I took online!
Damascus, Syria Lycée Charles de Gaulle inaugurated by President Sargozy (opened 2008)
Beit Lahia, Gaza American International School (bombed 2009)
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A Over 10 million people are online at any time playing
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Shutdown, demolished, invaded schools. This seems an uncanny parallel to the death of the university as a concept. And that leads back to the question: where do we learn and where will we learn? Are we heading into the physical and ideological deconstruction of institutional learning towards an informal one?
Betta. is a quarterly print publication investigating urban spaces one question at a time. Produced by Christina Kral and Adriana Valdez Young
remote teaching relate to remote warfare?
A What is the relationship between war and learning?
THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
betta.
C Then there are massive open online courses. How does
ALL LIFE LONG, WAR WILL TEAR US APART AGAIN
Exploratory and military carneval costumes found in a department store in Mitte (Berlin 2012)
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Zlitan, Libya School destroyed by NATO forces (bombed 2011) 11
Cairo, Egypt Microsoft Learning Center (opened 2011)
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Winning from the beginning. Fourth and eighth graders at schools on U.S. military bases outperform their peers at public schools in both reading and math. The test score gap between white and black students is also much lower on military bases than in public schools. NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 2011
Video stills from the perspective of US military veterans undergoing therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder via the immersive Iraq simulator, ‘Virtual Iraq.’ U.S. (2011)
Exercise #2 PICK UP A NEWSPAPER AND FIND AN IMAGE OF WAR. READ THE CAPTION. WRITE A NEW ONE.