Towards a dialogic theory of education for the Internet Age

This chapter begins with a brief outline of the way in which print literacy influences the practice of education, how we think about education and also, more generally, how we think about anything and everything. It outlines a dialogic theory of education that can apply equally to education in oral societies, literate societies and the emerging global Internet-based society. Education in oral societies is different from education in literate societies. The Internet is a major new step in communications technology offering in its turn a threat to social life but also an even greater potential for collective thinking than literacy alone can provided. In South Africa, an educational intervention using mobile phones can be used to illustrate how central to education the Generalised Other is and how spontaneously it arises. Adding a concept of the Infinite Other to our understanding of how educational dialogue works has practical implications.