Are New Media Technologies Good for Education and Democracy?

Dr. Gregory F. Pappas (Texas A&M University ) // October 26th, 2017 // 12:30pm-2:00pm // Jesse H. Jones Communication Center (CMA) 5.136

We live in a digital-electronic age and the internet is becoming more the central medium of information and communication. Dr. Gregory Pappas, a philosopher in the pragmatist tradition, explores the following questions and provide some answers in this research talk. Are the new media technologies good for education or the improvement of learning? Do they help us solve the crisis of education today? How do they foreground certain concepts of the “good” or “bad” when employed in education? What do these new media technologies mean for a deep sense of democracy, or the view inherent in some strains of American thought that seeks to improve citizen participation and empowerment?

Dr. Gregory Fernando Pappas is a Distinguished Fellow for the Latino Research Initiative at The University of Texas at Austin and Professor of Philosophy at Texas A & M University. Dr. Pappas works within the American Pragmatist and Latin American traditions in ethics and social-political philosophy. He is the author of the books Pragmatism in the Americas and John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience; he is also the editor-in-chief of The Inter-American Journal of Philosophy and the Vice President of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. His current research project, “An Inter-American Approach to the Problems of Injustice,” develops a theoretical framework for approaching problems of injustice in Latino communities, drawing on the insights of philosophers (e.g., Luis Villoro, Gloria Anzaldua, Jane Addams, John Dewey) concerned with local injustices in different regions of the Americas.

Free and open to the UT community and general public