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Sodobna pedagogika/Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies


Zvonimir Komar

Let./Vol. 69 (135)
Št./No. 4/2018
Str./pp. 290–304
ISSN 0038 0474

Pedagogical theory of medium
Abstract: The paper’s central question is, is there a view of media that can be articulated through a
specifically pedagogical theory, and if there is, how does the idea of medium open up to this pedagogical thinking? By answering this question, we would be able to articulate a specifically (pedagogically)
determined outlook on media, but at the same time, we would be able to read pedagogical potentialities
of the media themselves. By approaching the matter in this way, we would not be talking about pedagogical use of media but about pedagogical properties inherent in media and letting them speak in their
own particular pedagogical strength without using them as means to a heteronomous goal. This line of
inquiry relies on two other questions that must be answered before the central question above. First,
what is pedagogical theory, and second, what is a medium? If we are able to answer these two questions
and through them see the limited unity of the pedagogical outlook and the general properties of media
(the idea of a medium), we could synthesize the answer to our central question. By approaching the
inquiry in this way, we do not talk about specific media in this paper but prepare the theoretical outlook
for pedagogical investigations of concrete, specific media. We see this paper as a preparatory theoretical
work that tries to reflect the way in which we pedagogically see and ask questions about media, as well
as how we use these media in a wide range of pedagogical relations.
Keywords: pedagogy, theory, medium, Bildung
UDC: 37.01
Scientific article

Zvonimir Komar, PhD, assistant professor, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Arts, Department of Educational Sciences, Ul. Ivana Lučića 3, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia; e-mail: zkomar@ffzg.hr



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Introduction
Our aim is to articulate a pedagogical outlook on media. There are two questions we need to answer, which constitute the conditions of such an articulation.
The first one is, what is a pedagogical outlook itself? By that, we mean what
kind of perspective is inherent in pedagogy as a science? The second question
is, what do we mean when we say “medium” and “media”? If after answering
these questions, we can synthesize them in the sense of their inner connectedness, we would be able to name such an outlook a pedagogical outlook on a
medium.
There are explicit reasons for this approach to these two elements. The first is
that if we would like to pedagogically view media, then we have to explicitly answer
what a pedagogical outlook itself is, so we can understand what it is the object of
our observation (the medium) that can be seen and treated as having pedagogical
properties. Asking about the second element, situated in our question, “What is
medium?,” has its reason in our attempt to look at the medium, meaning our
question is not about the content in media but about the medium itself. One could
argue that we necessarily view the unity of content and media in the sense of the
unity of content and form, as content and form for themselves are abstractions.
However, here we stress the aspect of form that is what gives content a specific
shape. Focusing on content does not tell us anything about media themselves, as
Marshall McLuhan (2017, p. 20) pointed out throughout his career. It informs us
only about how a particular medium is used in some context. In essence, focusing
on the content actually makes us blind to the effect of the medium itself. Looking
at the shaping of content is different from looking at the content in the same
way as looking at a discursive formation is different from looking at a particular
“move” within a discourse (Gee 2015, pp. 36–38). Merely “making moves” within a
discourse still keeps us blind to the discursive formation itself. The kind of inquiry
focused on content when it comes to media, therefore, is political in the broadest
sense of this word. By asking about the content in media and the use of media, we
can ask questions about the informational value, possible manipulation(s), criteria
for selecting content, democratic status of media etc. What we cannot ask within

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that approach is how a medium itself forms the message and what is the language
of the medium itself.
These two research questions form the basis for the kind of approach we find
pedagogically potent, because pedagogy in its practical sense deals with interactions between subjects (the idea of a ‘pedagogical relation’), whose interaction is
necessarily mediated. These interactions are those of subjects’ worlds of experience
that are articulated in a particular sense in a concrete pedagogical relation. These
articulations are essentially mediations. This leads us to the final question of this
paper: the question of the pedagogical articulation of a medium. By “articulation,”
we mean the possibility of a pedagogical critique of existing media but even more
importantly, the possibility of the pedagogical production of media. Pedagogy
cannot have only a reactionary stance toward “reality” but should also realize its
productive essence in this area of research and practice. To achieve this articulation,
we must synthesize idea of a pedagogical outlook with the general properties of the
medium (on the formal and aesthetic level) that can be seen as pedagogical. Here,
a medium is approached as an object of pedagogical thought and as a productive
discourse-forming entity. We attempt to talk about the general pedagogical properties of a medium, but further inquiries should continually be performed at the
level of concrete and specific media.
Use of media is affirmation of the media: the pedagogical insufficiency
of the concept of media literacy
We have to further stress that media and mediations themselves are not “transparent” in the sense that they do not affect the “content.” They also cannot be
transformed in their use in such a way that we can “use the medium (in)correctly”
and through that use negate the medium’s inherent structuring properties as if the
whole interaction with media depended only on “media literacy” and “awareness.”
That is why we focus on a medium as a particular kind of language. The inner, formal
and aesthetic (in the original Greek sense of sensation, sensuousness) logic of a particular medium is a deciding factor for how the content and the subject interacting
with the content will be construed. When we talk about “the pedagogy of a medium,”
we focus on this aspect.
We can observe a relatively simple example of this kind of mediated construction
of subject in the expression and interaction through text. We take a scientific book
and a scientific article as two formally different textual expressions of hypothetically
the same content. The attempted “sameness” of the content is not achievable through
both forms. In the form of the book, if this hypothetical book is aware of its formal
mediality and therefore, is written as a book for a reason, the thought and experience
will be laid out in a slow tempo, deeply interwoven, systematically developed, with
few or no jumps in development. The (self-)consciousness in the interaction with this
book (the “reader”) will work in the same way inherent in the formal structuring
of the text here. The reader will have to work synthetically, systematically and with
deep and slow thought if it were to read successfully, as all of Nicholas Carr’s (2011)


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investigations in his book The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We
Think, Read and Remember demonstrate. This “way of reading” is caused by the
formal property of the medium of the book. It is not the “kind of use” that the reader
chooses. If one is to read the book successfully, one has to have an ear for the book.
The article, however, will always be fragmentary. It is not even intended to be a slow,
systematic development of thought. The article’s form pushes the idea of efficient
articulation of methodology and research results that can be produced, distributed
and read quickly and efficiently. One can try to disobey the form of this kind of text
and make an attempt at a slowly developed thought, but one will always fall short
of accomplishing this attempt that is suited to another medium. The same thing
will happen at the end for the “recipient” of the text. We can literally say that the
book as a medium has its own educational properties, just as an article has its own
specific educational properties. The same goes for every specific medium. Media do
not have educational properties in the sense of something merely external to the
subject’s experience of being. These properties do not form something external that
the subject then “knows” or “can do” when he or she interacts with the medium.
However, they form the subject’s being itself through the use of media. This is why it
is appropriate to say that media as such have the effect of Bildung,1 in the classical
pedagogical sense of this word.
We claim that using a particular medium necessarily means following and accepting the rules of that medium itself. This is McLuhan’s old idea: that to use the
medium by itself means to affirm the medium. We cannot think that the “right use”
of any medium denies the effects of the formal structuring-of-experience properties of
that same medium. McLuhan (2017) says, “Our conventional response to all media,
namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot” (ibid., p. 31). Pedagogically, it follows we have to understand the particular
medium itself, in terms of its construction and critique. Otherwise, the inherent
formal and aesthetic qualities of a medium can affect our pedagogical mediation in
an unforeseen manner, and we can overlook great new pedagogical opportunities.
1
Hartmut von Hentig (2008) reminds us in his text Bildung. Ein Essay of the instrumental role of
what Plato first meant under ‘idea’ for the concept of Bildung. An idea (gr. idea, eidos) is, in the concept
of Bildung, understood as that to which a human being is becoming (purpose). However, it is crucial to
understand that this purpose is not meant as a heteronomous “plan” or a technically produced “goal”
but as what a human being in himself or herself already ontologically is. It is a category of being itself.
In modern terms, a human being under the light of an idea is understood as freedom. This was developed
primarily in the works of I. Kant (1976), J. G. Fichte (1974) and G.W.F. Hegel (1955). In the way in which
J. F. Herbart (2015) pedagogically articulated the idea of Bildung in his book The Science of Education:
Its General Principles Deduced from Its Aim, this idea of freedom is embodied in his principal idea of
Bildsamkeit which then mediates itself through experience, as seen in the concept of interest, which is
the main driving force of the process of Bildung (Herbart 2015, pp. 124–129). Bildung, therefore, is an
experiential mediation of Bildsamkeit seen as a pedagogically articulated idea of freedom. In summary,
Bildung seen from this classical standpoint means the process of the self-becoming (self-realizing) of a
human being from the subject-object standpoint. One has to accentuate here that Bildung, therefore,
is not a matter of only “knowledge” or even “competence,” but a matter of what a human being is,
a matter of being itself. If one were to ask about the difference between knowledge and Bildung, we
could say that Bildung is achieved through knowledge (among other things), but knowledge itself is
not Bildung.

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Mediation is always a particular articulation of some kind of experience of a
pedagogical subject. Pedagogically, we have to ask whether this mediation is aware
of itself and whether this articulation is done with theoretical-pedagogical reasons,
because the kind of mediation has direct practical-pedagogical consequences. This
awareness of theoretical conditions (and absence of it) has implications not only
for the pedagogy of the medium but also for the didactics.
Our fundamental assumption here is that the media themselves are particular
languages, with their possibilities and impossibilities of expression. Media are not
“transparent” in such a way that we could talk about “content as such” that shows
itself to us through a medium. A medium is a specific kind of optics that structures
the content. We now examine this idea more closely.
Idea of the medium and its formative nature
When trying to talk about media themselves as having structuring properties
for their content, one could trace this approach back to what I. Kant did for epistemology. Before Kant’s philosophy unified empiricism and rationalism, and most
explicitly his Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1976), there was a clear division and
duality of so-called empiricist philosophy and so-called rationalist philosophy. The
empiricist focused on outside experience, which supposedly exclusively formed the
subject seen as tabula rasa. This was John Locke’s approach to subjectivity, seen
in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke 2007). The rationalist
focused on the world of pure thought, thought rid of outside experience, from which
a complete system of thought was to be deduced. This is exemplified most clearly
in Descartes’ (1993) deductions seen in his Meditations on First Philosophy and
Spinoza’s (1959) deductions in his Ethics. The debate about the true nature and
“source” of the formation of self (noumena or phaenomena) could not be settled
between rationalism and empiricism before Kant.
Kant essentially unified empiricism and rationalism. This was done in the way
that he conceived categories of pure reason, inherent in reason itself, as a priori
(meaning they exist independently and prior to experience) forms of structuring
of outside experience (Kant 1976, pp. 88–90). However, the outside experience
gave categories of pure reason “material,” which categories as formal structures
do not have by themselves (ibid., pp. 110–112). These experiences constitute the
necessary conditions for the appearance of phenomena, which can appear only as
a unity of material outside experience structured according to categories of pure
reason. Outside experience that is not structured according to categories of pure
reason actually does not exist for us and does not appear to us (ibid., pp. 118–119).
Because phenomena are material experiences structured by categories of pure reason,
there is a “left-over” in the possible idea of outside experience by itself, which is not
structured by the categories. This “leftover” is the idea of Ding an sich, thing per
se, and it constitutes something that Kant would call transcendent (not transcendental!). Kant (ibid., p. 71) writes: “That of which synthetical a priori propositions
can be stated are objects of appearance and not thing-in-itself [Translation Z. K.].”


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This essentially means that the thing-in-itself is “unknowable” for the subject of
cognition. Each time that we see a phenomenon, the work of the categories of pure
reason has already been done for the phenomenon to be able to appear. Fichte (1956)
later made a substantial critique of Kant’s idea of Ding an sich, essentially saying
that it is a phantom and that all that exists is produced by “I,” by consciousness
(ibid., p. 180). However, speaking about Kant, similar to experiences outside their
unification according to the rules of a priori categories of pure reason, categories
by themselves, without outside experience, are only empty forms that cannot lead
to the formation of phenomena that can appear to us.
We believe we can see something to an extent comparable to this in McLuhan’s
approach to media, in which he develops his idea that the medium itself is the
message (McLuhan 2017, pp. 19–35). McLuhan conceptualized the idea of the
medium as an “extension of man” (ibid., p. 19, pp. 63–68). What he meant by this
is that anything that “amplifies” or changes some human faculty can be regarded
as a medium. In this sense, he talked about media in a very broad sense. Media
in this sense are not only electronic media, digital media and mass media but also
technologies such as wheels, roads etc. Regarding media as extensions of man, he
says: “[M]edia as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our
private senses, but among themselves, when they interact among themselves” (ibid.,
p. 78). What he means when he talks about “new ratios” among our private senses
(but consequently, this means our self-consciousness as well) is that extending a
certain human faculty or faculties leads to rearranging the whole of the human
subject. McLuhan also stresses that it is not just that the particular stimulated sense
and faculty become amplified, but also the whole becomes rearranged according to
this new amplification. Self-consciousness is always the unity of apperception, as
Kant (1976, p. 104) writes: “every diversity of perceptions is necessarily related to: I
think of that subject in which this diversity of perceptions takes place [Translation
Z. K.].” This principle of apperception, I think, is a necessary unity of self-consciousness, which relates its manifold experiences. In the same sense, McLuhan’s
amplification of one sense and one experience cannot be contained within itself,
but it rearranges the whole because our central nervous system always tries to be
in ta state of equilibrium (McLuhan 2017, p. 67). For media, this idea means that
any kind of extension and any number of extensions in any of the faculties are necessarily a rearrangement of the senses and the unity of the self-consciousness of
the subject. This means that media, understood in this way, structure subjectivity
similar to Kant’s categories of pure reason structure subjectivity. Of course, media
are something explicitly created by human production and therefore, could be called
something like an exteriorized self and something that a productive human being
has control of. The formative power of the media on a deeper level, beyond and
beneath the surface of the content, can be seen as emerging here.
We also need to take a further look at the claim we made previously, that the
media themselves, not their content, affect these extensions. “… [T]he medium is
the message because the medium shapes and controls the scale and form of human
association and action. The content of the uses of such media are as diverse as
they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association” (McLuhan 2017,

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p. 20). McLuhan says that the medium in use extends a certain faculty or faculties
in terms of the senses and our consciousness and practice. Therefore, things like
sight, hearing, (de)concentration, synthesis etc. are all valid examples. This use
rearranges the faculties’ relation, just as it rearranges self-consciousness. The
rearrangement is that of the “scale” and the “form” of the “human association”
and “action.” The scale and form express the relations of the senses, experiences
and forms of self-consciousness, while the human association and action mean
how we structure our individual selves and our societies on theoretical and practical levels. It can already be seen here that this amplification is done through the
way in which a medium interacts with an individual, through the way in which a
medium itself is aesthetically structured. This has to do primarily with the formal
and structural aspects of the medium and the relations of our senses it affects and
consequently, with the form of the senses’ unity in our self-consciousness. Following
this, McLuhan can say that “medium is the message,” meaning it is not content
that is the true meaning of the medium, but the medium’s own formal properties,
structures and language it effects in its use. Consequently, the kind of inquiry that
wants to address media must focus on these languages.
This stance that media are material substances that have a productive quality
not only on the individual level but also on the societal level is clearly expressed in
the following lines: “If the formative power in the media are the media themselves,
that raises a host of large matters... Namely, that technological media are staples or
natural resources, exactly as are coal and cotton and oil. Anybody will concede that
a society whose economy is dependent upon one or two major staples like cotton,
or grain, or lumber, or fish, or cattle is going to have some obvious social patterns
of organization as a result” (ibid., p. 34). This stance almost reminds us of Marx’s
(1961) position regarding historical materialism seen clearly in this passage from
his manuscript The German Ideology (among many other places): “The class that
has means for material production at its disposition, in this very fact has means for
spiritual production as well, and so because of this it [the ruling class] has thoughts
of those who have no means for spiritual production at its disposition. The ruling
thoughts are nothing more than ideal expression of the ruling material relations,
that is, ruling material relations expressed in the form of thoughts [Translation
Z. K.]” (Marx and Engels 1961, p. 369). The material conditions of production are
crucial to the formation of our practices—both practical and theoretical. Once
again, this reveals the aspect that is of the most pedagogical importance to us:
the dynamic, productive quality of media. Of course, pedagogically, the individual
aspect of formation through media is central for us, because pedagogy as a science
does not deal primarily with society as a whole but with an individual’s formation
in the context of the pedagogical relation.
It would follow from this idea that pedagogy of media needs to understand the
formative character of the media themselves in a general theoretical sense and a
specific kind of formative character on the level of the construction and critique of
specific, concrete media. But merely taking the dogmatic and uncritical position
of “new is good, old is bad” (or vice versa), talking about how “interesting” and
“dynamic” instruction is when using “old” or “new” media, does not take into


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account that media by themselves are also always “working behind our back.” We
need to pedagogically understand media themselves and show from the position
of the theory of pedagogy how and when a particular medium makes sense for the
faculty, self-consciousness and practice to be developed.
Our following assumption is that different media themselves have different
kinds of pedagogical logic within their formal properties. If we should be able to
examine their logic pedagogically, it follows that we have to know what pedagogy
itself is, in the theoretical sense, in the sense of seeing the pedagogical way of seeing.
We cannot talk of pedagogical properties of media if we have no clear idea of the
pedagogical perspective of seeing.
Pedagogical outlook and pedagogical subject
What do we mean when we say we are looking for a “pedagogical outlook”? We
are not talking about pedagogical phenomena here, because a phenomenon itself
can be determined as pedagogical only through self-knowing of pedagogical sight.
We are not talking about the methodology of pedagogical research either, as it can
also be articulated only after we know how we are seeing and what can be revealed
to this particular kind of sight, so that only after that can we articulate methods
that will reveal that which we pedagogically see as a pedagogical phenomenon in
an appropriate way, which means exactly in its pedagogical properties. Self-aware,
disciplinary articulate methodology can be developed only on that basis and through
that discipline’s fundamental theory. An approach that starts with a general methodology of social sciences most often results in dissolution of the pedagogical subject,
as well as dissolution of the theoretical identity of pedagogy as a science. If our
starting point is neither the phenomenon (“object”) nor methodology, that leaves
us with a starting point of reflection of a certain mode of thinking and seeing, a
perspective that embodies the logic (in the old sense of logos) of pedagogy. In modern
terms, one might say that we are starting from self-aware reflection of pedagogy’s
own “language game” (Wittgenstein 1998) or pedagogy’s own “discourse.”
There is always a problem of the starting point of reflection that would allow
us to proceed without making arbitrary assumptions. In such a case, it is always
good to start from the word itself. If pedagogy is leading of a child (gr. pais; agein)
in its very logic and not only in its mere and essentially irrelevant historical image
of a slave physically leading a child to be educated, then within this idea there are
several implicit conditions that constitute the possibility of this activity.
First, we have to ask what we mean by “child.” The biological aspect of a
child is not central here, because the biological aspect by itself needs only adequate
conditions for its growth and health to take place. This aspect certainly requires
no leading. This reduced idea of a child is not enough to comprehend the logic of a
human becoming. The sociological aspect of a child is much more expanded than
the biological, and that aspect focuses on the interaction between child and society.
One could talk about a wide variety of functionalist or interactionist theories, but
in our opinion, they focus on something other than what we are after here, and that

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is the essential being of the child itself. Our question is really, what kind of a human
being is a child-being? To answer this question, one has to look in the direction of
the philosophical foundations of pedagogy. The possibility of education in pedagogy,
articulated as Bildsamkeit (Herbart 2015), has its roots in the philosophical idea of
freedom. A human being does not have an external property of freedom. Instead, the
human being itself is freedom. To be freedom means not to have a predetermined
form and at the same time, to have the ability to give a particular form to one’s
self. The form that the self gives to itself is never a final form, an absolute form.
Therefore, the basic, free self always transcends every possible self-given form. As
Hegel (1989) says for human will, as the practical subject: “The will holds in itself
an element of pure indeterminacy, or pure reflection into ‘I,’ in which every determination is absolved [Translation Z. K.]” (ibid., p. 38). This means that self-setting
of this pure “I” transcends every concrete setting and absorbs it through reflecting
it into itself, only to self-set again. In this fundamental self-transcendence is the
root for human being as becoming. This logic was historically explicated in various
ways, perhaps most paradigmatically in the entirety of Hegel’s (1955) Phenomenology of Spirit, but it was also done clearly in Helmuth Plessner’s (1994) work and
particularly in his idea of eccentric positionality (ibid., pp. 105–109). To be free
means not to be pre-determined. It means to be an observer that can make every
possible thing an object of observation. To be able to make everything an object
of thought means to be at the position of no-where and to be no-thing. This pure
sight of self-consciousness was what Plessner called human eccentric positionality
(ibid., pp. 105–109). We should also point out that if we see that freedom is not
only a negative idea (a lack of determination, freedom from something) but also
a positive idea in the sense of self-determination, then the idea of freedom takes
on its full meaning as self-determination and self-formation. In this way, a human
being as self-determination of freedom-thought is essentially causa sui, as Spinoza
(1959, p. 3) put it. This is the starting point of all truly modern philosophy. Following this with a specific pedagogical reflection of these ideas, Bildsamkeit is a
pedagogical expression of the negative aspect of the idea of freedom, dialectically
followed by Bildung as a positive aspect of the idea of freedom. Following from this,
the human being by its own logic needs education (Bildung) just as freedom needs
thought to become self-becoming. This means that education as self-forming is an
existential thing, not merely a question of one’s vocation. Following these ideas, a
‘child-being’ can be conceptualized as the eternal youth of freedom’s possibility for
self-transcendence and self-becoming. This is exactly what Nietzsche did when he
recognized the “final form” of the human spirit as a child, which he defined as “a
circle circling from itself” and “being a fresh start” (Nietzsche 1962, p. 27). This
means to be in the manner of fundamental self-production instead in the manner
of taking outside forms upon oneself. Being rooted in this self-production means to
be a child and in this sense, to be “young.” This is the child-being that constitutes
the possibility and the necessity of pedagogy.
One particular faculty of a human being that is present in the above and that
needs to be stressed more explicitly is that of our being able to see ideas. Ideas in the
sense of the Greek idea and eidos express the human ability to reveal being through


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theoretical activity (the activity of thinking or mindful observation). The fact that
being reveals itself to us in the activity of our thinking and that it reveals itself to
us as an idea, form of being, sight of being, is the reason we can talk about any kind
of determination. Without an idea as a form of being, the determining factor could
not be constituted. This is why freedom in the pedagogical sense of Bildung needs to
be seen in dialectical unity with the mind and reason, because the mind and reason
are the principles of determination. The true subject of self-determination in us as
humans can, therefore, be seen as the dialectical unity of the freedom-mind.
Pedagogy is the recognition, theory and awareness of a human as a child,
together with the theory and practice of leading this child. Leading itself (agein)
implies the idea of purpose and the purpose of pais-agein is pais itself. Pedagogy
does not lead the child toward something outside itself and thus, is not reducing
this child as self-formation to any particular image. It is leading a human being
to his or her own center of being, enabling a truly human, free and authentically
productive existence. If pedagogy conceptualizes itself in such a way that it leads
child-being to something outside pais itself, then pedagogy becomes ideological in
the sense that it reduces the absolute potentiality of freedom to a particular image
of what it means to be human.
The final, explicitly pedagogical aspect of this self-becoming is that it happens
in a pedagogical relation. What we mean by that is that although the process of
Bildung is, in its essence, self-becoming, this self-becoming needs mediation through
a pedagogical relation. What a pedagogue or a teacher does is a practical interaction
with this inner possibility of self-becoming in a pedagogical subject. This practical
interaction is most often pedagogically articulated as Unterricht but is not necessarily
reduced only to this. There are many kinds of pedagogical relations, and almost any
interaction can be approached and treated practically from a pedagogical standpoint.
In summary, the pedagogical outlook on a human being is that it is a free, not
predetermined, being, that should be approached as a subject of one’s own activity,
and whose activity needs to be articulated in such a way that it reflectively (self)
determines the fundamental freedom. This (self)determination is never finished,
as we cannot achieve the “full” of the “final” form. Freedom is never negated in
self-determination but always transcends each determination. The determination
part is done not only through knowledge but through also the widest variety of possible human experience. In this sense, Bildung is not reduced to an area of narrowly
understood knowledge but is also emotion, volition, intuition etc. Our next task is
to identify which properties in media themselves facilitate and effect such an idea
of human development.
Pedagogy implicit in the medium and the pedagogical use of media
When we say “pedagogy of a medium,” we are actually assuming within that
phrase that there is pedagogy implicit in the medium itself to be found. Of course,
that does not mean that the medium itself can be seen as a pedagogue or a teacher,
only because the medium structures the subject in a specific ratio, focus and intensity

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of senses and self-consciousness. The medium still has to be understood and used
by a teacher or pedagogue for appropriate development and faculties that need
developing in a specific case. But each specific medium has its own strengths and
weaknesses when it comes to a particular kind of human development. No medium
is by itself pedagogically “good” or “bad.” It all comes down to what the medium is
used for. Note that we do not claim that we can negate the specific power or weakness
of a specific medium in its pedagogical use. We claim that the pedagogue or teacher
has to understand the specific medium and use it in the appropriate context, for
the appropriate subject matter and for the appropriate student. Pedagogical use of
media does not mean that we can pedagogically transform the specific properties
and inherent rules of a certain medium, but that we knowingly and understandingly
choose media appropriate for a concrete pedagogical case and that we artfully use
the medium we have chosen, according to its own inner strength. This all means
that a pedagogue or a teacher has to understand a specific medium and be able to
produce within it, while doing that production in relation to his or her pedagogical
theory, in which the theory is the area in which he or she decides what to use, when
to use it, with whom and in what context. We claim that media themselves have
(trans)formative properties. However, we do not claim that media by themselves
are pedagogues and teachers. As humans, we mediate ourselves through media,
which are not “neutral” languages, but we also exist outside media as languages
and therefore, can transform them and even manipulate them to an extent. Media
are produced by humans, which means that humans fundamentally transcend
any “given” media. In conclusion, a medium needs a pedagogue or teacher, just
as a pedagogue or a teacher necessarily practices pedagogy through some kind of
mediation (we have to remember that even such a seemingly direct form of human
interaction as speech is a medium).
What does a pedagogue or teacher have to concentrate on, in a general sense,
when it comes to potentially pedagogical properties of media? And what does he or
she have to concentrate on when it comes to pedagogical use of media?
We should explicitly show the general potentially pedagogical aspects of a
medium. We say “general,” because our intention here is not to pedagogically
analyze particular media but to describe on which general media properties the
pedagogical analysis and construction should focus. We note here again that we
treat a medium simultaneously as an object of inquiry and as a subject in the sense
of discourse-producing material reality. If pedagogy deals with the leading of a
human being, understood as purposeful self-becoming, then pedagogical thinking
needs to operate within dialectical, transformative objects of thought (or their
transformative aspects), just as pedagogical practice needs to approach the transforming in humans and not the static aspects of human beings. Therefore, we also
see media not as static objects but as productive forces. Following from where we
started our talk about the idea of the medium itself, the way in which the medium
in use (trans)forms the subject that interacts with it is the deciding moment in the
kind of subject and the kind of faculties that are being developed.
However, transformation as such is too broad a notion to properly capture the
pedagogically meaningful notion of transformation. This inherent idea of trans-


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formation that we are looking for has to be of a particular kind, so transformation
can embody pedagogical self-becoming. This particularity of transformation has to
be derived from the idea of the pedagogical outlook that we were developing above.
From what we have said, we can explicate several traits that media themselves
and their pedagogical treatment should allow for and manifest, if they are to be
effective in a pedagogical sense:
––

If the arrangement of the senses that a medium stimulates is such that this
particular arrangement amplifies one sense, the question is, what does amplification of that one particular sense do in terms of that one sense and in terms
of the whole? For example, what does amplification of the visual faculty do to
the kind of thinking a subject is able to perform? If multiple senses are being
amplified, the additional question is, do they work in synergy, or do they produce a lack of focus? If they work in synergy, do they amplify one another in
the sense of giving an additional meaning that otherwise would not be present?
Different arrangements and ratios of senses and faculties in the use of a particular medium produce different effects.
a) An example of the amplification of one sense that enables deep synthesis
is a frontal lecture done through speech that is open and slow and that
develops thought. The speech can be arranged in such a way that it is
not only a presentation of finished knowledge but also a development of
knowledge through the speaker’s inner dialogue that is being spoken in
an open manner that invites listeners to co-think. This type of speech,
similar to a book that has a reflective quality, enables deep thought and
synthesis by amplifying one sense.
b) An example of the amplification of multiple senses that produces a lack of
focus is a frontal lecture done through speech, connected to a PowerPoint
presentation that shows banal (“funny” and “interesting”) visual cues for
what is being said or that shows in a textual form the same thing that is
being spoken. In this way, one sense does not amplify another and adds
nothing but demands that a student focus simultaneously on sight and
hearing and therefore, dissipates the focus, time and tempo required for
thought.
c) An example of the amplification of multiple senses that work in synergy is
a visual moment added to a speech through a presentation that stimulates
an emotional connection with what is being said, such as a picture of the
face of a thinker we are talking about that is chosen specifically to show
emotionality in the eyes of that person, something that cannot be expressed
in words, in sound or in anything else. This can emotionally color and
add to the students’ relation to the thoughts expressed through speech.
Another example that is not explicitly pedagogical is a music album with
a visual cover that expresses the feeling of music in the visual medium.
This visual aspect can create an additional framework for “reading” of
the music and vice versa.

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d) All of these examples are a mixture of the implicit and formal qualities of
media themselves, as well as their pedagogical use.
––

––

––

The medium has to allow for, and if possible, even invite and provoke the practical activity of the subject’s freedom. This follows from our insight that freedom
in the sense of not being predetermined and Bildsamkeit as a pedagogical
expression of this idea are the basis of the pedagogical process seen primarily
as Bildung in the sense of self-determination. Media can treat freedom and
Bildsamkeit in a wide variety of ways, but in essence, this means that the medium cannot suppose who the pedagogical subject in interaction with it is and
aim only to reproduce this subject. The medium cannot standardize its user.
The medium has to be constructed in a non-industrial way. If the medium is
constructed in an industrial way, then the medium has a predetermined way in
which it is to be used, experienced and ultimately, only consumed (Adorno 2001,
pp. 99–101). When structured through the principles of culture industry, the
medium positions itself so that it primarily structures predetermined effects,
construed as desired by the masses, with no regard for the inner development
of the medium’s content, and consequently, no development of the pedagogical
subject. Formally, this means that it is ideal if a pedagogical medium is not
too explicit and too “hot,” as McLuhan would put it, with high saturation of
high-definition data that extend only one sense or faculty.
As the pedagogical outlook demands the idea of reason and the mind as a
determining principle, the medium has to allow for a moment of inherent, detailed, clear showing, but in such a way that this showing is not “complete” and
finished. If this showing were complete, then it would not enable interaction,
only consuming or passive learning. This showing cannot be banal. As Herbart
(2015) says, “Interest arises from interesting objects and occupations. Manysided interest originates in the wealth of these” (ibid., p. 120). The showing has
to have a determining potential and have a potent effect on the student. The
showing has to provide substance and material for layered meaning. The only
way in which the determining aspect of Bildung works is through the forms
of knowledge and experience. A pedagogical medium should enable the forms
to show. They can be shown in a visual medium, auditory medium, textual
medium etc., and within different types of sensual structuring, the media will
form different aspects of a human being. Further, the media will apply to different faculties of a human being, according to their inherent mediality: Some
are more suited to deep thought (such as a slow text), some are more suited
to emotional development (such as music), some are more suited to provoking
the becoming of a practical subject (such as working with one’s own body) etc.
Of course, we are not saying there is only one way to do any of these things or
that other media cannot also be effective.
The medium’s showing has to allow for and invite further reflection based on
this showing. This means the showing must be dialogic. What we mean by this
is that a medium should be set up so it does not give the “final interpretation,”


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“finished truth,” “fact” and “already fully structured knowledge.” Instead, the
clear but not complete showing allows for concentrating on what is shown, to
think and comprehend that object of thought, but then also invites the subject
to reflect what is shown and try to synthesize, connect and systematize what is
shown with his or her other, existing knowledge and experience. In this space,
the subject will be active himself or herself, which means he or she will exist in
a mode of self-determining. In contrast, the finished knowledge or experience
embodied in some medium can be only passively accepted, “learned,” or perhaps
even used in some pragmatic context, but this kind of structuring of knowledge
does not allow for self-becoming. This is the central pedagogical category.
These are some of the things that can be said about the general characteristics
that must be present in the character of the medium itself if it is to be viewed as
potentially pedagogical. The list is by no means complete, or even the only possible
way of conceptualizing the pedagogical outlook on media. This list is an attempt
to deduce some points of a view of media that is based in pedagogical theory and
that can also serve as a general outline for producing, critiquing and using media
in a pedagogical way.
To summarize, the way in which a medium should allow the structuring of
a subject to work for it to be potentially pedagogical is that the senses and kinds
of (self)consciousness the medium amplifies should be appropriate for the kind of
faculty and development we wish to effect. If our medial approach to pedagogical
subject is multi-medial, there has to be a reason for multi-mediality, and there must
be a mutual amplification of these different media in the multi-medial system. The
medium should not be set up in accordance with presupposed effects but should
allow for and invite its exploration, where the student’s freedom will manifest.
The medium has to have a showing moment that is clear that can effectuate the
forming that Bildung requires. Finally, this showing, although clear, should not
attempt to be the “final knowledge,” or a mere “fact,” because that would disable
the reflective and dialogic relationship with the medium. The power that we are
able to gain from using a variety of media is that they can approach not only the
classically literate human but also the widest array of our possibilities for experience, which sometimes remain neglected in our pedagogical practice that is
primarily focused on the word and lately, on only the shallowly understood use of
“new media,” “digital media” etc.
More specific considerations of pedagogical use of media should be done in
the future. However, these considerations can be done only at the level of analysis
of concrete media, because each medium is specific. The ideas above should be
taken as (an incomplete) general-pedagogical outline for the pedagogical approach
to media. The general ideas above will manifest through a wide variety of ways in
concrete media, which should be continually pedagogically analyzed and used, due
to their dynamic nature.

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Zvonimir Komar (Univerza v Zagrebu, Hrvaška)
PEDAGOŠKA TEORIJA MEDIJA
Povzetek: Osrednje vprašanje prispevka je, ali je mogoč pogled na medij, ki bi ga lahko artikulirali skozi
specifično pedagoško teorijo. In če je, kako se lahko pojem medija odkriva skozi to pedagoško misel. Iskanje
odgovora na to vprašanje nam bo omogočilo artikulirati specifično (pedagoško) determiniran pogled na
medij, hkrati pa nas bo vodilo k razumevanju samih pedagoških možnosti medija. V prispevku tako ne
bomo razpravljali o pedagoški rabi medija, temveč o pedagoških značilnostih, ki so mediju inherentne,
prepustili jim bomo, da spregovorijo s svojo lastno in partikularno pedagoško težo, ne da bi jih zvedli na
golo sredstvo za doseganje nekega heteronomnega cilja. To je pot, ki se sicer opira na dve drugi vprašanji,
ki terjata odgovor, preden se sploh lotimo osrednjega. Prvič, kaj je pedagoška teorija, in drugič, kaj je medij.
Kolikor lahko odgovorimo na ti vprašanji in skozi njiju uzremo omejeno enotnost pedagoškega pogleda
ter splošnih značilnosti medija (pojma medija), bi nam to lahko omogočilo sintezo odgovora na izhodiščno
vprašanje. To je pristop, ki ne bo temeljil na razpravi o specifičnem mediju, temveč ima za cilj pripraviti
teoretski okvir za nadaljnje pedagoško raziskovanje konkretnih, specifičnih medijev. Zato pričujoči prispevek
razumemo kot pripravljalno teoretsko delo, ki skuša reflektirati način, kako pedagoško zaznavamo in se
sprašujemo o pojmu medija, pa tudi, kako ta pojem uporabljamo v širokem razponu pedagoških razmerij.
Ključne besede: pedagogika, teorija, medij, Bildung
Elektronski naslov: zkomar@ffzg.hr