DIGITAL NATIVES: VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE

This paper investigated the claims made in the popular press about the “digital native” generation. Because today students’ lives are saturated with digital devices at a time when their brains are still developing, many popular press authors claim that this generation of students thinks and learns differently than any generation that has come before, but the evidence to support these claims is scarce. The author tried to understand the pedagogical concepts, in which the fundamental differences of students either are approved or denied - the digital natives from previous generations of teachers - digital immigrants. The analysis of the subjects` language of the educational process leads to the discourse of digital natives. Discourse is seen as a set of social practices within which are constructed and reproduced values and meanings. Some researchers have isolated an independent “digital natives discourse” others see part of the discourse of digital natives postcolonial discourse or market discourse. The metaphor of the “digital native” reinforces the connotations of backwardness and progress of natural selection and of extinction. The market discourse is changing the social nature of the education, subordinating its discursive practices (reliance on repressive academic bureaucracy as “paper power”, a change in emphasis in the hierarchy relationship of the teacher and the student, bringing to the fore the purpose of satisfying the needs of students). The term “digital natives” is multidisciplinary and contains “rich knowledge” (D. Haraway), a lot of connotations and allusions. The analysis proposed has allowed us to see the present context (situate) concept. It is a question not just about borrowing metaphors from the political discourse and the market, but it is also hidden behind the popular rhetoric of philosophical ideas. The author made an attempt to show how philosophical ideas are at the basis of this view: the concept of metacognitive knowledge, special ontological and epistemic status of subjects, discourse and types of rationality. The digital natives discourse represents the prospects perception of education as the goods and services reflect a trend which marginalizes the role of the teacher. But on the other hand, the concept allows us to look at the place in higher education changes, based on the characteristics of the students themselves. This concept attempts to demarcate the conflicting philosophies - nativism and evolutionary epistemology. Nativism is the notion of innate (Plato) or a priori (Kant) knowledge that enables intuitively use all the knowledge and technology. Inability of using clear and simple procedures of verification in virtual reality made M. Prensky to appeal to a priori justification of digital competence. Consequently, the emphasizing of a special generation of digital natives, along with other age cohorts, represents an epistemological attempt to cope with the problem of credibility and reliability of intuitive knowledge without verification made by experience.

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