Effective communication: Links make up chain

Sun, 05/11/2008 12:37 PM  |  Supplement

municating effectively is such a fundamental part of education that it can be argued that learning to communicate is the central reason for attending school in the first place. That being so, it is crucial that students understand what communication is all about, and sadly, that's not something that is routinely happening in schools.

When we discuss communication, it is important to realize a number of things. Firstly, our conceptions of broadcast media notwithstanding, the process of communication is, by definition, a two-way, reciprocal process. Genuine communication is not simply sending or receiving a transmission. Communication is sending and receiving transmissions. Communication is give and take, message and response. Communication is, by its very nature, an exchange.

Secondly, communication does not merely involve the transmission or even the exchange of data or information. Suppose I were to send you the following data: 26081956 and you were to respond with 15061975. Could we describe that exchange as communication? Not in any meaningful way, most communications theorists would suggest. And that's the key: meaning. Unless we are both aware that the numbers being transmitted represent our birthdays, the raw data has no meaning. Information without context is meaningless and therefore cannot be accurately described as a message. Communication is the exchange of meaningful messages. And meaning is something both parties bring to the communication.

Much of what we learn in school, particularly at the higher levels of education, is intended to put our knowledge, our acquired data, into some sort of context; to give it meaning. The rainfall in Kenya in the month of February in 1992 is a piece of information. On its own, though, the data has little meaning. The manner in which that affected crop growth or the lives of the people in Kenya, however, is the context from which the meaning of the information emerges.

This is what school is about. It's about communicating. To do it well, we need to develop the tools; we need to acquire a skill set that allows us to communicate information, context, and meaning effortlessly with other scholars. We need to be able to express and record our ideas and insights, and we need to be able to understand the expressed thoughts of others, even others who have been dead for centuries.

It is not enough to understand a subject. It is necessary that we be able to communicate our understanding of the subject. One of the great communicators of the past, St. Augustine, very simply expressed the difficulties of communicating something we believe we understand: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." Closer examination of the subject will reveal that if we are unable to communicate a concept, we probably don't really understand it at all. Despite Descarte, Kant, Hume and other theorists, it wasn't until Einstein tried to develop a general theory of relativity that it became clear that although we may think we understand the idea of time, our inability to articulate it is an indication that we did not, in fact, have any real sense of what time is.

Reading, writing, engaging in intellectual discourse; these are all communication processes that higher education encourages. The endless conceptual debates and the opportunities for reading and writing on subjects that challenge, that inspire, that enlighten; these are the golden gifts of tertiary education in an international milieu. When we look back on our university experience, it is those attempts to put notions into words, those efforts to communicate difficult concepts that we will remember. Even those who primarily remember their college days for the social activities will recognize that what they were doing was developing communication skills that they rely on but take for granted today.

Participating in post secondary education of an internationally recognized standard is far more than simply going to classes and acquiring knowledge. It is to participate in a tradition of scholarship that started in a formal way as far back as Plato when he created what has been described as the first real university, The Academy.

Had it not been for Plato's note taking and his writings, we may never have heard of Socrates. When Socrates' student founded The Academy, recording as well as articulating thoughts became a scholarly tradition.

That tradition assumes a reciprocal participation; students are expected not just to draw from the well of accumulated knowledge, but to contribute to the common pool. That means that everything a student writes becomes part of the great chain of scholarship that spans the world in space and links us as far back as the Greek philosophers in time (whatever that may really be). The insights that students have, based on the research and thoughts of their predecessors, is their contribution to the shared capital of intellectual accomplishment. As a part of humankind's legacy, it's important that a student's thoughts, conceptual speculations, and attempts to explain be articulated as eloquently and as clearly as possible.

Effective communication through the employment of accepted stylistic conventions, familiarity with the great literary works that make up our global intellectual heritage, and a respect for clarity of thought and expression is perhaps the very finest tradition that higher education can pass along.

The author is a social critic, consultant and lecturer in communications at Bina Nusantara University and Monash College. He may be reached at pguntensperger@yahoo.ca

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