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Why Education is so Difficult and Contentious: 

Why Education is so Difficult and Contentious Kieran Egan

Socialization: 

Socialization The Good News • Hunter Gatherers began with extended human care for young and old ---> “we” • Homogeneous image of “our” society and “our” individual roles • Great success for countless generations • Procedures from oral cultures very effective in socializing our young through story telling e.g. myths, religious, and family stories

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This learning occurred effortlessly, in our early years primarily, and centered upon language, an image of our society and its norms, and values, and an image of the meaning of life.

2 Kinds of Learning: 

2 Kinds of Learning Effortless early years Focused upon language and social behavior Fast and “stupid” Rigid • Laborious and Slow Later years An all purpose focus Slow and “smart” Flexible

The Bad News: 

The Bad News We live in a world that requires flexibility in adapting to changing norms, beliefs and values. Evolution has equipped us to be socialized in a manner that creates rigidity and unquestioning commitment to unchanging norms, beliefs and values.

The Worse News: 

The Worse News If one is successful in socializing then there is indoctrination. • “We” educate; “They” indoctrinate • “We” distinguish indoctrination from education on the openness of inquiry the educator encourages about the values taught, whereas, the indoctrinators teach “their” values as unquestionable truths.

The Dilemma: 

The Dilemma There is a need to allow socialization to occur unimpeded. 2. Our commitment to rationality is affronted by the indoctrinary element in socialization. 3. To fail to socialize produces alienation

The Solution: 

The Solution Single minded socialization is unacceptable. e.g. Hitler Youth • We need double minded rational reflection to play a large role I.e. flexibility was to come with rationality and, therefore, Plato’s academics plays a role.

The Conundrum: 

The Conundrum We do not typically encourage our children to question the value of our kind of “openness to inquiry” -- we teach its value as an unquestionable truth.

The Really Bad News: 

The Really Bad News Thinking in language gives a powerful tendency to construct our conceptual grasp in terms of opposites. i.e. binary responses e.g. good/bad us/them fair/unfair The real world is continuous. Our inner world of features is discrete.

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The remedy for this is to try to increase the range of people we include as “we”. However, history suggests divisions. In the classroom teachers advocate that there is a team of individuals working in concert to achieve particular student and family goals. That team is composed of teacher, tutor, student, and parent.

Academic: 

Academic The Good News Literacy • Recorded knowledge and experience • Ability to compare recorded knowledge over time “When the best accumulated knowledge coded in writing is learned, Plato taught, it transforms the mind of the learners and enables them to understand the world more accurately and truly.”

The Bad News: 

The Bad News What is the best knowledge for children to learn? • timeless classics • urgent knowledge about social conditions • economically productive skills • children’s own interests

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• a combination selected by “stakeholders” • different curricula for different people • a core curricula for everyone with electives added How do we agree on reaching an agreed answer? Currently it is left to political power to decide. That is OK for socialization but lousy if we value Plato’s ideal.

The Worse News: 

The Worse News Whatever knowledge some group decides is worthiest -- most students find literacy a sufficient barrier that they will be unable to access it anyway. • Becoming literate has never been as easy as it seems it ought to be. People choose not read a lot of text or write a great deal.

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School disrupts the orality of early years trying to teach literacy and coded knowledge. • Schools fail to provide the glories of literacy and fail to provide access to literacy’s transcendent culture.

The Really Bad News: 

The Really Bad News There is no knowledge stored in libraries and data bases. We store symbols that are a cue to knowledge. Knowledge exists only in living tissue and the literacy codes we use for storage need to go through a complex transformation before they can be brought to life in another mind.

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We have seen students internalizing codes and passing exams with no deep knowledge, thereby producing Montaigne’s “asses loaded with books”. • The classics become a dry pedantry: codes versus knowledge training versus education book learning versus wisdom.

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Schools are not good at recognizing or promoting the genuine article. What kind of magic will bring new life in a new mind from written codes?

The Even Worse News: 

The Even Worse News Plato’s ideal can’t deliver on its promises. It is not clear that the products of high literacy include justice, objectivity, and truth. The Academic ideal of education is designed to achieve a kind of understanding it simply can’t deliver. It is not sure that anyone’s can.

Developmental: 

Developmental The Good News From Rousseau, the activity of supporting the fullest achievement of the natural process of mental development. There are stages at which the young can learn the various kinds of knowledge. i.e. match the knowledge with the natural stages Attend to the nature of the child’s learning, learning styles, and range of sensitivities. This is progressivism.

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Failure to learn may not just be recalcitrance. It may be an ill chosen method of teaching or stage at which something was taught It relieved fear of violence for failing to learn The Developmental orientation to education promised a revolution in learning if one could discover the nature of learning, development, motivation, pedagogy, … (Piaget)

The Bad News: 

The Bad News The revolution has refused to occur. With one century of intensive experiments of progressivism’s attempts to flesh it out scientifically (1762 - 1979), it hasn’t worked.

The Worse News: 

The Worse News It can’t work. Human beings don’t have a nature. (overstated to make a point) Any regularities in mental development are so tied up with social experience, culture, and kinds of intellectual tools we pick up that we can’t measure the regularities. (Vygotsky 1962) There is no nature of mental development.

The Really Bad News: 

The Really Bad News Rousseau put a binary distinction between an autonomously developing mind and an “external” body of knowledge. Now the problem is how to put them back together. e.g. content/method curriculum/instruction Subject centered/child centered Traditionalists/progressivists

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If education is facilitating the ideal development of individuals’ minds, what role does knowledge play in the process? Progressivism: Useless classics Value useful knowledge corresponding to current social needs, thereby, undermining Plato’s Academics. Utility trumps Transcendence every time e.g. computers over Latin; Drug Education over Music; Economics for Living over Art

Summary: 

Summary Taken individually each of the three ideas has basic flaws. Therefore, put the three together! (since the mid-19th century)

Sample combinations: 

Sample combinations Choose Socialization as a primary idea with academics inhibiting indoctrination and individual development reducing societies claims on any particular individual. OR choose Academic as a primary idea with socialization and individual development inhibiting elititism. OR choose Individual Development as a primary idea with socialization offering homogeneous pressure and academic a standardized common curricula.

There is Compromise: 

There is Compromise

Basic Incompatibilities: 

Basic Incompatibilities Socialization Inculcate a set of beliefs, values, and norms. Build acceptance Academic Question the basis for any beliefs, values or norms of behavior. See as stereotype, prejudice, homogeneity.

Basic Incompatibilities: 

Basic Incompatibilities Socialization Homogenous Individual Development Heterogeneous

Basic Incompatibilities: 

Basic Incompatibilities Academic One body of knowledge Individual Development Many bodies of knowledge

Education is Difficult and Contentious: 

Education is Difficult and Contentious Each idea has basic flaws which are fatal. Each idea is incompatible with the other two.

What to do?: 

What to do? Practical folk just get on with doing the best they can within the institutions that exist. But there is a need for a better idea of education with new forms of curricula, teaching practices, and appreciation of student learning