Education’s Three Conflicting Pillars
I participated in the EdTech Talk today that featured Jay Cross and George Siemens. The conversation flowed and the chat room stayed active with Stephen Downes and many others adding additional perspectives. The initial conversation centered on Connectivism and Informal Learning but meandered to many other corners of the learning field.
Some of George’s comments about learning and education and the conflict around what a good education should be, got me thinking about the work of Kieran Egan. His book, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding, begins with the statement that Western education is based on three conflicting premises which compete for dominance. These three premises are:
- education as socialization
- education as a quest for truth (Plato)
- education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)
Since no one premise can dominate without precluding the others, we continue to have conflict in our education system. Our public education system was created to give equal access to all (a good thing) and to prepare workers for industrial jobs (a self-serving thing for the corporations). Public education was embraced by reformers as well as factory owners.
The problem is that education has become all things to all people, and this conflict is clear in Egan’s book. You cannot socialize, seek the truth and realize individual potential all at the same time – within a single, enclosed system.
This lack of agreement on what our education system should be, is also muddying the waters in our discussions about learning. My experience is that few people disagree with any one of these premises on its own. So which one is the primary premise? Should there even be a primary premise? Without one, we keep bouncing around like pinballs, addressing symptoms but not root causes.
When reduced to the basic process, I believe that learning is an individual and personal activity. Learning has social aspects and can be helped or hindered in many ways. How we build systems to nurture, support or coerce it, are the issues that we can address as a community. First though, we have to have a common understanding of what we’re trying to achieve.
Filed under: Learning
Re: Education’s Three Conflicting PillarsI think the idea of a primary premise is something that is both interactive and in constant motion. The reason I say this is because I believe that education has to become something that is adaptive and responsive to the world around us. Given the fact that we have frozen knowledge and skills in something called curriculum, I would characterize today’s education system as something that is completely static and far removed from the practical realities of everyday life. So in that sense I would say that the very idea of a primary premise is plural and inseparable from the circumstances and situations we find ourselves in. I have not read Egan’s book, but I see no reason why the three premises mentioned above, and others, cannot co-exist simultaneously. Nor can I think of a reason that we would want to identify one and follow it exclusively. I’ll have to look into Egan’s work since I’m obviously confused here.
Today I believe we have a single primary premise in force in education and I would suggest that it is not any of the three mentioned above. The primary premise is the mass communication of a prerequisite. Various theoretical perspectives, to my thinking, attempt to carve out an existence on top of this basic structure. As a result, there is conflict but I have yet to see an educational theory that has any fundamental and durable impact on the education system at large. The problem with theory is that it is often divorced from reality and sometimes creates the effect that we are reading fiction – and essentially we are. Many theories I have scanned fail to make a meaningful connection with practical reality. This is an essential problem, I believe, with Connectivism – it is an abstraction – the lives and authentic experiences of people are noticeably absent and the idea of Connectivism seems to create another kind of prerequisite. I find it quite amazing how educational theorists when describing their theories fail to mention the lives of real people and real life events. Instead, they tend to covet the abstract.
Education is something that is remarkably ethnocentric; learning is something that has remarkable cultural diversity. The main reason I have a theme in my weblog called “People and Life” is because I believe that is where we have the best opportunity to try to find and explore learning. This, I know, would cause many academics to turn away and snicker. However, when I explore the life of, for example, Stephen Biko I see a magnificent learning “process” revealing itself. In exploring Stephen Biko’s life the idea of having a common understanding of something people were trying to achieve is abundantly clear. How he went about it is inspiring. I don’t see a theory of learning here, nor do I really want to. Nor do I want to apply technological metaphors to it. I do see how one remarkable individual and community of people found their way through exceedingly difficult circumstances over a long period of time. I do see how he raised a sense of collective consciousness and how learning can invite community and a greater sense of connection. This is a system in itself and exploring other people’s lives we can find other “systems” and approaches to learning.
Perhaps one way to think about learning is as an open acceptance that life is a mystery full of unknowns and uncertainty, and finding our way through these challenges in life is to embrace learning as, for example, diversity, resilience and adaptation. This is not, I suspect, a way in which we would characterize our education systems.
Theory & PractiseThanks for you articulate comments Brian. I have lent out Egan’s book, so I’m going from memory here. The point that I remember was how the three premises have historically competed for primacy in the education system. When one dominates, then the others get less attention. We see this in initiatives like "no child left behind" or the demise of music and physical education in the Canadian public school systems. My main concern is that there is no clear idea of what our education systems are trying to achieve, and we constantly go through "flavour of the year" initiatives.
If we could at least say something like "the primary role of public education is to focus on an individual search for the truth" then we would have a first principle from which to make decisions on funding and resources. It may also allow other organisations, like clubs or associations, to take up the slack for socialisation activities or the quest for individual potential. When I lived in Germany I was intrigued by the system where children went to class from 7:30 to around noon. In the afternoon they spent time with sports clubs or music lessons, etc. Many of these clubs used the schools’ facilities. This was an education partnership. The school focused on academics and the community at large was involved in socialisation and physical fitness.
One of the lessons that I take away from Egan’s book is that schools cannot do everything. I also feel that learning is "an open acceptance that life is a mystery full of unknowns and uncertainty" but I am a pragmatist who sees his children spending 12 years and 6 hours a day sitting in a classroom. Since we’re stuck with this public education system (for now), I would like it to at least to do one thing well. An expressed first principle may help to start that conversation.
Thanks again for your insight.
three pillarsThere is a big difference in what the stated reasons for education are and the reality. Western education has NEVER been based on those three pillars. Perhaps some lip service has bern paid to them in the universities, but the schools K12 were formed for the benefit of employers in the manufacturing economy. They taught students how to sit still, do as they are told, and shutup and do monotonous tasks without complaining AND most importantly to arrive on time and respond to the bell and leave only after the day was over with the final bell — and by the way if they could become literate while these skills were being taught, that would be considered a good thing. This was a GOOD system for the industrial economy. We have all benetited from it. The problem is that this type of disciplined unthinking labourer is no longer in demand. We need different types of workers today.
Rory
Re: unthinking labourer is no longer in demandNice to have you comment on this blog Rory
So what do we do now? Do we try to change the system, which seems to be a damned difficult thing to do, or do we create new systems and let the old one rot? Unfortunately a rotting old system will take many unthinking labourers with it. I see kids in school here and many are not prepared for the potential global competition that will be thrust on them. You, of course, have a good understanding of the capabilities of our public education system.
My main aim for this post was to get a conversation going around the first principles of education, as there is no agreement on even the options. I recently posted this comment on Brian Alger’s blog:
Curriculum is developed in a dark arts fashion, where a select group of wizards are sequestered into a closed environment and following some magical incantations arrive at the official curriculum. It’s magic!
I think that curriculum development is a black art because we as a society and educators have not confronted what we really want from education. The disagreements that I hear over our education system are focused on symptoms and we’ll continue to tinker with the system unless we can find a way to address the foundations, such as "what the hell are we really trying to do and how are we going do it?" ; and even more importantly "how are we going to measure ourselves?". No BS about "no child left behind" or back to the basics of the 3 R’s.
We need real discussions about what education in our post-industrial society is all about, and I’m not hearing it. All I’m hearing is a lot of posturing by special interest groups inside and outside the system.
Re: Theory & PracticeI completely agree – “there is no clear idea of what our education systems are trying to achieve.” If the school system could articulate a single principle and implement it well then we would at least know what the focus is. There would be, in a sense, a unifying principle to help guide the whole process (doing one thing well). Everyone would at least know where they stand.
Back in my days as an educator I felt the constant onslaught of increasing demands. It seemed there was a desire for schools to become everything – even a kind of parent. Some of this was driven by the frantic lifestyles of two-income families. Another part by an increasing swamp of information by the way of new technologies. Yet another by the increasing psychological problems students were having and increasing levels of violence. Still another by bizarre demands from the economic sector to prepare students for some mystical world of the future. In behind this rages the concept of the prerequisite and curriculum as mass communication which further drives the education into a downward spiral. The modern proposition for schools is in many ways unrealistic.
If I was to express a first principle it would focus on the desired quality of communication in education (in contrast to the current one). It seems to me that it is the nature of communication that needs to be changed in education more than anything else.
Conflicting agendas in education
All the posts here have been really thought provoking. Like Brian, I have wondered how to connect some of the current theories on learning with the ‘real’ lives of ‘real’ people. What I think is needed here is a sociological appreciation of how individual’s experience and perceptions (and learning processes) are embedded in particular socio-economic contexts and cultural processes that can only be very approximately captured in a theory of learning or a manual for instructional design. These constructs are inevitably reductive simplifications that ‘black box’ most of an individual’s learning process. They lead to educational practices that work for some students and not for others. And when they work, we don’t know why and when they don’t work we don’t know why. Are some students successful despite our teaching methods? What are students themselves bringing to their successes and failures?
On a more prosaic note, Rory’s comment about the link between state education and industrial society’s labour processes is important. ANd the link is still there today. In England at least the development of the state education system was intimately linked to the gradual extension of the vote to all working men and the needs of the developing labour market in a capitalist industrial economy. The extension of education to the masses was viewed with deep suspicion by the ‘natural’ and traditional ruling class. Education has always had the dual role of both enabling and controlling and has always been a double-edged sword. Teaching individuals how to read in order that they can read the Bible and employers’ instructions always risked the possibility that they would also read subversive pamphlets if available. The controlling aspect was seem as crucial to those that begrudgingly conceded that they were having to ‘educate our masters’ – the Duke of Wellington I think. Whatever the other contradictions and tensions in education today I think this fundamental one between the enabling agenda and the controlling agenda is still very much in evidence. And it makes its presence felt in every bit of curriculum development and in every lecture theatre, tutorial room and classroom.
Teachers are not psychologists of sociologists and they shouldn’t try to be. They are trained to impart knowledge using the Socratic method.
Socialization develops secondary during the knowledge process. Teacher should and do strive to develop an individual student’s potential, but the onus is on the student with encouragement from their parents to develop whatever potential they have.
Teachers need to concentrate on delivering well thought out curriculums that are constantly updated. Mass education deserves to be a primary focus. The more educated a population is, the better equipped societies become.
There is a place for rote learning in subjects such as acquiring skill at learning how to type that is accomplished by practice and more practice. Repetition is part of acquiring the manual dexterity needed in order to master the keyboard. Spelling drills can be made to be fun in the earlier grades.
More work needs to be done at the University level for teachers who are in training to understand the different ways to impart knowledge. I believe there are four accepted methods that have been established for: visual/ verbal, visual/nonverbal, tactile/kinesthetic and auditory/verbal. There could be others but these are the four most common learning styles students have. Teachers need to know which style they acquire knowledge best at and then adapt their learning pattern to other methods.
Less attention needs to be paid to theories of education and more emphasis placed on the practicality of teaching students how to acquire knowledge. I believe the lifetime goal for education is to promote making learning a lifetime experience starting at pre-kindergarden and becoming a never-ending pursuit.
In grade one, I had a primary teacher that walked me to a library a couple of blocks from the school. She was an exceptional teacher that I never forgot–she opened a marvellous world of books for me. Her act of kindness endured my entire life. There wasn’t one poor teacher in the primary school where I attended and my neighbourhood would now probably be classified as economically challenged.
I did become a teacher in later life, but did not stay with the profession because my husband’s company needed my services. In June, I’ll be 65 and I am just finishing an elective course in creative writing at a university–a thoroughly enjoyable class I might add.
Each year of schooling builds on the next. In modern schools, there quite often are too many specialized teachers that rotate within the teaching curriculum. Young students need to get to know one another and develop a relationship with their teachers. Schools need to limit the number of teachers that students are exposed to in the primary grades. Maturation develops with age and developing students aren’t emotionally ready for teachers who possess expertise in fields until they are old enough to attend high school.
Ooops…correction: psychologists or sociologists
“I believe the lifetime goal for education is to promote making learning a lifetime experience starting at pre-kindergarden and becoming a never-ending pursuit.”
I couldn’t agree more, Sylvia
[...] Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. I’ve referred to his premises in Education’s Three Conficting Pillars and in the same topic Revisited. I then went back to Egan’s website and came across a shorter [...]
[...] – a process with its main aims of socialization, a search for truth and/or the realisation of individual [...]