Somewhere Between Fatalism and Optimism: The tragedy in education of not knowing the future

There are two attitudes one can take when a child is not learning at the level we expect: fatalism and optimism. The fatalistic attitude is that which leads us toward giving up and changing direction; perhaps the child is not learning the material because she is not suited for it. The optimistic attitude is that which leads us towards redoubling our efforts; perhaps she is not learning because we are not teaching it correctly, intensely, or thoroughly.

Both attitudes have positives and negatives. If the child is not learning the material because she really is not capable, fatalism may save time and the potentially bad experience of trying to force the proverbial square peg into the round hole by forcing ill-suited information into an unwilling and unable participant. But fatalism is a bad thing if it means that we give up on a child too soon who could have learned if we had persisted.

Conversely, optimism has its benefits and drawbacks. Optimism, by definition, means persistence out of desire for a good outcome. Optimism leads to good results when it leads us not to give up on a child too soon. Of course, the hoped-for scenario of where the child gets the information by our sheer persistence does not always come to pass, in which case we see the downside of optimism: the risk of forcing students to do more than they may be able to do for the sake of hope for a better result.

The reason I point out these good and bad points is that the dilemma teachers often face ove which attitude to adopt is made (dare I say) impossible by our inability to know the future. Asking a teacher whether a child is capable of learning x or not – asking them to adopt a optimistic or fatalistic attitude – is asking them to know what the child is in fact capable of, which entails knowing the future. This is because knowing what a child’s potential is is premised on the idea of knowing what the child would be able to do if educated in the right way, which entails knowing what can’t be known in advance. The best we can do when contemplating a child’s potential is to give our best educated guess, which often isn’t really that educated at all.

To elaborate further on the difficulty of gaguing a student’s capability, I want to point out how essentially unfalsifiable estimates are. Let’s suppose that we believe that Johny is capable of learning Algebra and despite our efforts, he does not show evidence of learning it. Well, we can explain this in two ways: we can suggest that maybe Johny is not equipped to learn algebra, or that we have simply not done everything necessary to teach it to him.

The Child and the Subject: a dichotomy based on a linguistic slip

Teach the child rather than a subject.

This and similar utterances are often uttered to suggest that teachers should be responsive to children rather than teaching a subject without regard to children. John Dewey even wrote a book about this dichotomy called The Child and the Curriculum, where he purports to do away with the dichotomy.

Unfortunately, Dewey did not do away with the dichotomy, as evidenced by the persistence of the phrase: teach the child rather than a subject. After Dewey, the debate over whether we should teach to the child’s interest or to the subject’s requirements rages on.

It occurs to me, though, that perhaps this saying – and the idea of a dichotomy between teaching children and teaching curricula – is based on a linguistic and conceptual error. To put it bluntly, instead of saying that we should teach the child rather than the subject, why wouldn’t we teach the child the subject? Answer: because for some reason we are (wrongly) using “child” and “subjeject” as subjects, rather than a subject and an object.

If I offered the sentence “Give that person than book,” the subject of the sentence is “person” and the object is “book.” The same goes for the sentence “teach that child that subject.” The subject of the sentence is “child” and the object is “subject.” We could, of course, say “teach the child rather than the subject,” but that would be as linguistic an error as saying “Give the person, not the book.”

Compared to What?: An argument for a conservative approach

Recently, I watched an interesting youtube video of economist Thomas Sowell giving a talk about public schools. In response to a question about what to do over the idea that standardized testing may not be objective and may be biased, Sowell said this:

Compared to what? … That’s the question economists always ask: “Compared to what?”… Nothing is easier than to prove that something human has imperfections. I’m amazed at how many people devote themselves to that task.

This very simple statement – it almost seems like common sense! – is quite hard  for many to grasp. Whether the issue is standardized testing (whether to do away with it), or any other percieved injustice of society, many people’s reaction is to point out the flaw and use this as prima facie evidence that the system giving rise to it must be fised, abolished, or reconstructed.

Sowell’s point – one I share – is that pointing out a flaw in a thing is not the only step necessary toward arguing against the thing. The next ste – one not often taken up – is to argue that a concrete proposal for a solution will be better than and have fewer flaws than the system trying to be replaced.

Liberalism is Not Neutral or All-Inclusive: So What?

In political theory, a big deal is often made about critizing liberalism (small “l”) for not being the neutral, value-free, set up it allegedly pretends to be. Liberalism, of course, is the idea of a society set up so that the government refrains from the business of telling us how to live and leaves people free to pursue goals as they wish, short of harming others. Critics point out that liberalism still is not value neutral: it constrains certain things from being done (certain anti-liberal practices like refusing to send a child to school) and debate to be conducted in a certain way (in a secular way that leaves personal religious views at the door).

But here is a question: so what? What if liberalism draws lines that will inevitably restrict some from acting in ways they wish? Show me a social vision that doesn’t. (This, of course, is never done because it can’t be done. The only social vision without rules is anarchism which, as anarchists tell us, is not a system but the antithesis of one.)

Michael Sandel and Stanley Fish, two thinkers with little in common, have both seperately argued this criticism against liberalism: it pretends to be a value-free system whereby individuals can pursue their own visions but, at some point, it has to take a stand. As it is a vision of justice, it must take a stand and by taking a stand it must presuppose that certain values are superior to others. (What about the people that DON’T want to be left alone by the government? Supposing that non-interference is the highest good is to choose one good above all others.)

But the obvious retort to this is one seldom heard, and that is to affirm what is at issue.

The Dragon’s Den and the Reciprosity of Capitalism

Last night, my wife and I watched the BBC program The Dragon’s Den, where five venture capitalists listen to various pitches from struggling entrepreneurs, deciding whether to give them money in return for a stake in the business. Today, I read Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. Coincidence? Yes. Is there a connection? Yes! The former helps to prove the latter wrong by showing that, contra Marx’s assertions, capitalism functions reciprocally for mutual benefit rather than in a master/slave relationship.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx writes of the proletariat (the working class) as if they were slaves to the bourgeoisie (capitalists):

Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

…and again…

And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

Marxism sees employer/employee relations – and all other capitalist dealings – as a one way master/slave relationship; “I will pay you what I want and you will work for me regardless of whether you want to.”

The irony is that supporters of capitalism recognize that this is not at all the truth. In fact, defenders of capitalism (rightly) note that capitalism is the one and only economic system where employers may not enslave employees; in fact this is so by definition. A slave, to be a slave, is enslaved involuntarily. Her wishes are not taken into account, she is treated only as a means, and has no say in her fate. Capitalism, though, puts emphasis on contract; an employer cannot force unwilling participants into its employ, and employees are free to leave a job if they can find something better. The entire relationship is quite voluntary on both sides.

The further irony is that the same cannot be said about communism. Marx has it backwards: communism is the type of social structure that takes away choice from members by telling them that they will make what the government says they will make, will work where the government says they will work, etc.

How does this come back to BBC’s Dragon’s Den?

What Crossing the Street Says About a Person

One of the things that never fails to drive me crazy when walking around the University of Delaware’s campus is the crosswalks. At most crosswalks, cars yield to pedestrians and pedestrians need not stop for cars or wait for lights.

What drives me crazy is not the principle of this but how it works in practice. Students generally walk out in the road without looking, take their time in crossing the street, do not wave to cars for letting them through, and do not ever allow cars to go before them (no matter how long the car has been waiting while previous students crossed).

I have even witnessed several occasions where students exhibit a very “entitled” mentality through all of this. I’ve witnessed, for instance, two separate occasions where students doddling across the street were preventing a car from making a needed right turn. The cars honked after a certain amount of time, only to be greeted by the student’s sternly held-up middle-finger. How dare a car be angry while slow-moving students hold them up for ridiculous periods!

As a former schoolteacher, this really irks me because it exhibits something I found quite often in my high-schoolers: an entitlement attitude. There have been many a book published about the rising narcissism and “self-esteem” of youth: each generation seeming to outdo the last. (See the two books by Jean Twenge or psychologist Young-Eisendrath’s Self-Esteem Trap.) Teachers and others complain that kids are often self-absorbed and with new technologies giving rise to and encouraging self-advertisement (think myspace, youtube, facebook, etc.), the complaint is that we are raising a generation that think much more about themselves than others.

On the Basic Human Desire to Control Other People

Today, I watched a television interview on a news program. The interviewee was asked what I think to be an absolutely stupid question: should there be a law mandating salary caps on company executives? (to which the interviewee smartly answered in the negative.) Why do I say this is an idiotic question? Because the question is asked as if the answerer’s opinion is at all relevant to whether other people should be allowed to conduct affairs in the way they please.

The question is, in other words, a brilliant illustration of an unfortunate human tendency: the desire to control the actions of others.

Let’s look at the question again: should there be a law mandating salary caps on company executives? The question can be generalized this way: should there be a law mandating that x behavior (that some find appalling) not be allowed? So, we are asking whether the fact that some people feel that an act is wrong, offensive, or outlandish is sufficient to force others not to engage in it. And those who answer “yes” to the above questions are literally saying that their objection to a particular act is enough to warrant exactly this forcible restraint.

In some cases, of course, this may well be justified. If a person is doing something that actively harms someone who did not asked to be harmed, then we have a matter of coercion offsetting coercion. We are coercing one person to refrain from coercing another. This is similar in kind to to teacher breaking up the schoolyard bullying, or the police arresting and imprisoning the arsenist. We can, if we want, argue that the coercive restraint is more coercive than the action it tries to prevent (the police arresting someone gently pricking a person with a pin) or that stopping coercion with coercion is contradictory (it is, but often there is no other good alternative). But mostly, these are easy cases where it is assumed that individuals shall not coerce each other and the penalty for such action is coercion in defense of this idea.

Then, there are cases like that above: should legislation be enacted to prevent companies from paying huge sums to top executives (or athletes)? Should Peter be prevented from smoking crack cocaine or injecting heroin? Should James be prevented from being from finding willing clergy to marry him and his partner, Steve?
Should Walmart be prevented from employing people at lower wages than many people are just?

Should We Have Mandatory Tax-Funded Media?: An argument by analogy

Recently, I have been engaged in discussion with some folks over whether tax-funded public schools with mandatory attendance laws are justifiable. While I can see some arguments in favor of public schooling, I think public schooling also has much to be said against it (for reasons beside the fact that it seems not to be educating very well.) Most importantly, there is a moral argument against public schooling that I think can best be seen by analogizing the public school climate in the US with a theoretical case of public media and compulsory viewing laws.

Imagine the situation:

In 2050, the United States, in an effort to ensure that everyone has access to quality news and information, mandates that a certain percentage of all local taxes will be spent on a tax-supported, governmentally run, media. Because it is in the interest of all to be informed by good information, the government has decided that it will (a) make media listening mandatory for at least one hour a day by all citizens under penalty of arrest; (b) ensure that, while private media are allowed to run, they will be required to be approved/accredited by the Department of Media (c) allow citizens to either listen to the “free” government-run media outlet or pay separately for private media (meaning that they have to pay for the government media they have opted out of and the private media they’ve opted into). If they opt out of the government media, they can only do so by filling out paperwork with their local Department of Media to ensure that they are in compliance with the mandatory listening law by getting their media through a government-accredited alternate media source.

It is easy to spot the problems with this above scenario.

An Unjustly Forgotten Voice of Dissent: Review of Isaac Leon Kandel’s “Cult of Uncertainty”

To know about the philosophy of education today is to know about John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, William Kirkpatrick and progressive education. One of the most unfortunate byproducts of this singular focus is that many of the works critical of progressive education – and there have been many – have since been unjustly forgotten. It is quite standard to see a philosophy/theory of education course read the educational works of John Dewey (as well they should). Unfortunately, reading lists don’t tend to give voice to some of the criticisms (old or new) of progressive education that Dewey represents.

 One such remarkable book that has unjustly gone overlooked is Isaac Leon Kandel’s Cult of Uncertainty. Like so many other books critical of progressive education, this book is currently out of print, but can fortunately be seen and downloaded for free from googlebooks. In Cult of Uncertainty, historian of education Kandel criticizes what he saw as the excesses of progressive education – its flexibility and laxity with curriculum, overemphasis on maintaining children’s interest over teaching intellectual essentials, and conflation of authority with authoritarianism.

By contrast, Kandel’s view of education is somewhat reminiscent of Edmund Burke’s conservatism . Rather than the emphasis on each generation and individual creating and discovering their own knowledge, schools’ first goal should be to impart to students the essential knowledge that past generations have created and discovered.

Caring Theory Goes to School: Should Public Schools Teach Moral and Emotional Growth?

Today, a colleague of mine gave a very interesting presentation on , Nel Noddings, an education theorist who pioneered the idea of “caring theory.” The article my colleague spoke about, authored by Noddings, is entitled “A Morally Defensible Mission for Schools in the 21st Century (1995, Phi Delta Kappan v. 76[5], 465-368). This brief article outlines Noddings vision that too much focus on academics has left our students uncared for and outlining a vision of the future where schools’ primary focus is on nurturing students moral and emotional lives.

There is much to agree with in Noddings articles and much to disagree with. To start with my agreements with Noddings, she and I share a deep belief that one-size-fits-all curricula and schools have more costs than benefits. In their quests to cater to the greatest number, they end up catering to no one in particular.

In trying to teach everyone what we once taught only a few, we have wound up teaching everyone inadequately. Further, we have not bothered to ask whether the traditional education so highly treasured was ever the best education for anyone.

Noddings points out, very controversially, that “The vast majority of adults do not use algebra in their work, and forcing all students to study it is a simplistic response to the real issues of equity and mathematical literacy.” As a former schoolteacher, I believe that I and my colleagues did damage to many students who may have been ill-served by taking Algebra II and Chemistry in a quest to keep them on the college track. It has been my experience that standardized curricula is the moral equivalent of trying to make everyone to fit into the proverbial “round hold” regardless of their shape. In other words, we mold students to fit the curricula rather than the other way around.

But Noddings alternative vision to the standardized curriculum is one I cannot share.