A Student Proposal to Improve Modern Schools
On the Purpose and Methodology of Education
Introduction
In this essay, I will first examine a number of works on the philosophy of education that claim the purpose of education should be to produce social change. I will provide counter-arguments to that position and then follow up with an argument for my own position that education should simply be used to help people understand reality.
Secondly, I will look at some more works that have contrasting opinions on how to educate, those being education through experiential freedom vs education through regulated study. I will then attempt to synthesize these arguments into one cumulative methodology of education.
Lastly, I will detail a proposal for how to implement my conclusions from this essay in modern schools.
Purpose of Education
In order to figure out how education should be carried out, we must first know what we aim to achieve with education. It may seem that the goal is obvious, to provide students with knowledge:
But what is knowledge? Why do students need knowledge? What knowledge do students need? And how will students and the world around them be affected by the answers to those questions?
Social Change
Authors Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Seungho Moon, Paulo Freire, and Plato, in The Republic, each believes to some extent or another that education should be used to produce social change.
They each see problems in social reality (a lack of empathy, inequality, oppression, and immoral leadership) and believe that education can produce people who will, first off, not perpetuate these problems and, secondly, work to fix these problems.
Now there is a difference between those who simply won’t perpetuate problems and those who actively work to fix problems; Rousseau and Moon hold that change in the individual can be enough to create a just society while Freire and Plato lean more towards the action-oriented position.
However, both stances require the belief that there is a societal problem in need of combating in the first place, and it is this belief that I take issue with, not because I doubt the existence of problems such as the ones the authors present, but because I don’t expect a student will be able to understand and believe in those problems when educated as the authors recommend, with the goal of social change.
Rousseau and Moon:
Simplified versions of these authors’ claims are that, for Rousseau, students must be shown suffering to learn pity and then empathy, and that, for Moon, students must be taught that all things are connected to each other and part of a collective whole to learn equality; they both have specific curriculums that they believe will achieve the outcome of a better society.
Freire and Plato:
Simplified versions of these authors’ claims are that, for Freire, students must become problem-posing entities instead of passive absorbers of information, that to be human is to fight the oppression in society begun by forcing students to passively absorb information, and that, for Plato, students must use reason to seek out the nature of truth and morality and then teach what they find to others; they both have specific pedagogies that they believe will achieve the outcome of a better society.
But here’s the problem with these claims in more detail: the very goal of social change requires the assumption that the students accept the problems the authors see as in need of correcting and that the students accept that it is their duty to do the correcting themselves, be it in their own perception of reality or in their own actions within reality.
But how can a student come to accept these conclusions without understanding reality in the first place? How can a student understand what a problem is? What action is? What duty is? What a self is? These authors, in claiming that the point of education is to change social reality, have skipped the step of educating students about what social reality is and what their place is in it.
Now, there are two counter-arguments to my argument against these authors’ arguments: The first is that it is in the process of changing social reality that students will come to understand it. The second is that the authors are not talking about social change as the first step in education, but, in fact, they do intend it to be the second step once students understand social reality.
Process Argument:
This one is easy to refute, Rousseau and Plato do it themselves in their works:
“You instruct them so early in playing at sentiment; you teach them its language so soon that, speaking always with the same accent, they turn your lessons against you and leave you no way of distinguishing when they cease to lie and begin to feel what they say. But look at my Emile. At the age to which I have brought him he has neither felt nor lied. Before knowing what it is to love, he has said, “I love you,” to no one.” (Rousseau, 222)
“True opinions, for as long as they remain, are fine things and do nothing but good. But they don’t hang around for long; they escape from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much until one tethers them with chains of reasons why. And these, Meno my friend, are threads of memory, as previously agreed. After opinions are tied down, in the first place they become knowledge; secondly, they remain in place.” (Plato, Meno, 33)
To claim that understanding, knowledge, or, as Plato calls it, the “chains of reasons why,” will occur as the result of actions results in, as Rousseau believes, lies. Perhaps the student will still engage in just the right actions to produce the social change the teacher wants, but without knowledge, something only acquired through learning about reality, the actions will just be the motions of an automaton; perfect, but not representational of the student, rather of their teacher. I’m sure Freire would also critique this result as just another form of oppression in itself.
Second-Step Argument:
Refuting this one is more subjective, more dependant on personal preference, but I will present my case and you can judge its adequacy for yourself: Once the student has achieved an understanding of reality, why should we expect certain actions from that student and, more importantly, why should we have a second step of education where we try to get the now knowledgeable student to act a certain way? A knowledgeable student is, presumably, an equal to the knowledgeable teacher, so why should the teacher push their own goals onto the student?
The knowledgeable student is able to interpret and understand social reality, is able to see the problems just as the teacher, and, even if they can’t see as clearly as the teacher, possess the tools to develop their sight on their own. Naturally, a consequence of promoting understanding and the search for it will likely be social change, but I don’t think it should be a necessary function to judge the success of education.
Understanding Reality
So if social change shouldn’t be the purpose of education, why should the purpose be understanding reality? Well, I would like to delve deeper into the rationale I presented earlier, that students can only be self-aware, active participants in social reality if they understand it and their place in it. In fact, I will argue, all other subjects of an educational curriculum must first stem from this fundamental knowledge and this fundamental knowledge follows best from the study of philosophy.
As people age, they learn more about reality simply by perceiving and being a part of it. Early on, we learn that there are limits to our body’s interactions with the world, that injury hurts. A bit later, we learn that other people can feel the same pain as us. Later still, we can conclude that causing injury to other people is wrong because of the earlier conclusions; our first sense of logical reasoning and morality.
We couldn’t have come to that conclusion without one of the steps, and if we’d just been told injuring others is wrong we would question why, we might doubt the source of that instruction, or we might follow blindly but later, subject to another scenario without the authority to instruct us, be unable to figure out what to do. Based on this example, education is the natural process of receiving evidence and drawing conclusions from it, and the result of that is an understanding of reality.
A person without formal education can also achieve this understanding, as evidenced in the example above, but formal education is the acceleration and enhancement of the process.
Take history: Why should a student care about history? From the perspective of a student who has yet to understand reality, to possess knowledge, to have gone through the process of evaluation and conclusion, history may seem like a string of fairy tales; stories that have no bearing on his life. Once a student knows the laws of reality and the tools of perceiving them, that student could then judge history as evidence to draw conclusions about, as events that shaped the world we live in today, and as lessons and examples to be learned from for the future.
Evaluation and conclusion, logic, and reasoning; these are tools students naturally use and skills that ought to be developed through education to help them better understand reality. Essentially, students should be taught philosophy.
Not only does philosophy lead to knowledge about reality, as it is a process in which to gain understanding, the “chains of reasons why,” but it can also be used to imagine alternate realities that may be preferable to the current one; i.e. it allows for conclusions about what should be as well as what is; it enables students to take the first step towards social change if they choose to do so.
In conclusion, this essay is itself an example of how philosophy can be used to understand reality and strive for a better one, as that is what I have chosen to use it for.
Methodology of Education
Now that we’ve figured out what we aim to achieve with education, we can figure out how education should be carried out. The groundwork has been set with philosophy as the fundamental curriculum out of which other subjects should develop:
But how should philosophy and the other subjects be taught? Who has authority and over what in a classroom setting? What is a classroom? And how will the purpose of education best be fulfilled through the answers to those questions?
Experiential Freedom
Authors John Dewey and Wayne Au each believes to some extent or another that education comes from experience and that the role of the teacher is to present experiences to the student for them to learn from. They each see problems with the traditional method of simply telling students the information they need to know, what Freire calls the “banking concept of education,” because it stifles “inquiry” and “praxis” ( Freire, 379).
What specific new educational methods they call for are, for Dewey, to recognize that distilling experiential reality into instructional facts erases the connection students will make with information if they discover it for themselves and therefore to have the teacher present areas of study that allow for discovery, and, for Au, similarly, to have the teacher build and manipulate an “educative environment” (Au, 35) in which students can encounter information on their own.
This experience-based philosophy of education has both pros and cons:
Pros:
It is clearly true that students form a stronger connection to information if they discover it themselves and the “chains of reasons why” bound to that information. This is how humans evolved to learn, before structured schooling.
Also, teachers don’t force their students to study particular subjects regardless of their interest in them, thus producing people who are passionate about learning and will be more likely to continue studying what they’re interested in rather than dismissing the idea of learning as simply a negative period of their lives.
Finally, though this may be more contentious, experiential freedom is claimed, at least by Alexander Sutherland Neil, the founder of the experimental school Summerhill, to increase positive character traits:
““But what does it offer that the other schools don’t offer?” Jack scratched his head. “I dunno,” he said slowly; “I think it gives you a feeling of complete self-confidence.”” (Neil, 296)
Cons:
Though discovery will make information more relevant for a student, there are some subjects where discovery would take even longer than it took for others to discover the information in the first place.
Take mathematics; how would a teacher go about building an environment that contained all the knowledge of mathematics from the past millennium for a student to stumble upon? And how would a student go about learning that information without a strict guide of where to begin and in what order to continue? Furthermore, how would a student even begin to understand complex mathematical concepts without direct instruction from an authority on the subject?
It’s not just abstract subjects like mathematics with this problem either; any subject that has been developed throughout human history has also been simplified and structured so that it can be taught, through the exchange of information Freire so detests, in order for people to understand it without having to go through the trouble others did before them. And another point:
“There are some sorts of teaching situations in which the question of the pupil’s deciding something for himself does not really arise… If I am trying to teach you, on the other hand, to drive a car or play the French horn, there may be a good deal of theory involved. But nonetheless my aim in teaching is to get you to be able to do something.” (Warnock, 161)
Regulated Study
On the other side of the debate are authors Mary Warnock and Allen Bloom who each believes to some extent or another that there are certain subjects all students need to learn and that education requires teachers with knowledge to pass on that knowledge to their students. Essentially, they reject the notion that students are better off just being left to their own devices.
Instead of proposing new educational methods, these authors offer defenses of the traditional ones. Warnock believes the argument that teachers are indoctrinating students misrepresents the students’ role in the classroom as the true point of education is for them to learn how to perform the process of learning, of evaluating evidence and coming to conclusions, and that the teacher, their beliefs and all, is an example of that process. Also, as evidenced by the above quote, she sees that some subjects simply require instructional teaching.
Bloom holds similar beliefs but he specifically addresses the argument for relativism that he claims makes students conclude that there are no objective truths and therefore education is worthless. Bloom does believe in objective truths and he, like Warnock, argues for education with an evaluative foundation so that students can find them.
I believe the pros and cons of this evaluative philosophy of education have been covered as they are basically the antithesis of the pros and cons of the experience-based philosophy. So then which is the best system?
Synthesis
Unlike the purpose of education, which I see as a point that needs to be defined before proceeding to educate anyone, the methodology of education can and should be more fluid; experimentation here should be encouraged to test what best achieves the predetermined purpose.
Both of these positions offer procedures that do achieve that purpose of education, so I will take those parts of each and merge them into a wholistic methodology of education, one that should, naturally, continue to be developed in a real educative environment, which is why I will also present a number of more specific policies with which to integrate my philosophy of education and proposed educational system in the modern classroom.
Conclusion
In this essay, I have concluded that the purpose of education should be to create students who understand reality and that the methodology of education should be a combination of experiential freedom and regulated study.
Now, what would a modern classroom using this philosophy of education look like? I would like to think it would result in a system similar to what Nel Noddings describes in her work, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education.
While her purpose, unlike mine, is to produce more caring people, the methods she employs fit my goal as well, further proving that social change will likely be a result of an education designed for understanding reality. The following policies will be a combination of Noddings’ ideas as well as my own.
For starters, students should have more freedom to choose what subjects they take. While there are certain areas that everyone should have some level of understanding in, students would be more engaged with topics they’re interested in.
That being said, I believe philosophy should be a required course of study for all as it specifically focuses on the purpose of education, it enriches all other subjects, and it produces students who will be more prone to learning on their own from their environment as well as evaluating the information provided to them from their teachers.
In classes, I believe that the teacher should assure the students that they are equal participants in the process of learning, but that, as more experienced learners, they will try to offer their expertise as an example of learning.
Teachers should also be free to discuss their opinions and beliefs as these too are areas of knowledge and examples of the learning process that students can study. As long as teachers are clear about their intent, and with the students’ basis in philosophy and therefore practical reasoning, there is no danger of so-called “indoctrination.”
Where applicable, teachers should try to make their classes as interactive and experienced-based as possible. I believe that this will also naturally result from the equality students are assured they have to teachers in the learning process as they will feel more comfortable guiding that process to fit themselves.
On the topic of students; they should, as much as possible, be given permission to design their own process and concentration of study within the class subject.
For example, in a class on US history, the student, while still receiving instruction from the teacher on the entire timeline of the country, may be able to choose personally what sort of assignments they do and on what events their assignments will be about based on what piques their interest. Engagement, not grades, is judged here.
Following from that, students should also be given more opportunities with practical, experiential subjects such as lab science, engineering, agriculture, arts, etc. Community service and apprenticeships would also be incredibly valuable and should perhaps be required stages of the K-12 education.
In conclusion, empower and inspire students and they will naturally become more engaged in the purpose of education, understanding reality.
Recognize that teachers are authorities based on their experience and should be able to instruct students, but also that students engage in learning differently and so should be given the opportunity for experiences as well as instruction.
And know that education works best when teachers and students experiment to find the best ways to reach their shared goals.
Bibliography
- Au, Wayne. Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing.
- Bloom, Allen. The Closing of the American Mind.
- Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum.
- Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
- Moon, Seungho. Donghak (Eastern Learning), Self-cultivation, and Social Transformation: Towards Diverse Curriculum Discourses on Equity and Justice.
- Neil, Alexander Sutherland. Summerhill.
- Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education.
- Plato. Meno.
- Plato. The Republic.
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile or On Education.
- Warnock, Mary. The Neutral Teacher.
…Knowledge comes from a turning of the soul away from the shadows and towards the light…
…to demonstrate the method already used, often subconsciously, to come to philosophical conclusions…
…a commitment from all industrialized nations to cut their own emissions and then work together to help developing countries expand their green energy sectors. No other approach will be enough…
