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SD and critical pedagogy
Posted by Dexter Chapin on 10/23/2008
In Reply To:SD and critical pedagogy Posted by Richard Turnock on 10/19/2008
I am sorry, I came late to the discussion of SD and critical pedagogy but it seems to me that much of the discussion is about what are the goals of teaching. I cannot speak for any place but the U.S. but it seems to me that the Internet will give you tens of thousands of hits about the goals of education. Some sites are written from the social perspective of producing effective, entrepreneurial, technically astute, workers and citizens. Some sites are written from the student perspective of self-actualization, social mobility, and happiness.
It is possible to bring these views together using historicity (1). Historicity is the ability of a society or an individual to intervene in their own existence to change or re-invent themselves. There are three necessary, mutually causal components of historicity: knowledge and skill to intervene, the fiscal or social capital to underwrite the intervention, and a worldview to carry out, support, and give meaning to the intervention.
From a national perspective, the goal of education is to make sure that every student has, at least, the minimum knowledge and skill to intervene in his or her own life, i.e. get a job, read directions, fill out tax forms etc. Society would also very much appreciate teachers inculcating the student with a worldview that made getting a job and filling out taxes a meaningful intervention in their own lives. And society has invested a degree of fiscal and social capital in making this happen.
The student’s perspective on the goal of education is very similar to the national goals. The student wants to have the knowledge and skills to get a high paying job, to read the sales contract for a new car, and to pay the lowest possible taxes. And the student expects to get happiness out of these activities and has invested social and fiscal capital in the form of lost opportunity costs.
Therefore there is little or no difference, overall, between the national and individual goals of education in this country and, in fact National historicity is an outgrowth of the individual. But the devil is in the details. As this is being written, there are several deep and substantive social schisms developing in all three of historicity’s components. When President Kennedy proposed going to the moon, he was proposing a massive intervention in our society. First and foremost it had meaning; it was the new frontier. Second, we had the manpower or social capital to invest, and Kennedy had the personal social capital to serve as seed money. In addition, we had the fiscal capital to make it happen. And finally, as a society we had or could develop the technical knowledge to make it happen.
When President Bush proposed going to Mars, he also was proposing a massive intervention, but this time the proposal sank like a stone. Not only did he not have sufficient personal social capital, but the nation did not have the fiscal or the social capital to support the effort. The technical knowledge and skills existed or could be developed, but the national worldview had fractured, and did not give meaning to the effort; the will was not there..
If the goal of teaching is to increase the student’s historicity, the master teacher cannot focus solely, or even primarily, on the transmission of information. Rather, the teacher must have three foci: the transmission of knowledge and skills, the accrual of social capital, and the development of a worldview that gives meaning to the students’ interventions in their own and others’ lives.
The formal job description for any teaching position focuses primarily on the transmission of knowledge and skills. I am hired to be a history, spanish, or art teacher, and that is what I expect to do. Imagine my surprise if hired to teach science, I discover in August that I am assigned an art class and a french class starting in September. I will not last long, not just because both the students and I am frustrated, but because I am not transmitting the correct sorts of knowledge and skills.
However, the transmission of knowledge and skills is only one-third, and probably the easiest and most straightforward third, of any effort to increase historicity. It is the other two-thirds, increasing the student’s social capital and the development of meaning, that count the most towards creating successful, happy individuals able to intervene in their own, and others’, lives.
Consider for the moment the perfect squirrel. The perfect squirrel lives in a tree, builds a nest, collects nuts both for today and the future, and mates to produce a lot of little squirrels. Squirrels that do all this successfully are indeed perfect. To the extent that they can stay safe in the tree, collect more and more nuts, and produce more and more offspring, they are more and more perfect. These may be admirable activities, but all this is about the squirrels themselves and nothing else.
The existentialists, such as Camus (1), argue that that there is essentially no difference between the squirrel and a person except that the person can become fully human and fully alive by committing to something larger, better, and outside of self. It is not so much what we do that makes us different from the squirrel. It is our commitment to why we do it that may separate us from the squirrel. The individual with no social capital is in desperate straits, and any intervention is about survival, but any individual, even with lots of social capital, who intervenes only for self may be very impressive, but is still no better than a squirrel.
The “why” we commit, and to some extent the “what” we commit to, is the result of character. The structure of our character is based on our ideas about the nature of Self, Others, the Universe, Knowledge, Truth, and Value. Every teacher with a few years of experience can name students who were perfect squirrels and were, not always for the same reasons, nightmares to have in class.
Most teachers have never heard of the concept of historicity as it is used here, but every master teacher intuitively understands that there is more to successful teaching than a single focus on knowledge and skills. In fact, it is probably impossible to teach just knowledge and skills. But to the extent that such becomes the criterion of success, we will tend to produce squirrels.
Now the question is, does SD address these goals? Maybe yes, maybe not, but SD will not, indeed cannot, be effective in a traditional classroom. So if SD is effective, is it SD, or is it the classroom culture that allows SD to flourish?
1) Touraine, A. (1977). The self-production of society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
1) Camus, A. (1988). The stranger Translated by Matthew Ward. New York: Random House.
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