Plato's Attempt to Control Early Education

In Book II of Plato's Republic, Socrates begins to discuss the education of young children. He doesn't want children exposed to bad stories, but wants them to be exposed only to good stories. Students are frequently outraged at this "censorship."

The line that Socrates wants to draw seems to be that he doesn't want young children exposed to stories that teach falsehoods. Instead he wants them exposed to what is true.

The particular way this plays out is that he wants to reject false stories about the gods: stories that portray them as petty and immoral, hating each other and treating each other badly. Instead, he wants the stories about the gods to be stories that portray the gods as good.

A student in class today objected that this was one-sided: to only want to teach goodness. At some point, young people need to be exposed to the reality of problems and badness in the world.

But goodness and truth are so tightly-aligned in ancient Greek thought that my mind made a sideways shift and I wondered if this student's objection might sound to Socrates like someone saying, "But teaching only about truth is so one-sided! If education is to be balanced and fair, we should give equal time to teaching falsity as well!"

That, of course, was not what my student intended to say at all. But our contemporary political world seems at times to champion such a view!

More specifically, Socrates thought that it was bad for young children to hear stories about badness prevailing. I agree with my student's concern that people at some stage need to face the reality that bad things can happen. But how we tell those stories does matter, I think. Do we tell these stories in ways that disillusion and intimidate? Or do we tell these stories in ways intended to inspire and empower people to triumph over life's adversity?

Kierkegaard Quotation

From Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling:

"Suppose someone wanting to learn to dance said: 'For hundreds of years now one generation after another has been learning dance steps, it's high time I took advantage of this and began straight off with a set of quadrilles.' One would surely laugh a little at him; but in the world of spirit such an attitude is considered utterly plausible. What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself; and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age."

--Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 75.

Skills vs. Knowledge

During our final discussion at May College yesterday about our curriculum, several of my colleagues questioned the skills vs. knowledge dichotomy. I appreciate their concern, and very much agree that skills and competencies count as forms of knowledge.

But I do still think that there is an important distinction that can be drawn, that is very relevant to our discussions about what effect we hope that liberal education has on our students.

Developing skills and competencies is very important. As we've discussed, this makes our students better able to do certain things: analyze, synthesize, reason, communicate, etc.

But when I originally raised the question about whether there are other kinds of knowledge we want our students to have by the time they graduate, I was getting at something different that I believe is also very important: Do our students have a good understanding of the world?

We wouldn't necessarily have to specify exact factoids of knowledge that we want everyone to know -- I agree that it would be a nightmare to try to do that (and of dubious value)! But we can approach such a question in a more general, but still meaningful, sort of way. For example, what are the ways that we hope that students can map the world by the time they graduate? We have talked about how we want our students to have global awareness, cultural awareness, environmental awareness, and historical awareness. These are some ways of mapping the world, and they can be analyzed to a finer level of detail as well.

Don't we want our students to have a pretty good understanding of the cultural diversity of the world, its religious diversity, its biological diversity? Don't we want our students to have a pretty good understanding that much of what happens is structured by some combination of natural laws plus the operation of human agency? Don't we want our students to have a pretty good understanding of the best scientific knowledge of patterns of natural processes (laws of nature) and patterns of human behavior and human interaction? Don't we want students to have a good working knowledge of the major social systems that structure our lives: political systems, major world religions, economics, processes of information sharing, the arts? Don't we also want our students to also have a historical perspective on all of the above?

Another metaphor that may be helpful: this is about giving students different lenses with which to examine the world around them -- not specifying exactly what they must look at and how exactly they must see it.

I worry that we are too quick to devalue knowledge just to "information," and too quick to think that in this age of the internet and information overload, the content of what we teach is not important because everyone can just "look it up" when it becomes relevant for them to "know" something in particular.

What I'm trying to describe is a sense of knowledge that is not just facts or information. It is, instead, expanded awareness and enriched perceptiveness. It requires the practice of examining the world through different lenses. It is not just passive absorption, but involves a more subtle kind of skill or competence that involves the ability to get outside of oneself and encounter a greater world that is Other to what one already knows. It requires the development of strategies that enable one to meet this world on its own terms, and then integrate this new awareness responsibly and meaningfully into one's understanding.

We already do teach in ways that foster this kind of ability and this kind of awareness in our students. What I am trying to say here is that we must bring this dimension of education too into our discussions.

Your Anti-Transcript

I once heard a faculty member complaining about how many St. Lawrence students didn't know such-and-such from his discipline. With horror, I realized that I didn't know such-and-such about his discipline myself, because I had not taken even one college-level course in his discipline!

Out of curiosity, I later pulled out the SLU course catalog and decided to see if it was actually possible for an SLU student to take a course in every discipline. The answer is that it would be very very hard. I think what I came up with was that only a student who does a single 8-course major could possibly do this, if such a student planned very very carefully. But most of that student's coursework would be 100-level courses, and faculty would not be very happy with that.

Now emboldened by this finding (if a St. Lawrence student can't do it, and St. Lawrence's requirements are not that demanding, it was surely impossible at my college, which had more demanding requirements), I decided to take stock of my education relative to the full list of academic departments and programs. I decided to use St. Lawrence's listing, since this is my current academic home.

So I made a list of all the departments and programs in which I had not taken even one college-level course. I encourage you to make such a list as well. This is your Anti-Transcript, showing the Shadow Side of your own formal education!

I think that this is part of what makes these conversations about general education requirements so difficult. We all do have gaps in our education. If we are not careful, we can get defensive about those gaps. We can try to pretend that the fields of study we have not studied at all are not really all that important -- but we don't really know that, because we don't know what we don't know. Or, out of embarrassment about those gaps, we can overcompensate by wanting to require what we had not been required to study, in an attempt to ensure that our students do not later come to regret the gaps that we later came to regret in our own education.

Part of what is exciting about discussing general education requirements is how much we can learn from each other about our different fields of study. Is there anything in your field of study that you regard as so essential that you really do wish everyone knew it? Are there ways to teach each other (faculty in other disciplines as well as students) this essential knowledge and these essential skills, besides just through courses?

Ethics as a Critical Literacy?

At St. Lawrence University, we have been discussing our curriculum.

One of our current "Aims and Objectives" is "a personal ethic of considered values," but I notice that nothing similar clearly shows up on the new "Liberal Learning Goals for SLU" draft, although something like this is implicit in "Civic responsibility and self knowledge" and the items listed under this.

The phrasing on the AAC&U "Essential Learning Outcomes" handout is clearer. This listing includes "Personal and Social Responsibility," with "Ethical reasoning and action" as a sub-item.

How important do you think it is to keep ethics as an essential literacy? How important do you think it is for students to clarify and develop their own ethics and values? How important do you think it is for students to foster a commitment to living responsibly in relation to other people and the natural world?

First Draft of Liberal Education Goals

May Faculty College has begun, and this year's theme is "General Education 2.0: Exploring Essential Literacies." Our first assignment was to think about what we each regard as essential literacies. What do we hope that our students learn in their four years in college, and/or what skills do we think it is important that they develop? Here are my own preliminary thoughts.

Reasoning/Critical Thinking:

• deductive and inductive reasoning
  
• what counts as evidence in different fields
• constructing arguments (ability to do so; also, understanding of processes for doing so in different disciplines -- e.g., the scientific method)
• critiquing arguments (difference between finding problems in structure of reasoning vs. assessing quality and relevance of evidence)
• also - ability to recognize, critique, and avoid fallacies
• (note that quantitative reasoning fits into all of the above)
  

Good Communication Skills (perception and expression):

• reading, writing, listening, speaking
• other forms of creative expression and performance (e.g., visual, musical, kinesthetic)
  
• ability to do the above in various settings: face-to-face/in person, or via technology/media
• aesthetic awareness/aesthetic skill (in all aspects of perception and expression)
  

Understanding the World:

• historically
• different cultures, different religious traditions, different political systems
• natural world (includes environmental awareness)
  

Understanding Oneself:

• biologically, psychologically, sociologically
• one's own interests and abilities
• one's own values and ethical orientation

Quotation from Aristotle on Education

From Aristotle: "And those who have just learned something do not yet know it, though they string the words together; for it must grow into them, and this takes time."

--Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 3 (1147a20).
Translated by Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing Company, 2nd edition, 1999, p. 103.

On Simplicity and Complexity and Education

One of the motivations for anti-intellectualism is the appeal to "keep it simple." Simplification makes things easier to understand, but at a cost. Something is lost in translation.

While teaching is about helping people to understand, and simplification is a necessary step along the way, real understanding requires coming to terms with increasing levels of complexity. Education is a process of initiation into more complex truths.

The process of clarification requires stripping complex concepts down, but then building them back up again, layer by layer. Teachers can show their students how to do this, but students need to learn to repeat this on their own over and over again until they themselves become able to see the simple in the complex, and the complex in the simple.

The Seven Liberal Arts, Part I

The classic seven liberal arts were the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic [or logic]), and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). These were preparatory studies for the more advanced fields of philosophy and theology.

Are our students well-grounded in these fields? Should they be?

Many of my students claim not to have studied grammar at all. Some students do study grammar at the college level: by studying a foreign language. In classical times, much of grammar was also taught through studying other languages: Greek and Latin. Why is grammar so devalued now? Is there value to understanding that language has structure, and that different languages can be structured very differently?

It seems to me that grammar has been devalued because one can develop a good grasp of grammar without actually acquiring a workable fluency in speaking another language, or without acquiring good writing skills in one's own language. And people raised speaking several languages can speak those languages fluently and can write quite eloquently without consciously knowing grammar. But to use these observations as a critique of the study of grammar is to make a mistake about the purpose of studying grammar. The value of understanding the structure of language has little to do with whether it makes you a fluent speaker or a poetic writer. The latter skills are valuable in their own right, but are not the reasons for studying grammar.

The reason for studying grammar is to learn the different ways that language is structured. It is only when one closely studies the structures of different languages that one begins to understand the difference between language and thought (so closely related that most modestly-educated people think that there is no difference at all).

The Ideal of Liberal Education

Today is the day of the Crimmel Colloquium at St. Lawrence University. In honor of this event, I would like to quote from Professor Crimmel's book, sharing his view of the ideal of liberal education:

The ideal of liberal education is: "the development of wise people--that is, people who possess the capacity and inclination to act on the basis of knowledge of reality and ideality" (Crimmel, Henry H., The Liberal Arts College and the Ideal of Liberal Education: The Case for Radical Reform, University Press of America, 1993, p. 125).

Here is a later expansion: "The wise person [is] one who possesses the capacity and inclination for rational action. To act rationally is to act on the basis of knowledge of what is and what ought to be, and with prudence, and with the aid of moral virtues" (Crimmel, p. 217).

One more statement I would like to quote: "The wise person acts to transform reality into ideality" (Crimmel, p. 222).

And here are other statements of ideals that he does not think are as worthy:

Ideals Giving Priority to Theory:

To provide a religious faith
To provide specialized knowledge
To provide general knowledge
To provide both specialized and general knowledge
To understand the Great Books
To develop cultural literacy
To provide an understanding of Western culture
To provide an understanding of world cultures
To provide an initiation into the forms of knowledge
To develop the critical thinker

Ideals Giving Priority to Practice:

To provide vocational training
To prepare students for graduate school
To prepare for a mature, effective, adult life
To provide political liberation
To develop solidarity
To actualize human potential
To cope effectively with change
To develop the citizens of a free society
To develop "the democratic personality"
To develop a person

Ideals Giving Priority to Interests

To satisfy student interests
To satisfy a plurality of interests

It is not that all of these other statements of ideals are unworthy. He argues that his statement of the ideal is superior to all of these other statements. (His arguments can be found on pp. 127-163.)

As I look over his list of other statements of ideals, I see that the ones that give priority to theory all neglect the question "to what purpose?" The ones that give priority to practice point to goals but do not fully articulate them or justify them. Of each of those implicit goals, the further question "why?" still can be asked. This is not necessarily a problem. It just means that a person must choose such a goal outside of the educational system that supports that goal. But those who have set such goals for themselves might find such educational systems quite meaningful. I am inclined to agree with Professor Crimmel, however, that these would not count as institutions providing liberal education. I also agree that orienting education around interests is problematic.

I am struck most of all by the emphasis Professor Crimmel places on the study of ideality. I agree with him here (and have written previously about a similar theme here in the SLU Philosophy Blog). We seem to put more emphasis on the study of various dimensions of reality. And we often delude ourselves into thinking that "ideality" is not really real. Setting ideals and choosing values is just a matter of personal preference, and it is a bit rude (even an infringement of "academic freedom") to question each other about our values and our moral choices. And yet these relativistic attitudes about ideality, about what ought to be, miss the point completely. "Ought" gains much (most, all?) of its meaning from the reality of our essential interconnectedness with each other. It is crucial for us to be able to examine this, study it, question each other about it.

Our lives are permeated by the force fields of many "oughts" that compete for our attention. Our lives are so much more than aimless wanderings through a dispassionate world of what is. We always regard that world through lenses of "ought." All of our actions are oriented towards transforming the "is" we find ourselves in to the "ought" we want it to be.

It does seem to me that the wise person gives some serious consideration to the study of ideality, as well as the study of reality. To ignore paying explicit attention to understanding ideality is to unthinkingly follow the force-fields of "ought" that others have set up and that you happen to wander into unawares. I agree with Professor Crimmel that such a person is not very wise. Our "oughts" are not always good ones. Nor do we always succeed in effecting the transformations we hope for. This is why it is good to study ideality, and also good to study "practical wisdom," or, how to be effective in transforming reality to ideality.

An Idea: Having "Public" Components of Intro Courses

I have been thinking more about what I wrote about last time.

First, I tried this thought experiment:

The Anti-Transcript

Go through your university's course catalog. Look at the listing of majors and minors. Make a list of all of the majors or minors that you never took even one course in, in college or graduate school. This is your "Anti-Transcript": the shadow-side of all of your intellectual accomplishments!

(Humbling, isn't it?)

A Practical Idea

What if everyone who taught Intro courses created a lecture series that formed the backbone of this course but could also stand on its own, and opened the lecture series to anyone who was interested in attending? Maybe there would be one lecture per week, lasting a an hour. Not only would interested students audit these lectures, to fill out their education more fully, but professors would attend as well. What if it were the part of our university's culture that every student and faculty member "audited" at least one of these lecture series per semester?

The credit-bearing version of the Intro course would consist of more than just these weekly lectures, of course. These lectures would be integrated into the full Intro course that some of the students would be taking for credit. Those students then would have extra time with the professor above and beyond these weekly lectures. They would have time for additional in-depth discussion, for covering more material, and for reading, writing, engaging in laboratory sessions, performing, creating portfolios, etc. For those students, it would be pretty much like Intro courses already are. The only difference is that for one hour per week, some extra people would attend to hear the lecture of the week.

So, some questions for professors to think about:

• Could your Intro course be adapted in this way?
• Would you like this opportunity to give a "what I wish everyone knew about my field" lecture series (without this actually adding to your current responsibilities!)?
• Would you attend such series offered by your colleagues in other fields? If so, which would you attend first, and why?

Well-Roundedness vs. Specialization

In our conversations about the kind of education we are trying to offer at St. Lawrence, we often look to the University's "Aims and Objectives," found in our Catalog. We note the relationship between the numbered list of items and our general education requirements, and puzzle over the anomalies: the ones that do not map clearly onto our distribution requirements.

And there is talk about rethinking entirely how we structure our program of studies. Do we want to revise the Aims and Objectives? Do minors serve a meaningful purpose? Do we have too many minors? Should we eliminate majors and minors altogether, and have advisors (or "faculty mentors") work closely with each student to help them design meaningful programs of study? These are some of the questions I keep hearing.

What is difficult about talking about the general education requirements is that we faculty tend to be trained in specialized disciplines. We feel more comfortable talking about how to design our majors and minors than we do designing a more broad-based liberal arts framework of study. Within the latter, we each tend to advocate our own discipline or program as "essential" for all students, and feel hesitant about advocating too far beyond our own area of expertise.

I suspect that some of this discomfort comes from our awareness of the holes in our own educational backgrounds.

Not only can our students complete their entire four years of study here, playing fully by the rules, and yet neglecting ____________ (fill in your own favorite "essential" field of study), most of us as faculty -- even those who received their undergraduate degrees from small liberal arts colleges -- have also missed out on several important fields of study.

For example, by fulfilling my science requirement with courses in physics, I did not take biology in college. I studied German, but not Chinese. I took anthropology, but not economics. I played music, but did not take courses in music theory, or art history.

My liberal arts education did allow me to explore areas of study beyond my specialization. It also helped me to appreciate the value of a broad-based, well-rounded education -- to the extent that it inculcated in me a deeply-rooted regret for all that I haven't myself studied!

One day recently, while proctoring a final exam, I took the SLU Catalog and decided to see whether it would be possible for a student to study at least one course in every one of our departments (while still fulfilling major and distribution requirements) and the answer is "probably not." Students take 33.5 units. If you subtract the 3 FYP/FYS units, and the 8 minimum number of courses required for a major (but many majors require 9, 10, or more courses), there are 22.5 courses left. Taking the intro course for every department would probably result in fulfilling the distribution and diversity requirements. So some motivated student might achieve this, but such a curriculum would be a bit frowned-upon because most or all of the coursework outside of the student's major would be at the introductory level.

So we give students choices, but their choices necessarily leave holes in their education. We faculty have holes in our own education, and we can all too easily be biased in favor of what we ourselves have studied.

I am wondering whether there is a way to educate students and faculty in disciplines beyond what they have the time to take courses in. I suspect that all faculty have their own list of what they wish that every educated person knew about their discipline. Is there a way to structure an educational program that would allow students and faculty together to fill in those holes, at least a little?