What is the defining myth of our times? I've heard our culture described as materialistic, but we don't seem to love the material world all that much. I've also heard our philosophy labeled as "the myth of fact." Although I do see the academic world mad in its pursuit of facts, all carefully defined and counted, I think more simply that we are devoted to the myth of things.
We pride ourselves on the things we possess, and we go to school to learn things. The things we learn are all sorted out and grouped together: We learn mathematical things and scientific things and even psychological things. When I taught at universities, one of the problems I ran into -- and no doubt one of the reasons they didn't give me tenure -- was trying to create thing-type exams for material that was not reducible to things. It isn't easy to adapt philosophical and religious issues to a multiple-choice exam.
At school, students cram for an exam. "Cram" means to fill up or stuff. Well, if you're stuffing yourself for an exam, you must be filling yourself with things. That's how we imagine education: filling our minds with stuff.
The Greeks of old had a different idea that they called paideia. This was education conceived as creating a cultured person who would be a mature citizen and leader. Imagine if our focus in education was on the person rather than the things studied. We'd be concerned that a student grow up and learn how to deal with life and help others deal with it as well. This education has two purposes: self-ripening and leadership.
In a thing-centered culture, we believe that our job is to teach the young what they need to have a job and support themselves. Students are left on their own for learning how to cope with life's existential challenges, how to relate well to others, how to lead maturely in business and government, how to raise children and how to be married. How to develop taste and values and come to grips with human mortality and make a contribution to world culture--these are largely left alone by educators with the hope, apparently, that people will find their way unconsciously.
It's a false hope, and the quality of our leadership in business and government, with some notable exceptions, betrays the failure of that hope. Some things have to be taught, and eventually we discover that the most important things aren't things at all. They're qualities of character and hard-won values and matters of taste. The reason we have so many tasteless things in our society is that we don't teach taste, and the reason we confuse moralism with ethics is that no one taught us the difference.
There are many items we assume can't be taught that will simply fade away if we don't teach them: manners, civility, good language, mature love, good art, self-awareness and reflection, intelligent reading, responsible travel, care of one's home and belongings, a sense of the beautiful, intelligent spirituality and empathy for our fellow citizens on the planet. This is a small part of a much longer list.
Who should teach these things--parents or teachers? Obviously, both. And not only parents and teachers, but brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends, managers and CEOs, mayors and senators, movie stars and janitors. As members of society, each of us has a role to play in teaching the values and wisdom we've somehow acquired.
One way is not to treat the material we teach as things. I've used mythology in much of my writing, and frequently a reader will say to me, "I never knew that mythology had anything to do with my life." Most people could say the same about many things they have studied. I didn't know literature had anything to do with me. I didn't know that science had something to say about my life. I didn't know that I could sort out moral issues by reading poems.
The "thingification" of education has cost us an immeasurable loss of values and insight. We build great machines, but we don't know how to use them for human edification. Many have studied the natural world as a collection of things of which we are the absent landlord. We grant Ph.D.s to people without knowing if they're ready to be creative and responsible citizens of the world. As long as they know certain things...
Maybe it's time to restore subjectivity to the subjects we study and to redefine our very idea of education. We could guide people as they learn not only things of value but also how to be.
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Thomas Moore: Updating Your 'Old Time' Religion
As for personal and professional development, we often get caught up in trying to make people more industrious, punctual, and skills-oriented without respecting the real world where human relationships and rapport mean so much to co-workers and customers. A good storyteller and listener goes a long way in the working world. For my students, many of whom are indigenous people, storytelling is essential to becoming a community elder.
Finally, if we stuff things into our minds and test individuals by monitoring "cheating" with atomistic exams designed to tell us whether the stuff has stuck or not, are we really preparing students for what we proclaim to be so crucial for the modern worker? What does an individualized, strictly proctored test teach us about team work, community, and creativity? Such tests stand to make us ever more competitive, covetous, and hyper-rational.
Rob
Part of the challenge is that the thingification urge is not utterly wrong, just inadequate. But our system has swung to an extreme reliance on the thing aspect and the subtler aspects are more difficult to articulate.
My own basic proposal for steering us away from this reification of "things" is to reconceptualize the proper outcome of education as access to optimal states of mind, instead of the delivery of knowledge, skills, and information. This is based on a synthesis of some of the work in positive psychology by Seligman, Csikszentmihlayi, and others. This shifts the task from downloading bits into little heads, to assisting in a process of cognitive mapping of the world in which the students exist. Naturally maps have content but what makes a map useful is not the data points, but the proper depiction of the relationships between data points according the goals of the end users of the map. Thus there is maintained a proper respect for the data (subjects) but the emphasis is shifted towards the relationships that are meaningful for making sense of that data.
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Enjoy,
Don Berg
Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Free E-book: The Attitude Problem in Education
As I look back at my own years in school, my best teachers were those who understood this concept and were able to pull out from me, creatively, with patience, and caring guidance, my own inner ability to formulate an opinion on something or to reach a conclusion based on a series of accumulated "facts." They did not (the best ones, anyway) assume that "things" were the substance of education, but that the person was, and developing a full person is the real purpose of education.
Thank you Thomas for your usual insight!
Unless you're on a quiz show...does it matter what date Lincoln was shot? The more relevant piece of learning, is what did Lincoln stand for...and why? Teaching to the understanding of the issue, is far greater than teaching to tests, as is the current process. One teacher told me, our population of kids, often change schools before the end of the semester...we aren't even testing the same kids who started. What relevancy do those test stats have? So, many factors in an archaic school system.
Please continue sharing this wonderful perspective! I hope one day, our focus within education can truly focus on the growth of the whole person!
Yes, I have been saying something similar for years. Our current education system prepares our children for employment, and to be a valuable employee, one must be masterful at knowing and managing "things." It is no wonder that many in leadership and management positions treat others with a lack of human courtesy, respect or understanding.
I especially loved this part:
"There are many items we assume can't be taught that will simply fade away if we don't teach them: manners, civility, good language, mature love, good art, self-awareness and reflection, intelligent reading, responsible travel, care of one's home and belongings, a sense of the beautiful, intelligent spirituality and empathy for our fellow citizens on the planet. This is a small part of a much longer list."
Those are things that come with being guided by a refined soul, and there are very few of them walking this planet. Moreover, guiding others to develop these practices, interests and traits is a monumental challenge; the capitalistic paradigm means that rewards are given to those who can be the most viscous and ruthless - as in dog eat dog.
There is a saying in many African languages that states something like, "people are not born human, they become human in community."
Yes, if we are to teach our children to be human, we must do that in community.
Great article. Thank you.