http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA664.htm
by
Alan
Hudson
I understand the discussion about the school curriculum to
be a battle about the relative importance of subject, object and process in
education.
Subject
or content is knowing stuff as a precondition for understanding and interpreting
the world; there's no substitute for it. An object-centred curriculum emphasises
a prescribed set of outcomes or behaviour, like learning to drive and passing a
driving a test, or unthinkingly following orders and knowing how to slit
someone's throat in combat. A process-based curriculum is about the growth of
the person[ality], now commonly taken to mean not becoming a responsible adult
but being massaged in the hand cream of positive strokes for
self-esteem.
In
the present social and educational environment, I am unashamedly and onesidely
for content. Arguments that suggest we still get the 'content' when 'process'
and 'object' are privileged are mealy-mouthed and wrong.
Take
the example of citizenship classes. Citizenship is not a subject at all, and has
no place on an education curriculum. The aim of such classes is not knowledge
and understanding of human societies - rather, it is to produce a conformist
behavioural outcome (object) celebrated by both the teacher-as-counsellor and
pupil-as-counselled as empowerment (process). On the other hand, a proper
consideration of subject - let's say Aristotle's argument that humanity is
pre-eminently a political animal - allows for a consideration of process as
mature and critical reflection and at the moment I'm not worried about object.
But suffice it to say, you might get a politics of keen debate and
conflict.
Studying
a subject, or body of knowledge, is a good thing in itself and perhaps requires
no other justification than the satisfaction that comes from strenuous activity,
rigour and truth-seeking. But to abandon subjects does not just wipe the slate
clean with the possibility of alternative lifestyles, pursuits and pleasures
lining up to divert us. It is also dangerous.
Albert
Einstein once asked himself the question: 'How did the West come to the idea of
scientific discovery?' He answered himself: 'Development of Western Science is
based on two great achievements - the invention of the formal logical system (in
Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the
possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during
the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese
sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries
were made at all.' (1)
So
why do we want to give these incredible and difficult achievements up? Let's
remind ourselves here that the UK government's response
to a fall off of 21 per cent in the take up of A-level maths was the proposal to
make the course easier! The integrity and pursuit of knowledge can only
be maintained through the discipline of subject enquiry, and it's
difficult.
Let
me give another example - not because of its historical authority, not even just
because of the celebration of knowledge, but because knowledge, potentially,
makes the world a better place and because the downgrading of the struggle for
knowledge is reactionary. Many of us are familiar with Kant's response to his
own question 'What is Enlightenment?' It is 'Dare to know'. Let's instead
consider perhaps an even more provocative statement, from Diderot's editorial to
L' Encyclopedie: 'All things must be
examined, all must be winnowed and sifted without
exception.'
There
are no pre-determined outcomes and knowledge is no respecter of any prejudices
or individual sensibilities. I think Diderot would hold that this was just as
much a precondition of human freedom as his assertion that 'man will not be free
until the last priest has been hanged with the entrails of the last
aristocrat'.
Unless we know things and follow Diderot's advice, society will regress
Many
democrats and critics of the 'skills revolution' in education assume that it is
merely a way of justifying an inferior education for most of the general
population. They have a point, but this underestimates the corrosion of
subject-based education throughout the system.
I am struck by the lack of content in many Masters courses, particularly MBAs.
Such courses will often emphasise sections of the programme such as 'Leadership
skills', which amount to a bit of cod psychology, and the celebration of 'people
skills', which endorse the process of personal manipulation for the object of
company or individual success.
In
one sense there is nothing new here. Degrees, or rather participation in elite
institutions such as Oxbridge, have always provided the cultural capital or
'right stuff' to get on in politics and business. What's new is the restriction
of the credential to the technique of manipulation rather than the sense of what
it's for. In the past, Thucydides's account of the Athenian destruction of Melos
was read by men with the esprit de
corps of an imperial mission. The same elite were convinced by Machiavelli
of the need for public duty. If these two authors are read at all now it would
be on how to spin the Iraq intervention in the forlorn hope of inspiring fear in
the enemy and love in the consuming voter.
The
most amazing feature in the curriculum wars is that even when the research of
those institutions charged with promoting the 'learning skills' agenda
demonstrates that there is no learning skill independent of the subject under
scrutiny, there is no respite in the policy assault on subject knowledge. The
Oxford Institute for the Advancement of University Learning says: 'Attempting to
follow note-taking guidance independently of the purpose of the lecture will
inevitably lead to inappropriate study behaviour.' (2)
Indeed.
In a powerful piece of research into undergraduate learning conducted at
Harvard, William G Perry Jr concludes that the most important moment in the
development of an undergraduate is to do with content, not process or object.
For some undergraduates it never comes and for others it is never resolved. It
is the moment of realisation that the professor does not know everything. Some
undergraduates pretend that this is not the case and continue to learn material
to reproduce as objects and outcomes to achieve the credential. Some others
conclude that since there is not a complete and single answer, then any answer
is as good as any other. And yet others take the responsibility, and maybe a
lesson from the habits of their professor, to search out the best possible
answer to a given problem within their field and scope of enquiry. They learn to
classify, compare, establish connections, analyse, modify and develop a body of
subject knowledge. They learn to think rigorously about
something.
A
simple point in conclusion that I hope has been apparent from my remarks. The
contention that knowledge is changing so fast that we don't need to learn
anything is stupid. I'm sitting in front of my computer screen using a complex
piece of equipment as a word processor enabled to do so by a programme
designer's expertise, but the physics of this is and should be accessible to me.
I may be able to function in this world because experience and common sense tell
me I will fall if I jump off a high building. But only knowledge of Newton's
Laws of Motion and more sophisticatedly the Laws of Thermodynamics would give me
the equipment to counter gravity and fly. With one bound he was
free.
Unless
we know things and, following Diderot's advice on challenging and sifting
without exception, impart the spirit of critical scrutiny to every new
generation, society will regress both technically and socially. There will be no
innovation if there is a restricted attitude to subject enquiry. There will be
no sense of social engagement if the pursuit of knowledge is not at the cutting
edge of education for all.
For
me, there is nothing more irritating in the debate over the curriculum than the
presumption that the discovery that education is about skills training and
self-esteem is progressive and democratic, and that knowledge of Euclidean
geometry and scientific experimentation is redundant and elitist. Dare to know
is still, as it was at the time of Kant, the watchword of human progress. As far
as I'm concerned, I am with Kant and Diderot, and the Department for Education
and Skills is with the priests and the aristocrats.
Alan
Hudson
is director of studies in social and political science at the Oxford University
Department for Continuing Education.
Read
on:
spiked-issue:
Education
(1)
Quoted in Cleopatra's Nose, Essays on the
Unexpected, Daniel J Boorstin (1995), New York: Vintage Books,
p3
(2)
'What are Study Skills?' illuminatio, from the Institute for the Advancement of
University Learning, spring 204, p2
What
is spiked?
spiked
is an online publication with the modest ambition of making history as well as
reporting it. spiked stands for
liberty, enlightenment, experimentation and excellence.
Read
on...
Corrections
Terms
& Conditions
spiked,
Signet House, 49-51 Farringdon Road, London, EC1M 3JP
Email:
info@spiked-online.com
©
spiked 2000-2004 All rights reserved.
spiked is not responsible for the content of any third-party websites.