Sections:
I. Introduction
II. Responsibilities of educators to change Habits of Mind
III. The Habits of Mind
IV. Risks Involved in changing minds
V. Ethical Implications: Problems
A. Do no harm - no unnecessary and avoidable harms
B. Paternalism
C. Whose Benefit
D. Tolerance
E. Focus: learner or content
VI. Conclusion: Responsibility with
Sensitivity
Not only is it ethically or
morally appropriate and correct to address and seek to remediate Habits
of Mind but it is also a fundamental responsibility of professional
educators to do so.
I. Introduction
If it is the case that educators must avoid causing harm to others then
there are two major concerns with regard to causing harm and thus concern
for the morality of practicing education. The first concern is with
education itself as being an "invasive" enterprise and one that causes
harm-intellectual discomfort or distress- to the learner, if only to produce some other more positive result,
such as a
mind that is "educated" and capable of learning.
The second concern is with harms that might be produced when educators
conduct the pedagogic experiments that they must do in order to advance
the profession and continue improvement of the efficacy of instruction.
This later concern is the subject of the next chapter in this work.
In this chapter we take up the issue that education itself may be seen by
some people, learners and their parents, as causing harm
to learners when education is seen as causing changes in the minds of
students and some of those changes are perceived as doing just that:
causing harm by upsetting learners and their families and friends. In fact, some view the challenging of the beliefs of
students as being unacceptable educational practice precisely because of
claims and protests that beliefs are to be held as sacrosanct domains to
be held aside from the province of educators as challenges to beliefs
often cause upset and even worse in the learners when cherished beliefs
and feelings of esteem might be disturbed.
This chapter presents the case that education is essentially involved with
addressing, challenging and changing the minds of learners.
Genuine educational process must alter the mindsets (the beliefs and the
systems of beliefs) and Habits of Minds of learners (the manner
in which beliefs and information is obtained, organized and evaluated) if
there is to be an increase of their intellectual capital to benefit both
the individual learner and the more general society. In so doing, educators
while fulfilling their professional responsibilities to learners and
society must be aware of the possible harms involved in such challenges
and must protect learners from whatever harm is foreseeable, avoidable and
unnecessary.
It is the case following from the
professional duties of educators that not only is it ethically or
morally appropriate and correct to address and seek to remediate Habits
of Mind but it is also a fundamental responsibility of professional
educators to do so.
The most significant ethical issues with regard to
education arise from the very nature of the act of educating someone.
Beyond that, the most significant issues arise from the social role that
the institution of education is to serve. These matters will be the topic of
this chapter
which will deal with the ethics of education and matters associated with
changing Habits of Mind.
Serving the requests of clients :Tolerance
While tolerance is promoted as a value in a
pluralistic society to what degree, if any, should educators be tolerant
of sets of beliefs and Habits of Mind that establish those beliefs?
All students as learners, beginning with the very young, hold beliefs that
are in conflict with one another and with empirical evidence. Is
education to remediate that situation? If students object claiming
that they have a right to their beliefs is such a claim to be recognized
and accepted by educators? Must educators be tolerant of beliefs and
Habits of Mind that present threats to individuals and to society itself?
Obligations to others beyond the client and to
society :Whose benefit?
There are times when dealing with
learners that questions arise as to the appropriateness or acceptability
of a program of instruction or a lesson or a mode of instruction and
those questions result from there not being a clear indication of what
benefit there is to the learner. Whose benefit is being produced?
Is it that of the individual learner, that of society itself, or both at once? How is it
that the educator handles the conflict between serving the interests of
society in having education support the increase in human intellectual
capital to be shared by all in society and serving the interests of the
individual learner in increasing the individual's abilities to grow and
to occupy a certain desirable position in the social order, principally
through some vocation?
II. Responsibilities
of educators to change Habits of Mind
Learners will at
times claim that they have a right to their opinions and beliefs and that
they have the
right to go on believing what they believe despite what the instructor
is teaching including evidence to the contrary of the learner's
positions. This claim is often made with regard to religious
beliefs but it carries over to any belief, even those beliefs concerning claims
relating to the physical states of affairs: empirical claims. Too
many learners believe and hope that associating any belief that is
either highly valued and/or closely held with religion will afford them the
opportunity to escape reflection upon and criticism of their beliefs by
tossing what they hope will be a cloak of immunity over those most
basic beliefs with which they
identify and which identify them to others. Such beliefs may
provide them with comfort and consolation or at least the stability of
the familiar and thus function
to stave off what the learners perceive as a number of undesirable
consequences. Such claims of immunity are sometimes made in the name
not of "religious" beliefs but for "personal beliefs as well.
"You have no right
to challenge my beliefs!"
"I have a right to
believe what I want to believe!"
"These are my
personal beliefs and I am entitled to the right to hold them without
being examined or criticized."
Unfortunately,
there are educators who think that to some extent the learner is correct
and that the educator has no right to be addressing, challenging and
seeking to change beliefs that are
claimed by the learner to be either highly valued and /or core or foundational
beliefs. While this concession to the claim of immunity may
be fairly wide spread, it is deplorable as it is in effect a denial of
some of the most important goals of education. A mind that is
unchanged by a single or program of educational experiences is a
mind that has not been educated. An unchanged mind is not an
educated mind. If educators make no change in a learner's mind
through a course of instruction where has there been any learning?
To educate is to lead out of a mind what it is capable of doing.
This is to change that mind, to make it grow.
The whole object of
education is...to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that
works. -Sherwood Anderson
In addition to the
actual beliefs there are the Habits of Mind with which the beliefs are
settled into the mindsets of individuals. The Habits of Minds of learners
are the systems of beliefs and the manner in which beliefs and information
is obtained, organized and evaluated. There are some, even
within education, who may think that there are limits to addressing let
alone attempting to change a Habit of Mind as it includes
some fundamental beliefs and some of them are related to religious
beliefs. While this may be a fairly common idea it
is nonetheless mistaken as to what education has been and
is and will continue to be all about. It is an idea that is itself a
product of a relativistic mindset that holds for no manner in which
basic Habits of Mind can be or should be legitimately compared let alone
evaluated.
If students are permitted to maintain beliefs, especially inconsistent and
contradictory beliefs and beliefs concerning empirical claims that have
been refuted or disproved by evidence, and to maintain them without
challenge and without serious attempts to have them think reflectively
and critically about those beliefs and to think about the Habit of Mind that had them
accept and order and hold those beliefs, well then granting that
permission would constitute a formal failure on the part of
educators. Such educators may be
motivated by one of several concerns but they are failing their students
nonetheless. Educators who fail to encourage and promote and
support the examination of beliefs for fear of being subjected to
criticism by organized groups of ideologues, dogmatists, or
fundamentalists of any order are guilty of a failure to fulfill their
professional responsibility as educators.
Those who teach science and grant permission for their learners to
regard science as being a belief system akin to any other and akin to
religion in particular also fail in their professional responsibility to
advance their academic discipline. Such educators undermine
understanding of, respect for and valuation of science.
" I tell them
that I don't care what you believe; all I care about is what you answer
on the exams."
Educators who accept
the claims of immunity or allow the learners to believe whatever they
wish to believe as long as they memorize and offer back the "official"
correct answers on exams and other forms of
assessment are in a very fundamental manner failing in their
professional responsibilities as educators to engage the minds of their
learners in an examination of and alteration of the basic Habits of Mind through which their beliefs systems are
created and maintained. Educators who remain shy and retire
from direct engagements with the actual belief systems and the Habits of
Mind of their learners are not developing the critical thinking
skills and the reasoning abilities of their learners. They are not
encouraging of reflective thought and the need for and methods of
reviewing ideas and beliefs to determine the accuracy of empirical
claims and the value of non-cognitive claims.
"In my class I
teach science. I tell them to keep their other beliefs out of this
class."
Education is about
challenging and changing minds. Education is at its most basic level about addressing
and changing Habits of Mind. Educators must move or change a mind
from habits and conditions which close it off and which prevent
its growth. Educators teach subject matter and
information but even more so they attempt to inculcate the skills of
acquiring information and knowledge and of organizing such in the most
effective manner for humans to address problems and to question, set and
accomplish their goals. The challenging of the received view, of the facile,
of that which appears directly, of the simplistic
notions and the uncritical attitude is an essential part of what
genuine education is about. Education is about opening minds and having
them grow through careful and critical thought about experience.
Education is about the active pursuit of thought. Education
functions well when it fosters inquiry that leads to continual growth.
Education does this for people of all ages.
If at whatever period we choose
to take a person, he is still in the process of growth, then education
is not, save as a by product, a preparation for something coming
later. Getting from the present the degree and kind of growth there
is in it is education. --John Dewey, Reconstruction in
Philosophy, 1920, Boston: Beacon Press, 1952,p. 184-185.
Minds that work too impulsively and
reflexively are
close to minds that do not work at all as they respond at the lowest
levels at which humans think. Education is about developing
or the drawing out of a complexity of operation that the mind is capable
of and through which achieves its finest productions. Education
succeeds when the learner inculcates that process of inquiry that
fosters intellectual growth.
The object of
teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.
-Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
For too many people
education has not succeeded well at all. It has been reported in
studies indicating the underpreparedness of students for college work
and we have too often seen people
who have proceeded through several levels of formal education and yet
they are possessed
of incorrect information, deficiencies in intellectual skill and
debilitating Habits of Mind. One of the important aims of
education is to address those conditions and to remediate them. In so
saying it is clear that the aim of education is to change the manner in
which minds operate and the contents of minds. Habits of Mind
that close off a mind to inquiry and provide for false notions of
certainty are the nemesis of education and a threat to social well being
and advance.
There are
students/learners who enter college believing that:
-
heavier things fall faster than
lighter things because they are heavier
-
the sun rises and sets
-
only cold environs or exposure to drafts
cause colds
-
humans lived at the same time as
dinosaurs
-
the earth and universe have existed
for just over 6,000 years
-
events associated with a house in
Amityville in the movie, the “Amityville Horror”, are true because
they were described in a movie or book
-
members of one group of people are
naturally inferior/superior to others
-
if a person believes that X exists
then X does exist
-
if a person thinks that a
proposition or claim is true then the claim is true
-
all opinions on all subjects are of
equal value
-
the shape of planet earth can be
flat and spherical at the same time
-
evolutionary theory and creationist
theory are equally acceptable and effective explanations of life forms
on planet earth
-
a person is entitled to believe that
any claim or proposition P may be held to be true until someone else can prove that claim P is not true
using an empirical-logical method that is avoided in the initial holding and asserting of
the claim P and not even then must a person surrender belief that
claim P is true
-
there is no problem in holding
beliefs that are contradictory to one another
For the rational
mind educated in logic and science none of the above claims are true.
Education needs to address the believing in or holding of such claims
and, even more importantly and most essentially, education must be
involved with altering the method of thinking that leads a person to hold
false claims to be
true. Effective pedagogy seeks to identify such ideas that are empirical
claims or logical claims as may be false but that are
still held in the mind as being true and then educators proceed to correct them and to correct or change the method
of thought that lead to those empirical or logical claims being held as true. Education as a
process has a multiplicity of desired outcomes but the one most highly
valued for its utility for learner and society alike is Truth.
Falsehoods may serve short term interests but that perspective is itself
born of ignorance and needs to be remedied by the same process of
education that distinguishes those modalities of thought through which
and in which the false is detected and the true is approached.
There are people
possessed of such beliefs who may not like being challenged to confront
their ideas and beliefs that may be false or unsubstantiated and to
examine their Habits of Mind that may not be beneficial to them and/or to
the human community. Some learners may feel threatened and may
insist on their right to continue to hold their beliefs. Some
beliefs may be closely held because they provide comfort and protection from
the anxiety that results from seriously examining a set of truths
about the physical world and human life that produces a sort of
existential terror. Beliefs can and do provide a sense of order
for the human in the midst of an otherwise harsh and chaotic universe,
as well as
provide identification with something greater than the individual,
and a sense of belonging with others. Beliefs can operate to stave off
and keep such fear and terror of having no such coping mechanisms
available at bay and thus the prospect of critically reviewing such beliefs creates the
possibility of having to face the world without the familiar compass and
measures and meanings. To avoid such a prospect those who have
fundamental beliefs challenged will often respond with an experience
of a heightened need to maintain faith and remain loyal to the
beliefs and to those who hold them. Those who would criticize
fundamental beliefs that are part of or constitute entire worldviews will
be seen as the deviant other who must be resisted and even fought
off. Thus, will come the claims from learners that educators "have
no right" to do anything that might cause them some disruption in their
thought process and beliefs. The closed minded and obstinate believer is
often the person acting out of a real fear of being left to cope with
reality and the disquietudes of human existence without the familiar
beliefs that provide the becalming salve of certitudes. Theirs is
the fear that to enter into a critical consideration of belief would
threaten a
disintegration of the edifice of belief that is itself believed to be
the only viable remedy thus thought of as irreplaceable by any other set of beliefs erected by
any other Habit of Mind other than that which they have been
acculturated into assimilating and with which they think.
Confronted by
educators with counter claims and evidence to the contrary of closely
held beliefs and with demonstrations of the inconsistencies,
contradictions and inadequacies in sets of beliefs and the problems and
disadvantages of some Habits of Mind as opposed to others, some learners
experience real fright for they know no alternative to what has been
given previously and have been their basic conceptual frameworks and worldviews.
Further there is as well for some the real sense that they are being
tempted to become "disloyal" to what they have held for so long and
to those who have shared those beliefs with them. There is what
might be termed a "cultural
anxiety" that to reflect on their most common and basic beliefs and to accept challenges to
those beliefs would constitute a threat for it would tempt them "betray" a faith in
their worldview and that would be to fail to uphold the standards of the
worldviews with which they were raised. This acculturation process
that sets out the Habit of Mind used to set beliefs would include the
belief that a blind allegiance to or steadfast defense of those basic
beliefs and worldviews in the
face of any and all opposition or challenge is owed to those who share
them. And so the defense
will be made and the claim asserted and repeated and reinforced that the
educator "has no right" to be do anything that disturbs the belief
systems and the Habits of Mind that have created and maintained those
most basic and closely held beliefs, whatever their content.
People may hold their beliefs
to be immune to challenges from strangers and leaders of faith based
associations may hold their beliefs immune from the critical examination
of their members but such immunity is not the case in the relationship
of a learner with an educator. But there is
no such right to be held as immune to challenges to beliefs and Habits
of Mind where the relationship of the educator to the learner is
concerned and there is instead the obligation of educators to assist
learners to confront their false beliefs and belief systems and their
method for fixing beliefs in order to change them and have learners
develop more productive methodologies resulting in a more accurate understanding of
how things are and how knowledge of such matters is obtained and how
such claims are evaluated. This would include claims that are empirical
as well as claims with relation to interpretations of texts and
situations. If it is the obligation of educators to teach and thus
to provide the methods for determining truth, then should the
learner be possessed of any impediments to the learning the educator is
obliged to effectively address and remedy that situation by removing or
surmounting the obstructions to learning and to developing the
methodologies for distinguishing truth from falsehood.
The things taught in colleges and schools
are not an education, but the means of education. - Ralph Waldo
Emerson .
No learner who comes to a
professional educator has a mind that is tabula rasa.
Minds come to educators filled with a great many things and even the
youngets of minds arrives as
tabula congesta. The task of educators is to have the
learner examine the content of the mind and the methods
for acquiring ideas and fixing beliefs. The experiences and information and mental
habituation of learners need to be engaged by the instructor in a
manner whereby learners can become more aware of the contents of their own minds through reflection. Educators guide that reflective examination so that it
is productive of critical and effective discernment especially distinguishing of the true from the
false. That there are false
beliefs is evident in the listing previously given. That there are
methods for distinguishing the true from the false is but a part of what
education seeks to bring into the awareness of learners. Educators
at whatever level aim to engage learners in taking on the methods by
which educators have come to make distinctions and to develop in
learners the intellectual abilities to acquire not simply information
such as what is known to be true and what is known not to be true
but to mature in the intellectual skills with which to discriminate what is
true from what is not true and to be able to effectively represent this
in a manner possessed of some refinement.
Education: Being able to differentiate
between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to
find out what you need to know; and it's knowing how to use the
information once you get it. - William Feather
Education is at its
core all about changing minds. The core of a curriculum at the level of
higher education is the most general education that people can receive.
This is in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. This is what General
Education is about. It is not about training. Training
involves the deliberate shaping of minds in order to fit the thought and/or
behavior of individuals into some set manner of relating to their
environment and their fellow humans in some common enterprise.
Education is all about learning how to adapt and to grow and thus to
change. Education is about growth as presented by John Dewey.
If at whatever period we choose to take a person, he is still
in the process of growth, then education is not, save as a by product, a
preparation for something coming later. Getting from the present the
degree and kind of growth there is in it is education.
--John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1952,p. 184-185.
Growth requires minds that are open to growth and thus to development
and change. Education is about fostering Habits of Mind that are
not settled with fixed notions and resistant to a continuing process of
inquiry that invites reexamination of settled opinions and beliefs and
is open to the possibility of the need to change beliefs in the light of
new information and changing circumstances.
Societies create
institutions to provide for many things necessary for their maintenance
and progress. Among those institutions is
education offered in order to increase human intellectual
capital. This means educational institutions and programs produce
humans with knowledge and skills and shared values that is not only of
benefit to the individual but also is of benefit to
society as it provides for social cohesion and progress.
I believe that education is the
fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which
rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or
upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and
futile.... But through education society can formulate its own
purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape
itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it
wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and
intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience. --John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed, 1897
When the identity of the moral
process with the processes of specific growth is realized, the more
conscious and formal education of childhood will be seen to be the most
economical and efficient means of social advance and reorganization, and
it will also be evident that the test of all the institutions of adult
life is their effect in furthering continuing education. --John
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1952,p. 186.
What is of benefit to society is of benefit for the
individuals within it assisting them to realize what they are capable of
being, having and doing. What is of benefit to individuals through
education is of benefit to society as well. There are no
individuals as human individuals without society since incorporated in
those characteristics that define homo sapiens is a set of properties, skills and
features that are the products of a social life: being with other humans. Humans
are as Aristotle phrased it zoon politikon, social animals. Of course without individuals there is no
human society.
The goal of society is the development of its members. Society
provides for the movement of the nascent mammal, the human infant with
potentiality for rationality into the conditions within which the
individual can realize in an ongoing manner the freedom and support for
the realization of that potential growth.
Government, business, art,
religion, all social institutions have a meaning, a purpose. That
purpose is to set free and to develop the capacities of human
individuals without respect to race, sex, class, or economic status.
And this is all one with saying that the test of their value is the
extent to which they educate every individual into the full stature of
his possibility. --John Dewey, Reconstruction in
Philosophy, 1920, Boston: Beacon Press, 1952,p. 186.
These benefits are
particularly realized at the level of higher education through the study
of the liberal arts and sciences more than through the training programs
that prepare people for occupations. Individuals on their own may
be
inclined to look to the institution of education to derive a personal
benefit: an instrumental and self centered benefit rather than to obtain
a portion of the public benefit, the public good serving the public
interest.
Education provides a
structure for changing the lives of people. Education does this through
a process that can, does and should change the lives of people. Education changes lives by changing minds, by changing
the contents of minds and the manner in which minds operate. It changes
ideas and beliefs and the methods for fixing beliefs. Education changes
Habits of Mind.
Professional
educators have a responsibility to do what they do in producing minds
capable of continual growth as that which they owe to
those they teach through an explicit relationship and often a formal
contractual obligation. More importantly professional educators have
responsibilities to those they instruct that arise from sources other
than their direct relationship with the learner and that extend beyond
the period of instruction. Educators are not simply providing a
service for the consumers of instruction. Professional educators,
particularly in higher education, have a responsibility to their
academic professions and to society to produce changed minds that
continue to change as they grow. They owe it to society to increase
human intellectual capital: one of the aims of education. They owe
it to their academic and pedagogic professions to transmit their knowledge and to develop the
skills of acquiring such knowledge and skills as are possessed by
members of the professions for the continuation of the profession itself.
Society creates and
sustains the institution of education for a purpose. That purpose is
rather pragmatic. Society needs members who are capable of living
peacefully with one another, supporting the common good and in joining
together for common purpose and for contributing to the general
advancement of society. None of this is possible without education.
The heart of the sociality of
man is in education. --John Dewey,
Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920, Boston: Beacon Press,
1952,p. 185.
Education is about
preparing people for life the most important and essential aspect of
that life is that it is typically lived with others: a social life. It is not simply preparing people to occupy a very limited and
well defined location in a community of believers and a community of
employees or to occupy a position in the economic order. Education is
not simply about preparing people for entering into a vocation or the
labor market. It is about assisting people to learn how to learn and how
to reflect and criticize and enter into the exploration of the wider
range of experiences in order to derive a greater amount of the
potential of those experiences offered. Education is not
about the transfer of information and the development of some limited
set of skills.
Acquisition of skill,
possession of knowledge, attainment of culture are not ends: they are
marks of growth and means to its continuing. --John Dewey,
Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1952,p. 185.
Education in the
liberal arts and sciences is about examining, developing and changing
mindsets (the beliefs and the systems of beliefs) and Habits of Mind. (
the manner in which beliefs and information is obtained, organized and
evaluated). It is about moving people from a closed to an open
mental posture that will enable continued growth, more efficacious
thinking and an expansion in the range of human experience and
particularly of that which
is valued. Rationality and the need for evidence and supporting
reasons are common to the disciplines of science and the liberal arts.
The natural and social sciences are founded upon a reasoning process and
Habit of Mind that advances knowledge and criticizes claims of
knowledge. Teaching science effectively is not possible without
every effort to develop the rational mindset and Habit of Mind. To
teach History or Philosophy also requires the inculcation of reasoning
as a Habit of Mind, and so it is likewise with Literature and the Arts. The aims of any General Education
program, once enunciated, are the litany of the components of what has
been described herein as the rational Habit of Mind.
The things taught in colleges and schools
are not an education, but the means of education. - Ralph Waldo
Emerson .
Education is a
basic activity of every human society and every human group. It is that
process through which humans
develop the modes of experience that most typify the species. It is the
process through which humans develop their abilities to have experiences
that are most typically those of humans. Education occurs in both
formal and informal manners. Parents, siblings and extended family,
friends and neighbors provide for informal education as they instruct
others in language and behavior. Human offspring left alone without any
contacts with other humans who will interact with and thus, at least
minimally, educate that child , will not display the characteristics
that most distinguish the human species from others.
Children who are not provided with formal education, private or public,
can not enter into those aspects of common life that most typify
the level of achievement of a society as is evidenced in the arts and
sciences. Where formal
schooling carries the aim of technical skill development and vocational
training there may appear to be less a need for the mental skills set of
the rational mind but that is a conclusion drawn by considering the
human only as an employee and technician and not in the fullness of the
human experience which extends far beyond the workplace. Given that humans are homo faber
and that technology marks all human societies and that the technological
advance is as much a sign of humanness as are the products of
technology there is a need for humans to keep pace with
technological development. As to the "newness" of technology
and to the rate of change, A.N. Whitehead has observed that the twentieth
century would be noted for the dramatic increase in the very rate of
change itself. In the scope of all
human history the twentieth century was marked more by the dramatic change in the
rate of change than by any single development in technology. Thus
even in technical programs there is the need to have the
learner be a learner and thus one who has learned how to learn, as Harry
Harlow would express it, as technologies will continue to advance and
with that a cycle of creation and expiration. The world of humans
will not remain fixed in any way for very long. There is a will be
a need for its members to learn how to acquire knowledge and skills
needed to advance and grow along with the developments that will
surround them. Thus to be capable of and practitioner of the
sort of thinking that will best serve any human whether in the job
setting or not will be the mind that has acquired the Habits of Mind
that can keep abreast of change and make contributions to it.
Educators have a
fiduciary responsibility towards those whom they teach to not only do them
no harm but also, and most fundamental to the relationship of teacher to
learner, to assist the learner who benefits through the
acquisition of information, knowledge and intellectual skills.
Accredited educational
institutions have a fiduciary responsibility to provide to those that
attend them to gain benefits through
the acquisition of information, knowledge and intellectual skills.
Each educational
institution has as part of that basic responsibility to hire and retain and further develop educators who
are able to fulfill their responsibilities to educate and thus to most effectively
address the task of developing the basic intellectual skills of their
students.
Learners and their parents place trust
in educational institutions and in individual members of the profession
to fulfill these fiduciary responsibilities. So it is that both educational institutions and
their instructional staff need to protect and advance the interests of the
learners and in so doing to make the best judgment about what is in the
interest of learners. Such judgments are reviewed by others as a check against excess, insufficiencies, prejudices and
ineffectiveness. The performance of instructors is reviewed by
their peers and by others in their professions-both the
profession of academician and the profession of educator. The
performance of
institutions, as evidenced by their programs, curricula, courses and
rates of success, is in turn reviewed by institutions of the state in the form
of accreditation agencies.
There is at times a tension between the faculty
of educational institutions and the general society with regard to what learners need to know and be able to do. The faculty have ideas about educating students for
their growth in information and skills and for teaching them how to
continue that growth, continue to learn and to question and challenge
and reflect and reason and create. Society has an interest in
meeting immediate needs and is inclined to emphasize what is thought to
be most needed at the present. As such, society represents in its demands
of the educational institution what is popular and of the moment, what is
fashionable in thought and in behavior. Society in its demands
tends to be conservative as it presses for a conservation of the past
order. Faculty tend to be viewed as being liberal or having a
liberal slant as they demand thought from their students that will lead
to change within the learners and within society. The
priority for the faculty, particularly in the Arts and Sciences, is for
education first and training second while that of society is often the
reverse: wanting training at the expense of the cultivation of
that which would transform it.
Accreditation agencies serve to
moderate the tension: they insist that certain criteria be met for
accreditation and such criteria change over time reflecting the
changing values in society. Faculty assert what they think
necessary to continue to educate and to educate in the sense of the
liberal arts and sciences for the growth of individuals as well as for
the benefit to society. Accrediting agencies may insist on
assessment of all classes to insure their quality for producing
graduates with certain well defined skills sets and quantities of
information while faculty would prefer that there be no standardization of
instruction and curricula allowing for them to develop the intellectual
skills needed for the production of new knowledge and arts and for
social reforms and changes in the priorities assigned to commonly held
values.
Education is about much more than
simply training people to take a place in society as capable employees
and contributors to society. It is more about teaching people how to
think and how to solve problems and make changes as are needed, even
unto changing society itself. It is about teaching people how
to think and how to learn and as such the foundation of the academic enterprise is suffused with
reasoning, the value of reasoning and the hope that reasoning will be
accepted as the corrective to much that is wrong with other forms of thinking.
The Habits of Mind that have embraced forms of certainty that are
closed to further inquiry and that have proven to be wanting are to be
challenged and replaced by that which is more worthy of trust based on
actual experience and proven to have actually supported the progress of human
society in more effective dealings with the physical and social
environments that in turn has produced improvements in human welfare.
Educators can not allow learners who
refuse to embrace rationality itself to go unchallenged. They must
have their learners reflect critically on the the
effectiveness of the learners’ beliefs about making judgments and about
formulating and maintaining their beliefs. Learners who want to remain
unchanged do not want to learn. If the learners refuse to enter into
the community of informed, critical and rational thinkers, i.e. the
educated community, and the more general community of rational
discourse amongst members of the human species planet-wide, there is no
obligation to accept that refusal to learn and the refusal to have an
open mind and the refusal to grow and to make or allow changes to one's
mind. There is no duty on the part of the educator to respect the claim
of the student that there is
no need to reason nor to change fundamental beliefs about how claims of
knowledge are to be analyzed, criticized and reviewed. Instead,
there is a duty to disrespect and reject that claim. Indeed, education is about overcoming obstacles
constituted by such student refusals to accomplish the
most basic goals of education.
While learners might embrace their
familiar beliefs and wish to maintain them if only to spare themselves the
labor of conducting critical reviews of beliefs and/or the work of
overcoming the anxiety concerning the unknown when their beliefs are challenged and the need to reform them or surrender them is
realized. Many learners might be quite content to be left
with the simple mind as long as it is trained well enough to maintain a successful
vocation. Nonetheless it is the responsibility of educators to
persist in challenging learners to continue their own intellectual development
and with truth in the face of false beliefs in the interest of all of
society and in the long term interests of the human community that
sustains itself through continual growth.
Challenging learners to confront their
beliefs and their habits of formulating beliefs and organizing them and
maintaining them is the exercise of the duty of educators to teach.
Education assists individuals to fulfill their own moral
responsibilities in as much as beliefs should not be held without
sufficient warrant or justification. Such justification is a social
act as individuals are responsible to their communities to hold beliefs
that are based on truth and supported by both evidence and reasoning. The moral foundation for promoting the
use of reason in drawing conclusions is argued in The Ethics of Belief
(1877) ( Originally published in Contemporary Review,1877)
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html
wherein William K. Clifford concludes that :
We may believe what goes beyond our
experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the
assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.
We may believe the statement of another
person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the
matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as
he knows it.
It is wrong in all cases to believe on
insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to
investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.
The argument made by Clifford and
others is that humans are best served when they do not hold beliefs that
are not supported by evidence and reasoning. Humans must base
their beliefs only on what has been observed, tested and proven
and for those beliefs about the future that are beyond our knowledge
they must be based upon what they have actually observed and have
evidence to support, what can reasonably be expected to follow consistently from that
evidence. Humans are justified in reaching conclusions about
the future that they do not and can not know when those
conclusions are based on what is known based on experience and confirmed
evidence and warranted assumptions such as that similar things under
similar circumstances will behave in similar ways. This
ethical directive is based on the idea that humans must not accept as true what is
stated or
claimed by others without good reasons to accept those reports as being
worthy of trust as established by prior evidence. Finally, it is
wrong for humans to believe anything without sufficient evidence for that
belief especially where there are good reasons to doubt and reasons that
warrant further
investigations be conducted. Clifford, the first to advocate for
the rational habit of mind on moral grounds, insisted that humans had ought to be
skeptical and careful until
evidence and reasoning establishes sufficient warrant for holding a
belief so that they may avoid the consequences to the well being of
themselves as individuals and to society born of acting on unwarranted
beliefs.
For explanations of the resistance of
learners to the changing of their Habit of Mind, their basic mindsets
and systems of beliefs, if only to conduct a critical examination of
them, there are a variety of factors to be considered. There is in
nearly all humans a desire for a stable and secure world and environment
in which to live. This includes the belief system with which the
world is experienced and ordered. There is the desire for a cosmos and
avoidance of chaos. The questioning of the tenacious-authoritarian
Habits of Mind and the relativistic Habit of Mind is seen as threatening
to the sense of comfort enjoyed by those possessed of such
mindsets. If critical examination and questioning and
consideration of alternatives and measuring or weighing of such is
perceived as potentially threatening to displace the familiar beliefs
there will be a resistance or refusal to do such thinking. If learners
think that they have no ready replacement for their familiar
beliefs that are capable of providing and preserving the essential
components of mental life that rest upon the previous belief systems,
then resistance to such efforts to encourage or even require serious
critical thinking is the likely result. There is fear of the
unknown and fear of having the known and familiar and the safe being
removed from the learner.
In resistance to examining ones own
Habits of Mind and belief systems in addition to fear of the unknown there is also the lack of motivation
to do so, as long as the current set of beliefs and Habits of Mind are
providing all that the thinker/learner wants or considers as valued or
relevant. If efforts to educate so as to develop the rational
Habit of Mind are not made evident as relevant or to be valued in some way,
learners are likely to resist, dismiss or minimize any effort to enter
into experiences that might cause a change in the basic Habit of Mind.
"What do I need to know this for?"
"What has this to do with me?"
"This is not needed for my major."
With little or no motivation to change
there is likely to be little effort to change. Changing a mindset or a
set of beliefs involves a good deal of mental effort or work and the
tendency to avoid doing what is not absolutely necessary and that
which involves great effort likely wins out over curiosity. When the changing
of a mindset involves some disturbance and emotional upset there is even
greater resistance to education. There is often the need for the
educator to persist through the resistance to bring about the greater
social or public good through increasing the human capital of the
individual learner. The lack of appreciation of both the educator and
the learner of the fundamental social
goal of the social institution of education can thwart the teaching and
the learning in as much as the relevance and value of the activity is in
doubt.
The right to believe
It is altogether another issue as to
whether people, and in particular the less well educated, less informed
and those of less intellectual capacity, have a "right to believe" at
least in those situations that present circumstances where decisions as
to what to believe are as described by William James (The Will to
Believe) , "living", "forced" and "momentous".
There is to be no advocacy by the
rational mind of any beliefs held without sufficient reason. Those
who have developed a rational mind will accept that there is a duty to
attend to the evidence and to hold those positions best defended by
reason and supported by evidence, at least by the preponderance of the
evidence. Error is to be avoided by a rational mind and rational
persons are to avoid positions not supported by the preponderance of the
evidence as they are the most likely to be in error or contain errors.
The "right to believe" is to be restricted to those circumstances
in which there is not such a preponderance of evidence and that present
circumstances where decisions as to what to believe are "living",
"forced" and "momentous". In such circumstance a
rational minded person is justified in accepting an "hypothesis which, if true ,
would offer a way, more or less probably effective, of safeguarding
those values , or if not, of anesthetizing him self more or less to
their loss." and further to believe that which would be a "source
of comfort, courage, and strength , and an inspiration to beneficence"
(C. J. Ducasse, A Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion (New York: Ronald Press, 1953,p.166) "provided that it is not in
conflict with our duty to attend to evidence and it cannot be in
conflict with that duty if the there is no preponderance of the evidence. "Causing, Perceiving and Believing: An Examination of the
Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. With Edward H. Madden. Dordrecht,
Holland: D. Reidel, 1975. p150.)
When there is not preponderance of the
evidence , a person may in some cases use powerful techniques of
suggestion which virtually preclude recognition of the relevance of any
future preponderance of counter evidence. Although, on the one
hand, philosophers are mistaken who suppose that belief without adequate
evidence almost invariably impairs our ability to attend to evidence, on
the other hand, philosophers are equally mistaken who suppose that it is
impossible or highly unlikely that belief induced when evidence
inadequate will seriously impair the ability to attend to future
evidence. All such generalizations about the benefits and dangers
of suggestion and hypnosis are questionable. Causing, Perceiving
and Believing: An Examination of the Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse.
With Edward H. Madden. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1975. p149.)
Some such as C. J. Ducasse
suggest that the "vast masses of mankind" possessed of lesser
intelligence might be afforded such a "right to believe" less they
suffer the consequences which suspension of judgment may have for them.
(Causing, Perceiving and Believing: An Examination of the
Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. With Edward H. Madden. Dordrecht,
Holland: D. Reidel, 1975. p153.)
For most of those receiving
formal education there is not the case of lesser minds nor is there the
case that, in most matters that are the subject of study, particularly in
elementary and secondary education, there obtains circumstances such as to
present situations where decisions as to what to believe are
"living", "forced" and "momentous" or where there is not a preponderance
of the evidence. It is a professional responsibility
of educators to make known the evidence upon which their instruction
that portrays the way things are is based as they inculcate the rational
Habit of Mind
and model its reliance on evidence and reasoning in support of
positions. In formal education, when those circumstances where
there is not a preponderance of evidence arise, there can and should be a
suspension of belief and of judgment on the part of educators.
Such suspensions can
furnish occasions for further education in the very process of inquiry and
deliberation that leads to decisions concerning what to believe.
These decisions remain subject to continuing review in light of new
evidence and experiences by minds that are open to inquiry and
questioning as an essential, even quintessential, element in the life of
the mind.
The habit of mind that leads people
to believe that for which there is insufficient reason or evidence to
support the belief is a habit of mind that presents for both the
believers and for others potential harms in as much as such beliefs are
more likely to be incorrect and decisions based on such beliefs are more
likely t lead to unsuccessful results. People who claim a right to
belief that is an unqualified right and people who practice believing
without sufficient reason or evidence to support their beliefs are thus
presenting society with a challenge as they threaten both society's need
for social cohesion and for progress. Unwarranted beliefs do
not lead people closer to whatever is the actual case, i.e., closer
towards truth. Such beliefs and the habits of mind that lead to
their being held are thus socially dangerous.
There is no right to believe and
not have those beliefs questioned or challenged. There is no right
to beliefs immune to criticism and challenges. Society can ill
afford to permit the formation of habits of mind that settle beliefs
without sufficient reason and warrant to support those beliefs.
Such habits of mind do not further either social cohesion or progress.
The fixing of beliefs without evidence to support them or in
contradiction to other beliefs is the fixing of a habit of thinking that
leads away from truth and away from what is needed for the resolution of
conflicts through compromise and non-violent measures of accord.
Thus, society should not acknowledge nor
promote an unqualified right to belief. There is no such right to
belief that holds that beliefs are not to be subject to review,
questioning, examination and criticism. In education the beliefs
held by students are to be so examined and questioned and subject to
reformulation as rational thought might produce evidence counter to
beliefs and reveal beliefs that are inconsistent, contradictory or
incoherent. Education should develop habits of mind that would
arrive at people holding the most well formulated and defended beliefs
and even then they are to be understood as subject to continuing review
as part of the process of continuing inquiry. Society can ill
afford the encouragement of dogmatism, ideology, and the closing of
minds and so it can not afford its members an immunity from challenges
to their beliefs nor can it afford any recognition of an unlimited or
unqualified right to belief.
III. The Habits of Mind
What are the basic Habits of Mind that
confront educators? There are those habits that create minds that are
closed to inquiry and development and growth and the one that does not
do so.
It is the rational Habit of Mind that is the goal of education and in
particular the liberal arts and sciences as it is the learning objectives
or outcomes of such programs of study that aim to produce a mind fully
capable of critical thinking and reasoning and self reflection and
arguing to the best defended positions amongst well considered and
examined alternatives. Then there are the Habits of Mind that
cling tenaciously to ideas and beliefs often with the claim of certainty despite evidence and reasoning to
the contrary and those that accept all beliefs as equivalent in worth
with only the social setting upon which to settle preferences.
All educational institutions hold
out and celebrate varieties of expressions of their basic educational
goals and in particular the objectives of their general education
programs. Most common in such expressions are statements to the effect
that graduates would have developed their critical thinking skills,
information literacy and communication skills and are able to make
mature and well reasoned judgments including aesthetic and ethical
decision making. As laudable as such goals may be and as wonderful the
sound of such declarations are those who trumpet these notes at all
serious about the import of such declarations? Do the supporters of the
declaration make commitment to consider and address the most basic
Habits of Mind and belief systems of their learners? If we were to
seriously consider how well and how we are to achieve the general
objectives for degree programs then we would need to seriously consider
some of the most central elements of the lives of our learners: their
mindsets or Habits of Mind. We have
not as yet begun to do this. An institution that wants a genuine
general education program that sets out the general objectives and wants
to place great emphasis on the teaching and learning that contributes to
achieving those general objectives has need to be concerned with
just who
are their learners and what do they bring to the community of learning and
to the process of learning itself. It is presented herein that the most
popular set of outcomes of a general education program are those
associated with a particular mindset or Habits of Mind that are
characteristic of the faculty of most colleges but not of their students.
The alternative mindsets must be directly identified and addressed if
they are to be moved into the that of the rationalist mindset
consonant with the aims of general education.
Heterogeneous
Groups
It is more and more the case that
educators at all levels, and most particularly at community colleges in
urban settings, realize that the groups of learners found in classrooms
are typified by heterogeneity. In fact, there is heterogeneity of
heterogeneity. In the major cities of the United States to observe that
students come together in classes that are characterized as heterogeneous
is pure understatement. The most common basis for describing these
classes as being diversified is based on the ethnic nature of the
learners. Add to that the further distinctions that can be made based on
language differences and cultural differences and religious backgrounds and one just begins to
appreciate how diverse a group each group of learners in a single class
can be.
But what are the distinctions that
matter most for the enterprise at hand: teaching and learning? The
diversity that matters for learning comes into focus beyond that of
culture, language, and ethnicity. The learners have different learning
styles that need to be taken into effective consideration by instructors
who want to insure as best they can that the learners achieve the
objectives of the learning experiences being formulated for them.
And, of course, one of the most obvious of differences for educators is
that the
learners have different knowledge backgrounds and different levels of
basic skills attainment.
Habits of Mind or
Mindsets
Beyond the differences in learning styles
and background knowledge there are
the even more fundamental differences in the most basic Habits of Mind. These include
the most basic ways in which the learners gather and receive information and deal
with it, the background against which new experiences are interpreted,
with which they are valued and to which responses are formulated. There
are at least three basic Habits of Mind that instructors in a multi-cultural
environment need to be mindful of when designing programs of instruction.
These Habits of Mind or mindsets may be described in different ways. One
might be to characterize them in a temporal ordering such as: Pre Modern,
Modern, and Post Modern in an effort to link them with those periods where
the mindsets predominate within the modes of discourse shaping the
culture. This terminology might also be viewed as polemical and so it
will not be used here. Another might be to describe them as
fundamentalist, scientific and relativist to use terms popular in
contemporary discourse. These would be both pejorative and
misleading as they would
introduce terms that are value laden for many. In this work the terms
used will be a combination of those cited and those used by Charles
Sanders Peirce in "The Fixation of Belief",(Popular Science Monthly 12
(November 1877), 1-15.
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html)
Peirce identified four ways in which
people fix their beliefs: tenacity, authority, a priori and science. In
this work the three basic Habits of Mind being described will be termed:
the tenacious-authoritarian, the rational, and the relativistic.
I am combining the first two methods for fixing beliefs as described by Peirce and associating it with a popular and most basic mindset that is
herein termed the "tenacious-authoritarian". I
am associating what Peirce termed as the "a priori" method with the
"relativistic" mindset as Peirce recognized that this mindset or method for
fixing beliefs was ultimately one that based positions on a set of given
truths or a priori truths that were usually simply the most popular ideas of the time.
It makes of inquiry
something similar to the development of taste; but taste, unfortunately,
is always more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly metaphysicians
have never come to any fixed agreement, but the pendulum has swung
backward and forward between a more material and a more spiritual
philosophy, from the earliest times to the latest. - Charles Sanders Peirce in
The Fixation of Belief.
Finally, I rename his fourth and
preferred method with the more general descriptive: "rationalist" as
reasoning and critical thinking is
what it emphasizes and what most distinguishes it from the other methods for
fixing beliefs, Habits of Mind and mindsets. It is not to be
identified with science as science is but one manifestation of this Habit
of Mind through which positions taken are arrived at and defended using
thought process that involve reflective and critical thinking that is
considerate of alternatives and insistent upon well formulated and
defended positions. This rational Habit of Mind is one that holds
all positions as hypotheses subject to continuing review in light of new
evidence, reviews of reasoning and the development of or acceptance of
new perspectives.
The use of the terms, "rational" or
"rationalist" or rationalistic" is not to be associated with the meaning
of rationalism as in the long history of that term in philosophy that
links it with thinkers from Plato on through Descartes and others who held
that knowledge was contained in the mind or soul and could be recognized
or achieved without experiences involving the senses, the community of
inquirers or the external world.
To attempt a single manner of
approaching learners in a group with these different Habits of Mind is
bound for failure for the learners for whom the single approach is without
meaning or value. Instructors have these manners of
approach that are based on their own Habits of Mind. To operate out of
ignorance of the mismatch between the Habits of Mind of the instructor
with sub groups of learners in the class is a method that will leave some
learners with little real learning and more likely with some form of
failure.
The instructional staff is nearly
exclusively populated by those with the rational mindset placing high
value on reasoning and critical thinking and the need to support claims
with evidence and reasoning.
The student body in our ethnically
diverse urban community colleges is composed of learners with different
mindsets: the tenacious-authoritarian, the rational, and the relativistic.
The
Tenacious-Authoritarian Habit of Mind
The tenacious-authoritarian students
come from cultures in which there is high value placed on respect for
authorities and official texts. They are literalists and unfamiliar
with and anxious about multiple interpretations of texts and information
and history. They are also inexperienced with diversity and find it
difficult to accommodate with the pluralistic society they find in the
country and on campus and in their classes and with the faculty.
People are acculturated into possession of this mindset with little
conscious effort on their part. The perception would be that this
Habit of Mind is simply the way people think within their culture or their
cultural groups.
At this moment this mindset is oft
times described as “fundamentalist” when those so characterizing it want
to identify the set of religious beliefs that are a part of this mindset
as being the defining characteristic of it. This may be historically
and socially relevant but in terms of the cognitive or psychological
processes it is not. The mindset is a deeper formation that accepts
a particular form of religious life but is not constituted by that. With
this Habit of Mind faith is generated by a basic need for order and order
at any cost. Faith can be set against reason as a result of
satisfying a basic drive, perhaps rooted in a genetic disposition (a "god
gene"), that results in a belief system conveyed through story that
provides order or "cosmos" for the believer. Such faith is held tenaciously and all the more so when
reinforced by its endorsement and promulgation by a variety of social
institutions each carrying the weight of authority.
The tenacious-authoritarian mindset
would view the rational mindset as a threat to disturb the order of things
as held in the belief system that was uncritically acquired.
The tenacious-authoritarian mind would
likely view the relativistic mindset as no threat to persons of the
tenacious-authoritarian mindset as the relativistic accepts and is
tolerant of all views
and so the tenacious-authoritarian belief system and its Habits of Mind
are not capable of being challenged. The tenacious-authoritarian can hold that their
beliefs are better than others and expressions of the actual one and only
truth and there is not a way the relativistic can
criticize them given the relativistic claims of relativity with its
denials of
absolutes, trans-cultural universals, objective knowledge, and objective truth.
The Rational Habit of Mind
The characteristics or
the rational mindset are those found in the outcomes of the typical
general education component of the Liberal Arts and Sciences core of any
degree program. This mindset places a high value on reason and
believes in the possibility of human progress through the use of reason.
This pragmatic function of Reason provides the agency procuring the
upward trend of animal evolution.--Alfred North Whitehead
, The Function of Reason,,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1929, p. 27
But when mentality is working at a high level, it brings novelty into
the appetitions of mental experience. In this function, there is a sheer
element of anarchy. But mentality now becomes self-regulative. It
canalizes its own operations by its own judgments. It introduces a
higher appetition which discriminates among its own anarchic
productions. Reason appears. It is Reason, thus conceived, which is the
subject-matter of this discussion. We have to consider the introduction
of anarchy, the revolt from anarchy, the use of anarchy, and the
regulation of anarchy. Reason civilizes the brute force of anarchic
appetition. Apart from anarchic appetition, nature is doomed to slow
descent towards nothingness. Mere repetitive experience gradually
eliminates element after element and fades towards vacuity. Mere
anarchic appetition accomplishes quickly the same end, reached slowly by
repetition. Reason is the special embodiment in us of the disciplined
counter-agency which saves the world.--Alfred
North Whitehead
, The Function of Reason,,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1929, p.34.
This Habit of Mind is
characterized by critical thinking skills and reflective thinking.
Those with such a mindset accept science and technology and place trust in
reasoning and experimentation and fact gathering and testing of hypotheses
and ideas. They are willing to offer and ask for reasons and evidence in
support of claims that are made and in defense of positions taken on
issues. The rational mind accepts Whitehead's pronouncement that:
The rejection of any source of
evidence is always treason to that ultimate rationalism which urges
forward science and philosophy alike.---Alfred North Whitehead
, The Function of Reason,,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1929, p. 61.
The critical use of reasoning or rationality itself is
applied across disciplines. Science is but one form of thinking in
which reasoning is an essential method for arriving at conclusions and for
defending positions using evidence in support of claims and for the
verification of hypotheses. The rationalistic Habit of Mind is
developed by Mathematics as a form of thinking that develops appreciation
for methodology and for systemic knowledge along with reliance on logical
analysis and inference. The rational mindset is not one that embraces the
philosophical tradition of rationalism with its holding for innate ideas
or for truths that are realizable through thought alone. The
rational mindset values science but does not make it either the summum
bonum or establish science on a pedestal of faith. The rational
habit of thinking is far more likely to interpret and analyze religion as
a social phenomena and religious beliefs as expressions of values than to
accept religious claims as literal truth or unquestionable claims.
The rational mind accepts the role of
fact in its relation to the efforts of speculation and imagination.
The basis of all authority is the
supremacy of fact over thought. Yet this contrast of fact and thought
can be conceived fallaciously. For thought is a factor in the fact of
experience. Thus the immediate fact is what it is, partly by reason of
the thought involved in it. The quality of an act of experience is
largely determined by the factor of the thinking which it contains. But
the thought involved in any one such act involves an analytic survey of
experience beyond itself. The supremacy of fact over thought means that
even the utmost flight of speculative thought should have its measure of
truth. It may be the truth of art. But thought irrelevant to the wide
world of experience, is unproductive.
The proper satisfaction to be
derived from speculative thought is elucidation. It is for this reason
that fact is supreme over thought. This supremacy is the basis of
authority. We scan the world to find evidence for this elucidatory
power.
Thus the supreme verification of
the speculative flight is that it issues in the establishment of a
practical technique for well-attested ends, and that the speculative
system maintains itself as the elucidation of that technique. In this
way there is the progress from thought to practice, and regress from
practice to the same thought. This interplay of thought and practice is
the supreme authority. It is the test by which the charlatanism of
speculation is restrained.--Alfred North Whitehead
, The Function of Reason,,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1929, p. 80-81.
Beliefs are subjected to a critical
examination by the use of reason . The logic to be employed is as
described by Whitehead a derivation of what starts with the Greeks in the
West:
The Greek logic as finally
perfected by the experience of centuries provides a set of criteria to
which the content of a belief should be subjected. These are:
(i) Conformity to intuitive
experience:
(ii) Clarity of the propositional
content:
(iii) Internal Logical
consistency:
(iv) External Logical
consistency:
(v) Status of a Logical scheme
with,
(a) widespread conformity to
experience,
(b) no discordance with
experience,
(c) coherence among its
categoreal notions,
(d) methodological
consequences.
The misconception which has haunted the ages of
thought down to the present time is that these criteria are easy to
apply.--Alfred North Whitehead
, The Function of Reason,,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1929, p. 67-68.
Unlike with the
tenacious-authoritarian mindset and the relativistic mindset people are
not acculturated into possession of this mindset with little conscious
effort on their part. This Habit of Mind is the result of effort and self
reflective thought. It is not perceived of as simply the way people
think within their culture or their cultural groups. It is the result of
education, whether formal or informal. It is not an innate Habit of
Mind. Neither is it often the mindset typical of most groups within
which people develop and from which they learn. It is the mindset of
professional scholars and researchers and people of letters and others who
are themselves products of formal education.
Despite it being the case that the
rational mindset is the goal of General Education, students with the
rational mindset are nearly always in the minority of those entering
colleges in this country at this time, particularly in large urban settings with a multicultural setting
and a multicultural student body-a stated desire of many colleges.
Students with the rational mindset are both native born and immigrants.
They share much in common with faculty and find it relatively easy to
perform well on all forms of assessments prepared by a faculty with
rational mindsets as their own.
With this Habit of Mind faith is the
result of what reason holds and supports and faith is maintained for the
sake of hope. Belief systems must adhere to the rational criteria of
coherency and consistency. This is so even for religious belief
systems and they are held as sources of value and as the reservoir for
hope. Religious language is operative as expressive of axiological
positions rather than empirical claims.
The rational views the
tenacious-authoritarian as uncritical and even irrational and in need of
further education or development into the rational.
The rational views the relativistic
as riddled with inconsistencies and self refutations and in need of reform
that incorporates the core values of the rational.
The Relativistic
Habit of Mind
There are a large number of students
with the relativistic mindset. In the main they are products of European
and American cultures that are post religious and post modern. For them
all opinions are of equal worth and entitled to equal respect and
protection. For them there is no position that is privileged except
through power of some form. The power that establishes the preferred
or privileged position or sets out the criteria for judgments and sets out
the values to be held is not the power of tradition nor of authorities as
established by tradition or by some divine act as with the
tenacious-authoritarian mindset. It is the authority or power of the
social group or institution. It is a power that rests on the most
common or most popular beliefs. The learners who are relativists will accept as a correct answer that
evolution is the best explanation for the development of life forms on the
planet earth in order to get credit for the preferred answer of the
empowered instructor but many of them will maintain that creationism is also
true or even more true or true because they believe it to be true and are
so entitled to believe it to be such.
As with the tenacious-authoritarian
mindset people are acculturated into possession of this mindset with
little conscious effort on their part. Again the perception would be
that this Habit of Mind is simply the way people think within their
culture or their cultural groups. This Habit of Mind is the
consequence of a series of historical events and movements that challenged
the assumptions and operations of those engaged in the disciplines that
marked the rise of the "modern age". The presence of this
Habit of Mind in individuals is not likely to be accompanied by an awareness of
itself or of the historical dimensions of the development or popularizing
of this mindset. This mindset as with the tenacious-authoritarian mindset
is arrived at through an unquestioned acceptance of both the Habit of Mind
and its attendant and resultant set of beliefs.
The relativistic views the
tenacious-authoritarian as one of many possible mind sets that are equally
acceptable. The relativistic views the rational
as being intolerant and outmoded with sets of values and criteria for
evaluations and judgments that are not absolute or universal or objective and
, worst of all, not popular.
For the relativistic mind acceptance
by and assimilation within a group is the valued end This mindset rejects
as its goal to be possessed of the most well founded position on an issue
or the best hypothesis as supported by reasoning and evidence. Science is
no better than any other way to arrive at a position, belief or thought
for the relativistic mindset. It is the popularity of the position that
matters. The criteria for accepting a belief has become for this group
whether or not the holders of the belief have a community within which
they feel comfortable and accepted. The distinction between fact and
opinion and the real and the simulated has broken down for the post modern
and relativistic learner.
With this Habit of Mind faith is a
form of discourse and is akin to any other in its basic social foundation
and functioning. A religious set of beliefs is as valued as its social
setting has determined. Beliefs based on faith need not adhere to any
criteria external to the group discourse nor be subject to any review by
those outside the group of faithful that the adherents to that faith need
accept.
The relativistic mind has moved
beyond science and reason as having diminished in their importance and any
position of privilege that they might occupy in the determination of
knowledge or truth, even truth concerning such physical matters as the shape of
the planet
or the origins of illness and disease or the process through which life
forms.
The relativistic mindset is post
historical and focuses on the eternal “now” with no value placed on
historical perspective. The past matters little as an aid to
understanding because all thinking about the past is just discourse or
opinion and all opinions have equal status.
The relativistic mindset flourishes
in what is an age of simulation. The simulation is no longer opposed to
the real or the authentic. The distinctions are not respected. They have
no effective meaning for the relativistic mindset. The distinction of the
real from the fake or the representation or simulation is meaningless.
The real is whatever is perceived. “Reality TV” no matter how prearranged
and orchestrated is reality. What is seen on television or through any
other media is as real as it can get and as authentic as with any other
mode of receiving information. If it has been on TV or in the movies it
is real and genuine and as accurate as any other report or depiction or
interpretation. There are no criteria for determining authenticity or
accuracy that are objective so, anything goes!
For many of the young with the relativistic mindset
fame is real and fame, no matter how achieved, is the value. All fame is
equal and is itself what matters. Opinion polls no matter how conducted
and how influenced by media reporting are the indication of the real and
the genuine, no matter how produced or measured.
So there are people who arrive in
college with minds that are developed enough to have accomplished college
admittance and yet they hold beliefs that are not rational in the sense of
not having been arrived at through processes involving careful and
critical thought and some beliefs that are
even anti-rational in the sense of being inconsistent with or in
contradiction to other beliefs that are also held with equal fervor.
In taking college classes the basic
mindsets can remain submerged from view as much formal instruction does
not reach down to the level of the basic manner in which ideas and
information are processed and beliefs are fixed in the learners. In
teaching some subjects such as Philosophy the basic mindsets are
exposed. Over a number of years students in Philosophy classes have
admitted to or spontaneously made claims to many or all of the following
beliefs and many continue to hold them throughout their time at the
college as they are not effectively challenged to do otherwise:
If a person believes that "X" is
true then "X" is true.
If a person believes that "X" is
real then "X" is real.
There can be one god, many gods
and no gods all at the same time.
A physical object can be a flat
disk and a sphere at the same time.
Astrology and astronomy are just
different ways of knowing things but equally valuable.
Evolutionary Theory and Creation
Theory are equally acceptable explanations for life forms on planet
earth.
John Edwards talks to and hears
dead people. (cold reading trick)
David Blaine can actually
levitate his body. (the Balducci levitation illusion)
Science is no more than a
special type of opinion.
All opinions are of equal worth.
There is no objective knowledge
or objective truth about anything.
There is no real problem in
holding beliefs that are contradictory.
They are concerned with being
“politically correct” or socially correct or popular and accepted rather
than accepting that there may be criteria for determining the correctness
of beliefs that have been established in ways that all peoples may share
in regardless of culture, class, religion, age, or any other consideration
that may be relative.
The student with a relativistic
mindset is more concerned with appearance than what might be under or
beyond that appearance. They mistakenly accept that “perception is
reality” and arrive at conclusions that there are multiple realities that
exists simultaneously even when “reality” is defined to be "the sum total
of all that is real". They are as indifferent to equivocations as
they are to other mental machinations that would be termed "fallacies" by
those possessed of the rational mindset.
Tenacious-Authoritarian to Relativistic Habit
of Mind
The tenacious-authoritarian mindset
that arrives at college is more inclined to go to or relate to or fit in
with the relativistic mindset when confronted with a pluralistic society
that has great cultural diversity and a range of mindsets and Habits of
Mind. As the tenacious-authoritarian mindset believes in a “truth” even
as a sacred or unquestionable “truth” and does not want to subject that
truth to examination let alone to possible revision or rejection. The
tenacious-authoritarian mindset thus accepts the relativistic mindset’s
celebration of the equality of all truth claims and all claims of
privilege. In this manner, the tenacious-authoritarian mindset can
maintain that their traditional dogmas and doctrines and received truths
go on as such even in the midst of contrary and contradictory claims by
those who are possessed of the rational mindset and its mechanism for
establishing truth and for determining which would be the best defended of
all hypotheses and positions and beliefs.
Since all positions are afforded equal entitlements
within their social settings in the post rational or relativist mindset,
so it is that the tenacious-authoritarian mindset can
feel that their "official" or received beliefs are just as important and to be just as
valued as with any other set of beliefs or claims or practices, for that
matter. This explains how what would appear as conflicting
mindsets can coexist in a pluralist society. There is the appearance
of respectful tolerance and peaceful coexistence. The frictions that
lead to violence in a pluralist society are not likely to be those of the
rationalist mindset with either of the other two mindsets but of the tenacious-authoritarian with
the relativistic because lurking under this surface appearance of peaceful
coexistence there are still the deeply held beliefs and intolerant mindset
of the tenacious-authoritarian mind that can act against others if
threatened or if the ability to resist being "converted' is feared to be
weakening. In contemporary times this is evidenced by fear of the
challenges to the belief systems of the various orthodoxies being made by
the materialism and wantonness of the "infidels" of relativism.
A pluralistic society holding
pluralism as a value based on conclusions arrived at by the rational Habit
of Mind is much more secure than that resting on the relativist Habit of
Mind. This is so because it would not hold for uncritical acceptance
of all belief systems nor for an unqualified celebration of tolerance.
Education and the Habits of Mind
Education is, in its most genuine
sense, the effort to develop the rational Habit of Mind. People born
into cultures in which the other Habits of Mind are predominant and even
linked with popularity and success simply acquire those Habits of Mind
through acculturation. Only the rational Habit of Mind results from
formal or intentional acts of education. The self reflective and careful and critical thinking that
mark the rational Habit of Mind are not innate but are the products of a
series of interactions with others who model that behavior and encourage
and recognize and reward it in others. In the perspective set out
herein the rational mindset is the basic goal of education.
Not only is it ethically or morally
appropriate and correct to address and seek to remediate Habits of Mind
but it is also a fundamental responsibility of professional educators to
do so.
When the instructional staff that is
of the rational mindset or Habit of Mind confronts a student body that
is diverse in mindsets and diverse in Habits of Mind and in their
associated values there results a tremendous challenge to bring the
diverse group of learners into the rational mindset or to have them
achieve the outcomes of the typical general education component of the
Liberal Arts and Sciences core of any degree program.
Among those challenges is the
confrontation with the risks inherent in the enterprise of education
involving the changing of minds, basic Habits of Mind and mindsets.
IV. Risks Involved in
changing minds
A risk can be taken to mean the possibility of
outcomes of some negative characterization. In the relationship of
the educator to the learner there are such risks of outcomes that are in
opposition to the aim or purpose of the basic endeavor. There are definite and unavoidable risks involved in the process of changing minds. There are
risks to the learner and to the educator. These risks include the most
serious of all and that is the failure to teach and to learn.
The risks to the educator involve
charges of being abusive or exceeding the bounds of what is proper for
an educator. There are risks of not being appreciated or even being
criticized for performing the basic task of an educator to challenge
beliefs and confront false ideas and educe the growth of the mind. The
educator might then retreat from being provocative and evocative and
from be enticing and exciting and from attempting to change minds. This
would amount to a failure to teach.
In upsetting learners and causing them
to fear change the instructor may receive some harsh comments and
critiques from the learners and their parents who would not understand
the aims of education and prefer to be left with the apparent comfort of
holding to beliefs unchallenged, a comfort enjoyed by the ignorant and
poorly informed.
The risks to the learner include
developing a strong resistance to the challenge to confront one’s own
ideas and beliefs and Habits of Mind. This would be a refusal to open up
the mind to the possibility of change. This would amount to a failure
to learn.
Beyond the risks of fundamental
failure are the risks of poor performance. Instruction that aims at
developing minds and changing mindsets and Habits of Mind can be done
poorly enough that while there is some teaching and learning that occurs
it is done so poorly that the outcome may be a changed mind but not a
well developed mind capable of further learning. Poor education
will not develop the rational Habit of Mind. Teachers who are
authoritarian will not develop critical Habits of Mind. Instructors who are
excessively critical and provide little that is positive in place of the
belief sets that are challenged and the Habit of Mind that is subject to
reformation might produce a Habit of Mind that is excessively skeptical
and one that rejects the possibility of achieving any form of knowledge
and of developing any manner of making effective judgments.
V. Ethical
Implications: Problems
As with most human behavior in which
humans interact, there are some ethical concerns. What are the
moral responsibilities of professional educators? How is it that
educators are to go about changing minds? How far do they go? Are there
any moral prohibitions?
A. Do no harm - no unnecessary and
avoidable harms
A basic moral prohibition for any and
all humans and found in all human societies is
Do no harm !
In the context of
education that injunction needs to be modified a bit to what is more
accurate to the case.
Do no unnecessary and
avoidable harms!
First and foremost and most basic and
foundational for any set of obligations for a professional educator is
the ethical obligation to avoid deliberate harm to another human being.
This is taken to be a fundamental and universal ethical obligation found
in all human societies. It appears as if it is a necessary feature
for social life. It is a basic principle found supported by all
religious traditions. It is also a principle that finds support
being provided for it from nearly every philosophical tradition of
thought in ethics. So with this as the" given" what sort of harms are
to be avoided?
Harm can be produced through omission
as well as commission of acts. When harm occurs and it has been
produced by the educator and it was foreseeable, avoidable and
unnecessary then there is a failure to have fulfilled an obligation that
is both a professional and a moral obligation. It would also be
construed as malpractice. It is malpractice to perform at a level below
the standard set. The standard is set to avoid whatever harm is
foreseeable, avoidable and unnecessary.
Professionals with
a fiduciary responsibility are not responsible for harms that are
not foreseeable. Such harms may not be avoidable at all.
Professionals with a fiduciary
responsibility are not responsible for harms that are not capable of
being avoided by that very reason.
Professionals with a fiduciary
responsibility are not responsible for harms that are a necessary part
of what they are doing for those who entrust themselves into the care of
the professional.
It is not necessary to avoid all
possible harm. There may be and often is some harm that will be caused
in order to achieve the basic aim of the endeavor. Even so if that
goal, aim or purpose can
be achieved without the harm then the harm should be avoided.
The harms that are avoidable and unnecessary can be distinguished form
those that are necessary and unavoidable as will be seen below. At
this point the concern is on the reasoning for causing such harms as may
be necessary. What benefit justifies harming a person?
Whose benefit is to be achieved?
Most learners would look to their own benefit and that would be to
realize some instrumental value for the achievement of some personal
end. Professional educators have a responsibility to not only
benefit their learners but to do so in service to the greater society
for which the aim is to increase human intellectual capital for social
cohesion and progress. In serving the greater society individual
learners may not appreciate or accept that the professional educator
will be causing some harms that are avoidable in the view of the
individual learner with individual self interested goals but not
avoidable if either the enrichment and empowerment (education) of
the learner or the more general social goals of improving human
intellectual capital are to be realized.
In changing minds there is quite often
harm caused to learners. The task it to minimize those harms to
what is absolutely necessary to produce the change and the growth of the
learner. How are these harms to be envisioned and dealt with,
particularly when the aims of education are not simply to provide for
benefit to the individual learners but to benefit society, serve the
public interest and increase the public good through educating to
increase the human intellectual capital.
As an instructive analogy a
consideration of the role of medical provider to the person in need of
such services as compared to the professional educator to the persons
who receive instruction may be useful. This analogy is not to be taken
as being an exact analogy nor is it to be pursued into every possible
mode of comparison. The medical model or analogy is useful up to a
point as would be the psychotherapeutic model. Either of those is
more apt than the parental model as the responsibilities involved are
different in kind and degree. In common is the responsibility for
the one served by the more knowledgeable other. The difference is
in exactly what the one is responsible for and to what extent.
In the relation of an educator to a
learner there is oft times something akin to the relationship of a
physician to a patient. The physician has a relationship with those
treated wherein the physician's responsibility is to provide cure or
alleviation of the pathology and the maintenance of health wherever
possible. There is the therapeutic relationship in which it is the
obligation of the physician to restore a person to wellness and to
maintain wellness. Does this exist or can this relationship exist
between the educator and the learner?
For wellness the human needs to grow
in a number of ways: physical, social, intellectual and emotional.
Parents assist the child in that development. Parents can contract
directly or indirectly with professional educators to assist them in the
intellectual development of the child. If the child encounters a
pathology the parents seek to ameliorate, remediate or alleviate it.
Parents are responsible to provide for such as best they can. Many times
parents seek professional assistance in addressing these needs and
through which they fulfill their duties to their children. Something
similar exists when focusing on the intellectual development of the
child. In performing this duty toward children most parents look for assistance from
professional educators to accompany their own efforts to develop
intellectual capacities and to address intellectual pathologies as best they can do
so.
What would be an intellectual
pathology to be addressed through formal education? Given what we know
from cognitive and developmental psychology there is a range for normal
development of cognitive skills and acquisition of information. In
order for some part of formal education to be seen as a form of mediation or
"medical" therapy there would need to be some condition that the
professional educator would need to relieve or at least address so as to
lessen its severity in impairing the human. What might that be? It
might be cognitive development that was running behind the range of the
normal or it might involve the actual contents of the intellect: its
beliefs, information and habits of organization. If so what would be
the pathology to be remedied or cured? As humans are born without
the products of formal education so that normal development of a human can not be viewed as a
pathology. Learning about what one does not know is not
treating a pathology. It is not ignorance so much as false beliefs
and mistaken thinking that is the pathology. So where would be the need for a cure?
Consider these comparisons as this
analogy is further developed here.
|
Physician |
Educator |
|
|
|
|
Bacteria |
incorrect belief |
|
Virus |
incorrect information |
|
Injury |
debilitating Habit of Mind |
|
|
|
|
|
|
A belief held that is not supported by
evidence and has counter evidence in abundance available to the believer
is as a bacteria. An educator can identify such beliefs and then
attempt to remedy them if there is an available counter agency or
“anti-biotic” in the form of counter evidence or the presentation of
other beliefs held by the learner that are inconsistent with the belief
identified as incorrect in some way.
A virus once acquired nearly always
remains in the human body for its remaining life. The virus has been
fought off through a period of resistance to it as the immune system
brings about a new state of equilibrium with the virus. The educator
approaches incorrect information so as to place it in proper context and
provides the needed correctives and more accurate information. The
learner continues to remember the incorrect information but know
recognizes it -post correction- as being inaccurate or incorrect in some
way.
A method for organizing information
and acquiring knowledge and fixing beliefs is a Habit of Mind that might
not always be the most effective at enabling the human to make the best
judgments, decisions, and evaluations. When the predominant Habit
of Mind is not well functioning for the entire organism it is as if an
injury had occurred and a debilitating condition set in. Such
Habits of Mind can be identified by the educator and then repaired or improved
upon through a program of studies and experiences intended to develop in
the learner an alternative Habit of Mind that would better serve the
entire organism in the midst of the human community.
The recipients of surgical
interventions submit to the surgeons and their staff and give consent
either directly or indirectly through their guardians to be subject to
the surgeon and subject to the procedures trusting that the surgeon will
exercise the fiduciary responsibility to benefit and not to harm the
person who is ill and in need of surgery.
Surgeons cause harm to those upon whom
they operate in an effort to produce benefit. They make incisions and
expose people to infections in the process of attempting to improve
their health and bodily functioning. In an effort to produce good
there are times that harm results. It is termed as “iatrogenic” harm or
consequence as it was the result of an attempt not to harm but to
benefit someone.
The surgeon should make every attempt
to avoid harm, either physical or psychological, and to minimize it
wherever there must be some harm. The patient is prepared for the
surgery with explanations of the procedures and likely post operative
events and experiences explained. The environment is prepared and made
as aseptic as possible. Antiseptics, anesthetics and antibiotics are
employed to deal with the threat of infections. The surgery is as
minimally intrusive and disruptive as possible to the body and the
functioning of the organ systems.
There are times when the person
possessed of pathology may resist efforts to ameliorate the situation,
even deny consent. If the threat of the pathology to the public health
and safety is great and well substantiated then treatment may be ordered
by the legitimate authorities even over the objections of the
individual. These cases are rare enough and include situations where
the threat is a physical disease that is highly infectious. A similar
case where the threat would be posed by a belief set or Habit of Mind
would be nearly impossible to substantiate at the present time. Actions
taken based on such beliefs and Habits of Mind and deemed criminal would
be dealt with after the fact and the likelihood of repeat acts would
lead to separation from society.
If an individual were possessed of an
infection treatable by antibiotics most effectively rendered
intravenously but such person wanted to refuse an injection for fear of
the pain of the needle the medical staff would reason with the person, cajole
and perhaps mollify by administering a local anesthetic upon the
epidermis at the injection site for the desired delivery of the antibiotic. The
medical staff having a professional responsibility to render effective
care while avoiding whatever harm is foreseeable, avoidable and
unnecessary would attempt to avoid abandoning the person in need as well
as avoiding proceeding to invade their person without consent.
If an individual were possessed of a
false beliefs, incorrect information and debilitating Habits of Mind
that were remediable but that person wanted to refuse what
effective instruction was available for fear of the emotional upset of the
unknown or of change or of threats to self esteem or of feelings of disloyalty to
certain groups sharing in those beliefs, then the instructional staff should
reason with the person, cajole and perhaps mollify by administering
local and temporary appeasements to secure not only consent but a
sincere participation in the program of instruction. The educational
staff having a professional responsibility to render effective care
while avoiding whatever harm is foreseeable, avoidable and unnecessary
would attempt to avoid abandoning the person in need as well as avoiding
proceeding to invade their person without consent in a manner likely to
be counterproductive to the aims of education.
There is not a concern for the
unforeseen and unintended harms as they are not within the realm of
moral responsibility. It is the harms that are foreseeable and
foreseen and even intended where attention needs to be paid to discern
when such harms may be acceptable and when they are not.
Learners submit to educators and give
consent either directly or indirectly through their guardians to be
subject to the educator and subject to instruction trusting that the
educator will exercise the fiduciary responsibility to benefit and not
to harm the learner.
What are the variety
of harms to which learners are subject? There are the possible
harms, the necessary harms and the unnecessary and the avoidable and
unavoidable harms.
Possible Harms
For some types of learning and for
growth there will be the perception and even the experience of harm. In
the changing of minds there can be distress that results as the learners
may experience a variety of emotional states of discomfort:
Necessary Harms
For some types of learning and for
growth there will be the need to produce situations for learning in
which there is a definite possibility for some results that would be
perceived by the learner as harm but they are necessary experiences for
the growth in knowledge, self reflection, critical thinking and growth.
These “harms” would include:
-
Loss of certainty- the creation of doubts
-
Loss of comfort- anxiety over the
consequences of change and of the unknown
-
Loss of confidence-feelings of
inadequacy
-
Loss of self esteem-feeling ignorant
-
Sense of disloyalty to groups
The single most important necessary
harm is the arresting and divesting of the sense of certainty from the
learner. Knowledge of uncertainty and of one's own ignorance is healthy
and a sign of growth. Knowledge of that not all is known and that
one does not know is needed. It is propaedeutic to and necessary
for learning. Knowledge of ignorance is not the end but the
staring point for learning.
Education is the progressive discovery
of how little we know"- Will Durant
Educators must
facilitate the entry of the learner into a discourse that will
acknowledge and dispel ignorance. Education aims to counter the
Dogmatism of Ignorance.
There will be these
necessary harms as there is the pain associated with growth.
No pain, No Gain.
The pains and harms
associated with education may be thought of as a most important part of
what are commonly referred to as "growing pains".
Unnecessary Harms
For some types of learning and for
growth there will be the need to produce situations for learning in
which there is a definite possibility for some results that would be
perceived by the learner as harm but they are not necessary experiences
for the growth in knowledge, self reflection, critical thinking and
growth. These “harms” would be gratuitous. They include:
-
Feeling hopeless
-
Feeling helpless
-
Feeling ashamed
Professional educators should make
every effort to avoid these outcomes. They are harmful to the learning
process itself. Interactions of educators with learners that are
insulting or demeaning are to be avoided as they are both directly
harmful to the person of the learner and stultifying to the learning
process and poison the relationship of learner to educator.
The feeling of being hopeless or
helpless due to accepting that one is in error or held a false belief is
not based on fact and can be both avoided and remedied if it emerges out
of instruction. Fear is natural in the face of the unknown
and so if there is to be a displacement from what has been held as known
and true but falsely so there should be the notion that there is an
alternative to complete ignorance. There is that which is better
established and closer to the truth than that which is to be or has been
challenged and proven false or inconsistent or contradictory.
Learners can learn that we all learn from our mistakes and that science
learns more from that which does not prove to be so than from that which
was suspected and proven to be the case. They can learn the
process or Habit of Mind that continually examines what is thought to be
known and to be true and learn that it is self correcting and makes
progress over time. Learners must come to understand that because
not everything is known does not mean that nothing is known. That
mistakes are made does not mean that all is mistaken. That to have
made a mistake is not to be ignorant and bereft of the ability to learn.
"I know this is a stupid question
but..."
"I am so dumb for thinking that..."
"I can't believe that I thought that
was true! What a .. I must be."
The learner must be educated to
understand and accept that to admit ignorance or a mistake is not
grounds for shame but it opens the possibility for learning.
B. Paternalism
When is it that the professional
educator can cause a harm to benefit the learner and society and do so
over the objection of or without informing the learner? With what learners and to what extent
is paternalism an ethically acceptable attitude and basis for action?
When is it that an educator can make decisions as to what is best for
the learner without informing or involving the learner or the guardians
of the learner in that decision making process?
Some educators consider themselves to
have responsibility for the well being of those who come to them for
assistance. They think of themselves as a parent would think in relation
to their children. The term “paternalism,” derived from the Latin pater
(father) literally means treating someone in a “fatherly” way.
Traditionally, this entails providing for a person’s basic needs without
giving them autonomous, decision-making authority. The professional
practitioner of education assuming the role of a parent will make
decisions for the child (student), determine what information will be
provided, and provide only as much information as the parent thinks best
for the student. The educator might even act in ways to influence or
coerce the decisions or actions of those considered to be that
educator's “child.” At bottom, pedagogical paternalism is the tendency
of educators to act in what they perceive as the best interest of the
student, regardless of what the student actually perceives as his her
own best interests. This attitude often results in a teacher acting in
a most authoritarian manner, even though the educator believes he or she
is acting in the best interests of the student.
Important in the understanding of
paternalistic models of education is that the profession of education,
as rooted in the fiduciary (from the Latin fiducia – trust) commitments
of beneficience (charity, benefit, kindness), and it has an
intrinsically paternalistic dimension. All teachers make decisions
regarding course content and pedagogical methodology. This means that
we are deciding what our students should know, what sorts
of criteria we use for assessing that knowledge, the format for inquiry
and discussion, and the normative claim that this knowledge will benefit
them.
Educational paternalism occurs on many
different levels. First and foremost, education is paternalistic in the
sense that students (or their parents) have implicit trust that we, as
educators, will teach them things that will benefit them in the future.
However, the paternalistic implications of pedagogy are not consistent
over time. As Ronald Dworkin argues, children are not autonomous, and
we are justified in making decision for them in their own best interest
based on the fact that they “…lack some of the emotional and cognitive
capacities in order to make fully rational decisions.” It is a mistake
to assume first-graders will make informed decisions regarding their
education, and so we, as adults, structure their education in ways that
we think will benefit them in the long-run, and to best provide for the
development of autonomous decision-making in the future. As children
age, their choices become more informed, and we rightly allow them to
make more and more significant choices regarding their education.
Adult learners, while in possession of
the emotional and cognitive capacities which signal informed consent and
autonomy, are still lacking the intellectual capacity to decide the
content of their studies . A student might make autonomous decisions
regarding their career path and major field of study, but most students
are ill-equipped to make decisions concerning course content. (Note: Of
course students in upper-level and graduate courses often do make these
sorts of content decisions-independent studies, senior projects, and
thesis projects - yet these are simply another result of growing
academic autonomy of advanced learners.). In making the informed choice
to attend college, students are implicitly giving institutions the right
to determine curricular programs and standards, and giving individual
faculty members the right to set content and methodology in the
classroom. This tacit “approval” of paternalistic treatment given to
colleges by students carries with it a set of reciprocal obligations on
the part of administration and faculty. All individuals involved in
post secondary education must constantly evaluate, and where necessary,
modify, their curricula and courses to meet these fiduciary obligations.
The right of faculty and institutions to make decisions on behalf of
those they serve is not one that remains sacrosanct. The decisions
made by both faculty acting individually and collectively are subject to
review. Individual faculty members have their decisions reviewed
by peers and the collective is reviewed by agencies that conduct
periodic reviews of programs, courses, and curricula.
At its most basic level the
relationship of the educator to the learner is paternalistic. The basic
responsibilities individuals have to respect the autonomy of others is
radically transformed in the context of the teacher/student
relationship. Educators, in their professional roles as teachers,
encounter a new set of responsibilities akin to that of parents. The
professional responsibilities of the educator are also dictated by the
educator's social role. The educator is in a covenential role with
society and with the individual learners. The educator is, in John
Dewey's view, not simply the transmitter of some well defined set of
skills or body of knowledge. For Dewey, education prepares people
for fulfilling lives by not simply providing them with the
information and the skills they need for professional success but in
providing the instrumentalities, the skills and the Habits of Mind for
continual learning and growth.
Education is, in this later sense, as is human life itself.
Education is preparation for continual growth, learning and development.
And
so one of the crucial functions of education is preparing people for a
lifetime of learning. This is all the more evident and made
necessary in cultures that have so much change taking place and have
increased the rate of change to the point where it marks itself off as
one of the characteristics of an age and the culture.
Like it or not, the educator plays a
central role in shaping the decisions of students, both academic and
personal. In giving bad grades or performance ratings, for
instance, an
educator can close off entire avenues of professional development. And
on these grounds, an educator is not only responsible for student
learning , but in one sense functions as society's "last line of
defense" with regard to the maintenance of accepted standards for
personal achievement and professional development.
The educator must determine for each
student::
-
what potential for academic,
professional, and personal growth the learner has
-
what is known and still unknown and
yet to be known
-
what there is to be accomplished by
the learner
-
how knowledge and skills can be
used
Educators are in a paternalistic
relationship because they serve as educators due to the decision of the
parent(s) to entrust the child's development, at least in part, to
others who are trained and professional educators. The educator serves
in loco parentis in the development or growth of the child. The
partnership is between the parents and educators in the development of
the child. Educators enter into either a implicit
or explicit relationship with the parents or those serving in the stead
of parents, guardians or the state in the form of public institutions
for education. At times there is an explicit contract between parent
and educator at other times it is through some mediating body such as a
school system.
Parents must produce changes in their
children. Without the physical changes that are the products of
nourishment and known as growth they die.
Children left unfed will not prosper or long survive. Parents attend to
the needs of their offspring before such are known or appreciated by
their progeny. Parents, at least those who attempt to be responsible
parents, make their best judgments as to how to best serve the needs of
their children for physical and intellectual development or growth. So
parents are to produce changes in their children. Parents enter into
this relationship and its incumbent duties of their own accord. There
is no contract that explicates either the relation or the duties.
Educators must produce changes in
their students, else they suffer the death of intellect for lack of intellectual change known as
intellectual growth. Students left untaught will not prosper in the
social setting or even long survive as involved in social life in any
positive sense. The ignorant and uneducated suffer us all to bear
their physical survival on the outskirts of society and often times
outside of the accepted norms of behavior. Their survival is a
product of a liberal welfare state born of a well educated populace. Educators attend to the needs of
their learners before such are known or appreciated by their students.
Educators, at least those who attempt to be responsible educators, make
their best judgments as to how to best serve the needs of their students
for physical and intellectual development or growth. So educators are to
produce changes in their students. Educators enter into this
relationship and its incumbent duties of their own accord. Sometimes
there is an actual contract that explicates the duties of the educator.
At all times there is the covenant between the educator and the
community of learners.
Throughout the life span there is a
growth in the capacity for autonomy or a "generative autonomy " on the
part of children as children in their role as students and thus there is
a tendency for paternalism to decrease. The least evidence of
paternalistic behavior would be and is exhibited in graduate and post
graduate education.
In latter life there are oft times
conditions that lead to a "degenerative autonomy" whereby children often
need to exercise a paternalism in their relationship to their aging and
ailing parent. At such times there occurs a "reverse paternalism".
The development of programs for the aged have led to children
"enrolling" their parents in education programs aimed at assisting them
with adapting to circumstances of their aging.
There are problems with paternalism
and none more interesting than that most mature adults do not want to be
treated as if they were children. Most human beings want to maintain
their autonomy and right of self-determination. The law supports the
rights of individuals to make their own decisions and their right to the
information needed to make good decisions. This paternalistic model may work well
with small children and those lacking full intellectual capacity as
autonomous moral agents capable of responsible decision making.
Paternalism does
not work well as children mature into adults and certainly becomes most
problematic, if not downright insulting, when used with adults. This
being said it is nonetheless the case that in education the relationship
involving the educator and the learner is always one where the
parties have not accumulated equal or equivalent knowledge or skills and so
there is often need for the learner to surrender decision making
authority to the educator who assumes the fiduciary responsibility for
the learner wherein when making decisions on behalf of the learner the
educator must aim to both benefit the learners and protect the
learner from harm.
The educator and learner are not
equal. There is a gap that distinguishes the one form the other.
The relationship is of course relative to what is known and who has yet
to learn it. The roles of learner and educator can be reversed
easily relative to some information, knowledge or skill. The gap
can not be overcome by some equalizing. The gap is preserved and
revivified by emphasizing what makes the one not the other. There
are the differences in the midst of the similarities. There is a
process of interaction through which the learner should acquire the
methodology though which the educator acquired what the educator knows
and can do. Both learner and educator submit to the process of
emphasizing and transferring through interacting with the educator
enticing and inspiring and doing what is needed to lead out of the
learner that which the learner is capable of acquiring from the
educator: what is possessed by the educator and yet to be possessed by
the learner.
C. Whose Benefit?
Necessary Harm for the Benefit
of Society
A harm to a learner may be regarded as
a necessary harm over the complaint of the learner if the professional
educator is to achieve the fulfillment of the responsibility all
professional educators have to the more general public they serve in
producing an increase in human intellectual capital needed for social cohesion and
progress. But in this case the harm is one that is warranted out of a
sense of paternalism.
"Dworkin does not draw a sharp distinction between
weak and strong paternalism - and perhaps there is no sharp
distinction to be drawn - he does argue that Mill was mistaken to
reject paternalism. According to Dworkin,
Gerald Dworkin, Paternalism, The Monist,
La Salle, IL., Vol. 56, No. 1. the wager view by which Mill
justifies paternalism with respect to children can be extended to
adults.
The Wager View: It is morally permissible to restrict the
autonomy of children for their benefit since they are not fully
rational and we bet (wager) that if they were, they would concur with
our decisions.
But extending the wager view to adults requires
that we assume that, if the adult were fully rational, the adult would
concur with our restrictions on his or her autonomy. What this implies
is that
-
Those who would restrict an individual's autonomy
bear the burden of proof-i.e., they must demonstrate that
paternalism is justified. It is not required that the individual
justify that paternalism is wrong, since paternalism is
presumptively wrong.
-
In cases were paternalism can be adequately
justified, the alternative which least restricts autonomy should be
adopted over any other alternative.
Given these restrictions on paternalism, it is
astonishing to realize the extent of unjustified paternalism on the
part of the Federal and State Governments. For example, the so-called
'War on Drugs' and the prohibition of drugs for recreational use is
morally illicit, since the government has clearly failed to adopt the
alternatives which least restrict autonomy, even assuming it borne the
burden of proof to justify the prohibition, which, to be sure, it has
not." - - Don Berkich of University of
Massachusetts-http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~phil100/units/unit-07/lecture-01/dworkins_argument.html
As an example of such a harm requiring an act of
strong paternalism on the part of the social institution of education consider
the case of those who hold ideas and beliefs supportive of bigotry,
prejudices, stereotypes, and racial hatred. The belief systems of
racial supremacists are to be challenged despite the potential harm to
the self esteem and self image of those who think of themselves as
supremacists. It matters not how hard such people might protest
the attempts to change their minds on this matter or the harms they
claim are being done unto them by those attempts. What does matter
is that the debilitating Habits of Mind be effectively addressed and
that these people become better educated and relieved of those mindsets
that impair their intellectual growth and threaten social cohesiveness.
A person with an infection that was highly communicable and dangerous to
the well being of humans would be required to undergo treatment for the
benefit of themselves and for that of society or be isolated from others
who are without the infection and made to remain possibly with others so
infected. Treatments need be
rendered against the protests of the infected. Such people might
need to observed undergoing the treatment to insure that they received
it and even physically confined as long as they were a threat to the
general well being of society. So too would be that case with
rendering educational efforts to those in need for the benefit of
themselves and the greater whole.
It must be noted that there are
important ways in which the institution of education can not be compared
to that of medicine in so far as treatment of the abnormal or
pathological is concerned. In education there are many
people who are in the sense above infected in some way with a remediable
pathology who may feel good about their condition as they do not
perceive any pain or harm caused by their ignorance or lack of skill.
They remain a danger to society nonetheless and had ought to be treated
while in formal educational institutions for the benefit of both the
individuals and the general society. In education the "patient"
must be an active participant in the process of intellectual development
if educational efforts or instruction is to succeed. There
is labor, effort or work to be done and this is often perceived as
disruptive, painful, costly and unnecessary by learners.
In medicine it can be the case that a remedy can be delivered
effectively while the recipient remains in a passive role.
There are times when dealing with
learners that questions arise as to the appropriateness or acceptability
of a program of instruction or a lesson or a mode of instruction and
those questions result from there not being a clear indication of what
benefit there is to the learner. Whose benefit is being produced?
Is it that of the individual learner, that of society itself, or both at once? How is it
that the educator handles the conflict between serving the interests of
society in having education support the increase in human intellectual
capital to be shared by all in society and serving the interests of the
individual learner in increasing the individual's abilities to grow and
to occupy a certain desirable position in the social order, principally
through some vocation?
It would be a professional
responsibility of an educator to make it clear to the learner the
reasons why the educational program and experiences and exercises are
what they are. This mitigates against unnecessary harm.
D. Tolerance
People have a right to believe what they wish but
that is not an absolute right and, in particular and most acutely, that is not a right to be recognized in
educational institutions. Whatever is its status in popular culture,
tolerance as an absolute value is not a value within the institution of
education. Tolerance and education are at odds with one another when
tolerance is taken as acceptance of beliefs no matter their content or
implications.
To tolerate some person or behavior or rule or
regulation is not to accept it and embrace it a support it. In
tolerating something there is the idea that there some aspect of it that
is undesirable or troubling else it would not be tolerated but some
other relationship would obtain such as endorsement, acceptance or
celebration. When the undesirable aspect of what is being
tolerated reaches a point that it is harmful to the person or
institution that is tolerating it, then what had been tolerated would be
tolerated no longer. Parents can tolerate certain behaviors of
their children up to a point. When that point is reached there is
an end to the toleration.
"Alright buster now you have done it. Now
you have gone too far."
Inside of the social institution of education beliefs
about the physical universe including the human species and its history
and varied cultures are not beliefs that are to be given any protection
from being challenged and being made the object of careful examination.
Behaviors and beliefs that interfere with instruction or thwart education
are not to be tolerated in an educational institution.
The following behaviors (mental) and espousals would
not and should not be tolerated:
"Where I come from we believe that :" or "My personal
belief is that:"
Blacks are grossly inferior to other peoples and
should be treated as property and made into beasts of burden.
Women are not the equal of men and ought not to be
allowed into commerce or into the same rooms as men in schools.
The belief that the earth is flat is to be challenged
and changed by education. The belief that women are inferior to men is to
be challenged and changed by education. The belief that the cure for aids
is to have sex with a virgin is to be challenged and changed by
education. The belief that one group of people by virtue of skin color is
superior or inferior to another is to be challenged and changed by
education. Claiming that these beliefs are part of one’s religion or
culture or are personal to one's self and
thus not to be subject to examination or challenge or the effort to have
them removed from the mind of the believer is a claim that should not be
respected in any educational institution and not in civilized societies.
This has grave implications for the practice of allowing religious
organizations to teach basic subject matter. “Separate but equal” is as
near impossible with religious schools being separate from public schools
as it was for schools that were for what were thought to be different
races. The religious Habit of Mind is not that which is developed in
public education through a study of math and science and other forms of
rational thought. A curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences is a
curriculum to develop critical thinking and the appraisal of empirical
claims by the careful review of the physical evidence in support of this
claims. Such a curriculum is not the same as and in some ways antithetical
to a program of religious instruction that would foster a Habit of Mind
that is authoritarian or tenacious.
The Habit of Mind that accepts what authorities have
claimed as true without asking for support for those claims is to be
challenged by education. Every effort should be made within the
educational institution to change minds from being formed and informed by
Habits of Mind that are closed to inquiry and testing and evaluation into
minds that are open to inquiry: from the willing believer into the
skeptical inquirer seeking the best possible positions supported by
reasoning and evidence.. Minds should be challenged to grow and realize their
potential. Such growth would be supported by insistence upon respect for
individual expression and participation within every form of social
association. The education of such minds has been and will be a
civilizing force.
Humans progress when they do not believe that the earth
is flat but learn through experience and minds open to experience that the
earth is an oblate spheroid. Humans progress when they do not believe that
disease is an unavoidable condition resulting form some supernatural cause
but learn that disease results from bacteria and viruses. Humans progress
when they do not believe that people are superior or inferior to one
another in virtue of their sex or skin color but learn of the fundamental
similarities and the valuable differences amongst humans. Humans progress
when their simple minded and false beliefs are displaced by learning that
develops minds open to inquiry and knowledge and truth that tempers the
impulse to jump to conclusions and for prejudgment and for violence.
Tolerance has as its root meaning "to endure". Recent
events are making it increasingly clear that the celebration of tolerance
as a high value is something that needs to be rethought. Endurance of
behaviors that are threatening to civilization itself its core values and
driving forces) is no longer desirable. In the assault upon innocent
lives and the values that mark civilization itself, the idea of
unqualified tolerance and the practice of permitting people to maintain
their beliefs and Habits of Mind unchallenged by education are no longer
to be tolerated.
It was never a very good idea to make tolerance so
important or to identify it as a cardinal virtue for a liberal or
democratic society. Unlimited tolerance could never serve as part of some
universal bedrock for society or culture let alone for civilization.
Tolerance as an absolute could not be promoted if it would mean to
tolerate the intolerant. That is a self defeating notion. Those who hold
beliefs that are intolerant of those not sharing those beliefs are a
danger to those desiring to be tolerant. The fanatic believers often want
all others to join with them in their beliefs or to remove the
non-believers altogether: convert or die. Tolerating killers is not a
good idea. Tolerating that which produces, supports and encourages
killers is also not a good idea.
Tolerance has always implied a temporary state of
affairs. It has always indicated that what was to be tolerated was not
altogether to be accepted and certainly not promoted or valued highly: it
was to be, well, tolerated or simply put up with, but up to a point. The
toleration of belief systems that support the destruction of the social
fabric through deliberate acts of homicide and homicidal acts targeting
the innocent and children and the needy has now reached that point where
tolerance can be tolerated no longer.
What exactly is no longer to be tolerated? The acts of
violence have never been tolerated. So, now it is the ideas, the beliefs,
and the belief systems that lead to and support and celebrate those acts
of violence that are not to be tolerated. The belief systems that
threaten human life and civilization itself cannot be tolerated. They
need to be challenged and they need to be changed. The minds that possess
the ideas, beliefs, sets of beliefs and Habits of Mind that are set
against civilization need to be changed. Education is the institution
that serves societies in changing the minds of its members in a fashion
that promotes the development of individuals and provides for the social
cohesion and progress needed for the social life. Educational
institutions that offer what becomes mere training and permits simple
minded holding of beliefs fail to educate that mind that is itself a
product of civilization: the mind that is open to ideas and insists on the
critical examination, review and evaluation of ideas before holding them
to be true and acting upon them. Such minds are the target of attack by
those possessed of the opposite: minds that are programmed to refuse
careful examination of beliefs.
It is not so much a clash of culture or a culture war.
It is an assault on civilization itself. Those who commit the violent
acts attack not so much people as the way of life and the values
supporting that way of life and that way of life is one identified with
being civilized. They do not simply act out against freedom and
materialism they act against the values placed on human life: the idea
that innocent people are not to be harmed.
Civilization is represented in those who are
compassionate to those in need. Civilization is represented in the idea
that children are not to be killed or offered up in sacrifice in the
service of some ideal, and particularly not in service of some political
cause.
Those who commit these acts are barbarians in the sense
of being outside of the culture of civilization as they hold different
values from those who cherish civilization and value its continued
progression.
What is it that moves human forward in the process of
civilization? It is the process of educating people that develops human
potential through the development of minds capable of critical thought and
evaluation. It is a process of intellectual growth that moves beyond
basing human action on beliefs alone. Civilization advances not on belief
but on knowledge. It is knowledge of the cause of disease that leads to
their curtailment or elimination. It is knowledge of the plight of the
other that can develop effective feelings of empathy and sympathy.
Belief can serve for a time as a basis for social
unity and identification. Belief can serve to help humans to form groups
and deal with one another and the environment. But beliefs can and do
lead to some most horrible atrocities as humans come to hold the
continuation of their beliefs as more important than life itself. This
occurs when beliefs are challenged by experiences to the contrary of those
beliefs. Then some fearing loss of all identity and value might react
with actions to remove the perceived threats to those beliefs. If those
who feel threatened believe that they have no other method for determining
truth or knowledge they may and do so value the beliefs that they have
that they will and do commit violent acts against persons. In the defense
of such beliefs, particularly those supporting intolerance, humans are
killed. Innocent humans are killed, children are killed, and the injured
and needy and incapable of defense are killed.
Before the killing of humans there must be the killing
of knowledge and truth and value for human life. This occurs when
education becomes indoctrination and training. When math and science are
forbidden or reduced to simple belief systems there is surrender to simple
beliefs and a flight from beliefs that are to be tested by reason and
evidence. The Taliban presented us with what education becomes in the
service of ideology and what education becomes when there is a need for
the production of suicide bombers. Education becomes indoctrination.
There is only one truth and it is to be memorized and the authority
conveyed upon the transmitters of that truth is to be considered as
absolute and thus all questions of truth and knowledge are referred to
that authority.
Against this is the teaching that develops minds
capable of making judgments about beliefs using reasoning and evidence.
Such minds must be deliberately developed as such minds develop beyond the
earliest Habits of Mind that emerge in the young who must accept what
authorities provide and quickly if they are to survive. The educated mind
is a mind that is distrustful of ideology and indoctrination. The
educated mind is a mind that is open to inquiry and wants evidence to
support or falsify claims and theories.
E. Focus: learner or content
It happens at times that physicians
focus more on the disease entity or organ system than on the person who
is ill and in need of assistance. This has been commented on often in
the fields of medicine and medical ethics as this situation brought
attention to itself through the resultant set of problems generated in
the realm of interpersonal relationships and respect of basic human
rights and sensibilities that becomes lessened when the focus is not on
the person. There are ongoing attempts to address this through medical
school curricula incorporating more humanities instruction and
legislative measures setting out basic rights for recipients of medical
care. Likewise in education a professional educator can become more
focused on the curriculum or the discipline and its cognitive contents
than on the persons being educated. When this occurs educators can
lessen the emphasis on the growth process of individuals as they attend
to the development and delivery of course content. Some attempts to
address this are now in evidence as there is a rapid rise in centers for
excellence in teaching and learning and the move towards learner centered
education. The literature or SOTL is replete with materials urging or
supporting a focusing on the learner.
The contrast between focusing on the
content of the curriculum rather than on the development and growth of
the learner evidences itself in discussions on the relative importance
of depth as compared to the breadth of the instructional program or
class. It is also in evidence in the nearly perennial debate amongst
those in higher education that pits instruction in the liberal arts and
sciences against vocational and professional training. For the
professional educator the obligation to benefit the individual learner
can not be supplanted by the obligation to serve the public good or the
advancement of the academic discipline.
VI. Conclusion:
Responsibility with Sensitivity
Not only is it ethically or
morally appropriate and correct to address and seek to remediate Habits
of Mind but it is also a fundamental responsibility of professional
educators to do so.
Changing the contents and the Habits of Mind of learners is the object of education. Education is about teaching people how
to think and the foundation of the academic enterprise is suffused with
reasoning, the value of reasoning and the hope that reasoning will be
accepted as the corrective to much that is wrong with some thinking.
Such an objective must be approached by professional educators with
ethical awareness as sensitive to the needs and rights of the learners
as human beings who entrust themselves to the educators for presumed
benefit as it is sensitive to the obligations that professional
educators have to their disciplines and to society who entrust educators
with their professional responsibilities. Educators seek to increase
the human intellectual capital of their learners; their knowledge,
skills and Habits of Mind. Educators should seek to avoid causing
their learners whatever harm is foreseeable, avoidable and unnecessary.
Professional educators must think about those harms.
Professional programs that prepare educators should address the ethical
obligations of professional educators to their disciplines, their
society and their learners along with their rights as educators.
@copyright 2005 by S. Kincaid and P. Pecorino