I'm a Simpleton. Are You a Simpleton?

In Walter Miller's tale, A Canticle for Leibowitz, there is a "great simplification" unleashed after a nuclear holocaust akin to Pol Pot's attack on the learned in Cambodia but world-wide in scope.

As I set sail for the year 1493 (that would be Chapter 2 in Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me), I feared I was headed for one of Miller's (in)famous Simple Towns where learning has stopped and simple explanations reign. In this I was disappointed that this was the case, but not surprised.

What was surprising was reading Loewen's unconscious mimicking of a the worst approaches to any subject: simplification to the point of distortion. One would think that Loewen would be astute enough to remove the lumber from his own self before railing against the textbooks but it was not to be.

The big question for people like Loewen who congratulate themselves for happening to have been born after the unenlightened hoardes who proceeded them is along these lines: So, are you suggesting that it would be better that you did not exist? According to your narrative, the world would have been better off if Columbus never set sail and history did not unfold as it did. Had it not, I dare say that none of us would be here opining about the crimes of others that we distance ourselves from.

Loewen would prefer a world where the weak are not trampled on by the strong and that is understandable, but that world does not exist. That does not mean sugar-coating the sins of our fathers, but it does mean recognizing that every group of people have done evil. Do you think the Aztecs would have shied away from slaughtering the Spaniards if they had the means to do so? Does a group of people achieve sinless status simply because they get exploited?

C'mon, virtue does follow simple because one has been victimized. Yes, high school history textbooks over-simplify and are vapid, but great books are not created by simply inverting the historical narrative.

Hidden Curriculum, Hidden Anthropology (Phase I)

I. Critical Pedagogy and Hidden Curriculum

Promoters of "critical pedagogy" sometimes speak of the "hidden" curriculum that is present and assumed within the public or overt teaching that happens day-to-day. Joan Wink writes: "The hidden curriculum is the unexpressed perpetuation of dominant culture through institutional processes" (Critical Pedagogy, p. 46). Wink gives a good example of some Native American kids who think Thanksgiving is the celebration of when white guys taught the Indians how to farm! One could argue that what these students expressed is less about what goes at school than what is received as common "wisdom" from a multiplicity of sources (friends, family, media, etc.). But I digress.

Suffice to say that teachers and schools communicate far more than what is said or read in school. Education is always an "incomplete" process, of course, but what happens when entire fields of human knowledge are ignored? What might one call that? Hmm, unexamined subjects. Perhaps Unsub could be the Newspeak word. Or perhaps the omission of certain subjects are the result of the "hidden anthropology" of public education?

An East German soldier seeks an absent good
What's lacking in the American curriculum?

II. Hidden Anthropology - An Initial Sketch 

If one were to examine K-12 state standards (or Common Core) and ask, "What is omitted?" one would discover some interesting things. First, by "what is omitted?" I mean, What is a substantial field of human knowledge that is neglected or disproportionately small in the curriculum? The next step is to ask, "What do these omissions suggest about the nature of the human person that is assumed by the absence of these subject areas in the curriculum?"

A Premise. This may be so obvious as to seem unnecessary to state: Important things ought to be taught. This statement seems platitudinous, after all, who will argue that education ought to consist in the communication of trivia and frivolity? Hopefully no one. However, this premise could have transformative implications for the public school curriculum if it were taken seriously.

Fields of Knowledge versus State Standards. This is where "Phase II" comes into play. To find the missing like and hence the hidden anthropology. Stay tuned for details.

Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World - An Unreview

Joan Wink, Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, 3rd ed. (Pearson, 2005). 

This rambling and philosophically incoherent book is filled with questions such as "So what is Critical Pedagogy?" and even a chapter entitled "What in the World Do I Think It Is?", but Wink seems incapable of providing a clear definition of critical pedagogy. Instead, we get "gems" like this:

• One way to begin this chapter would be for me to list several definitions of critical pedagogy right now. I am resistant  to doing that because readers might be tempted to memorize any one of them as if it were the true definition (24). 
• In other words, Dear Reader: You are a numskull too dimwitted to be trusted with a definition. Or is it perhaps that a definition would require some clarity on the part of the Writer? 
• Critical pedagogy means that we see and articulate the entire critical context of teaching and learning. We are not afraid to say what we see, and we move to take action. Critical pedagogy gives us the courage to say what we have lived. Critical pedagogy challenges us to question our long-held assumptions (67).
• Got jargon? Got pious platitudes? Got a Party Line?  Little wonder that I had the same experience reading Wink's book that I had in reading stuff by Paulo Freire and John Dewey: these three all write in a faux mystical fashion. Here's an example from Freire: 
• "There is no possibility for teaching without learning. As well as there is no possibility of learning without teaching" (Wink, qtd at 85). 
• Whisky Tango Foxtrot, Over? If you dig brilliant flashes of the obvious these three will surely brighten your horizon.

All of this critical pedagogy talk reminds me of this clip from Whit Stillman's classic Barcelona: "Yeah, but they never talk about that [the actual text]. Or in the case of education, they never talk about content of education -- it's all about hegemony, class, power, race. In other words, education became an ideological battleground and supremely uninteresting.  Is it any wonder that education is such a mess with "sages" like this being touted as gurus and deep thinkers?

Give me a serious Marxist over any of these educators so fixated on praxis that they are utterly disinterested in academic disciplines and human subjects with actual intellectual, moral and spiritual needs.

Doing what Dewey discoursed about but decidely did not do

Experience and Education

Years ago (Francis J. Stafford was still the archbishop), Lorenzo Albacete gave a talk to Catholic catechists and school teachers. He spoke about how so many people are running around these days talking about experience but because they are so solipsistic or materialistic, they really aren't talking about experience, per se, but something much smaller and limited.

While re-reading portions of John Dewey's Experience and Education I thought of what Albacete said. Dewey was of course a thorough anti-religionist and materialist, so one wonders if he ought to entitled his book "Interactions and Education" or "Stimulus, Response and Education." This might have cheated him of the opportunity to further devalue the English language, but it might have made for a book with greater clarity.

Etymologically, ex-perience indicates the perception of something that does not originate in me; it has its origin in something other or Other. Thus ontologically one realizes that the self is not the center of reality but that all has been given. Experience in depth opens one to the transcendent; experience with the preconception of positivism leads a flattening of everything -- the center does not hold.

One will search in vain to find a coherent discussion of either education or experience in Experience and Education. But perhaps the title of Dewey's work is useful inasmuch as it points to what should be obvious to everyone: education ought to an experience that means something.

Bring out the Juice...

What Dewey cannot do, Luigi Giussani (aka, "The Juice") does do: dissolve the false opposition between so-called traditional and so-called progressive pedagogies.

Giussani recognized in The Risk of Education that a partial education will tend to be ideological (be it political or religious in nature) and that the goal of human (hence, authentic and complete) education is an education in freedom:

What we want -- and this is our purpose here -- is to free the young generation from mental slavery and from the tendency to conform, which mentally enslaves them to the forces in society (11)

In order to do this he proposes three simple (but by no means easy) premises for a pedagogical approach:

1. Present the past in a suitable form (tradition)
2. The content of tradition is discovered in one's own life right here, right now (experience)
3. Tradition and experience must be reflected upon and judged (criticism) [pages 8-9]

The dominant approaches to education may possess one or sometimes two of these elements, but one does not find a major "pedagogical school" that takes all three into consideration. Thus

• Progressives may link criticism and experience but neglect to take tradition seriously (e.g., "critical pedagogy" as espoused by the likes of Joan Wink)
• Traditionalists too may value personal experience via interpretation of a text and surely value traditional/canonical texts but often are superficially critical (e.g., Mortimer Adler's Paideia Proposal)

Giussani has thus discovered (rediscovered?) an approach that prevents teachers from either being "gurus" who know it all or passive-aggressive "facilitators" who push an agenda. Students too benefit by this approach because they are taught something of substance (tradition) and encouraged to relate this to their own life experience and then take the crucial next step:

The young student will now explore the contents of his knapsack, critically comparing what's inside of it -- his received tradition -- with the longings of his heart. The final standard of judgment must be found inside of us, for otherwise we are alienated (9).

What can he possibly mean by the "standard of judgment must be found inside of us"? If you are expecting a shallow relativism, you'll be surprised.

Stay tuned for details for answers to these and other exciting pedagogical topics.