Philosophy of education at the edge of the world: the concept of education revisited... more

Philosophy of education at the edge of the world: the concept of education revisited... Mrs Helen Lees Laboratory for Educational Theory, University of Stirling School of Education Pathfoot Building University of Stirling STIRLING FK9 4LA Stirlingshire SCOTLAND h.e.lees@stir.ac.uk 1 Philosophy of education at the edge of the world: the concept of education revisited... Cathy: [talking about home education] “Either it‟s cool or they completely don‟t get the idea...” (Interview with Cathy in Lees 2010) „In exploring the concept of education a territory is being explored where there are few signposts. To use Ryle‟s phrase, the „logical geography‟ of concepts in the area of education has not yet been mapped.‟ (Peters 1967, pg 1) Abstract This article examines possible implications for the field of philosophy of education of data from a recent research study (Lees 2010) of the discovery, by adults, of alternative modalities of education distinct from mainstream schooling. The 2010 study showed that discovery of educational alternatives such as elective home education (Thomas and Pattison 2007) or democratic schooling of a Summerhillian (Neill 1968) type appears to exhibit characteristics closely matching natural science discoveries as theorised by T. S. Kuhn involving anomaly, crisis, revelation, gestalt switch and revolution (Kuhn 1962). This would suggest paradigmatic „worlds‟ operate within education. Using the article „The Concept of Education Revisited‟ (Wilson 2003), the present „visit‟ to the concept of education uses the implications of the above study on discovery‟s data on educational conceptual revolutions to suggest that conceptual analysis of education requires substantial revision in the light of the idea of education as paradigmatic at the level of modality. The article posits that not taking into account the possibility that education can be a paradigmatic field at the level of modality tacitly and by omission philosophically conflates education as a concept with a singular „paradigm‟ of education to be mostly found in and modelled by mainstream schooling. 2 An introduction to two possible problems with current conceptual philosophising in education Questions abound in the field of philosophy of education concerning the tools of the trade, the style of „philosophy‟, the perspective and position of vision and the nature of writing acceptable to the community of philosophers (Alexander 2006; Peters 2007; Suissa 2008; Chambliss 2009; Phillips 2009). Whether philosophy of education involves a background in analytical philosophy or continental philosophy, transcends, demands aims, offers comparisons or simply wonders about education from varying perspectives, what is most important in all of this is the concept of education, or the meaning of what we talk about when we mean „education‟. Numerous attempts have been made to claim for philosophy of education the task, as primary, of determining the conceptual meaning of „education‟, rather than a stronger focus on its empirical nature. For instance: „Similarly it might be thought that competent English-speakers already know what is meant by „education‟ and cognate terms („educate‟, „educational‟, etc.): that we need to enquire into the nature of education rather than into the meaning of „education‟. But that assumption is, pretty obviously, false or at least questionable: prima facie people seem to disagree about the meaning of the term as well as about the nature of the thing. And that implies that our first priority is to reach agreement about the meaning of the term.‟ (Wilson 2003, pg 103) The above quote includes the suggestion that although we might argue about what education is in nature, the „first priority‟ of a philosopher of education is to determine meaning, not nature. This seemingly important determination is through a reaching of „agreement‟. 3 A first educational problematisation of this argument is grounded in an application of Kuhnian theorisation. The appropriateness of such an application has emerged from an empirical study on the discovery of educational alternatives which showed that core features of natural science discovery as theorised by Kuhn involving anomaly, crisis, revelation, gestalt switch and revolution (Kuhn 1962) apply in the same manner, sequence and pattern to educational discovery of alternatives to mainstream schooling (see Lees 2010). This would suggest paradigmatic „worlds‟ operate within education: mainstream schooling is one and alternative education is another. Also, it suggests that factors of Kuhnian incommensurability (Kuhn 2000) that are a part of the difference of paradigmatic „locations‟ are taking place in education between differing worlds of educational practice and philosophy. In the light of this various questions arise: W hat if a reaching of conceptual agreement about what education is in line with Wilson‟s suggestion (Wilson 2003) were impossible? What if the „world-views‟ of the thinkers involved in such a debate were incommensurable each with the other to an extent so strong that attempting agreement were itself meaningless? Kuhn has suggested in no uncertain terms that different understandings of a natural science object of enquiry can occur to someone who has experienced a change in their view point so fundamental that the „data themselves had changed‟ (Kuhn 1962, pg 135). Can this be true of educational data: that depending on our point of view the education before us for conceptual analysis with a desire to determine meaning is actually different „data‟ to different people? Is it possible that it is not possible in Wilson‟s sense of the meaning of the concept of education to reach agreement because of Kuhnian factors of incommensurability being at play within education as a wide field of study? What, if this is possible, does that do to philosophy of education if, as it is claimed by Wilson, a primary aim of such philosophy is to determine the meaning of „education‟? A second problematisation of a tidy agreement seemingly deemed desirable within philosophy of education about the concept of education is that a definition of education like: 4 „a serious and sustained programme of learning, for the benefit of people qua people rather than only qua role-fillers or functionaries, above the level of what people might pick up for themselves in their daily lives...‟ (Wilson 1979, in Wilson 2003) excludes those people qua people‟s definition of education who disagree that education is like this. We might reasonably ask, „Who would reasonably disagree with such a sensible and comprehensive definition?‟ However, there are people qua people who have determined for themselves that a) education is neither „serious‟ nor „sustained‟ and furthermore need be neither, b) it is mostly and most efficiently picked up for themselves and others in their daily lives and that casual daily activity constitutes the main educational activity for them qua people (e.g. Davies 2009). Such views are widely held in alternative education where autonomous modes of educational practice, involving „picking up‟ are taken to be the most educationally meaningful lines of educational flight towards benefit for themselves qua people amongst people (Goodsman 1992; Thomas and Pattison 2007) and are not in any way „bordering‟ on education (Peters 1967, pg 11) but are the intrinsic and sometimes complete process of education itself. Thus we find that on at least two counts, an attempt within philosophy of education aiming to determine the concept of education works ineffectively as determinant of the concept of education as a whole if education is paradigmatic at the level of modality. Such extant definitions can do helpful and substantial work in determining education as seen from a certain world-view of education (see also Peters 1967) if that world view involves that „any serious programme of learning will necessitate some kind of disciplinary structure to ensure that the programme is effective; and it will require some kind of evaluation to ensure that the learning has actually been done‟ (Wilson 2003). If, however, the „programme of learning‟ is of another kind: mostly unstructured and unevaluated „conversations‟ (Thomas and Pattison 2007) or is determined and constructed by freedom rather than programmatic learning principles (Neill 1968; Sudbury-Valley-SchoolPress 1992), then a Wilsonian concept of education applied to claims (coming from inside such a paradigm of alternative education?) that education of „another kind‟ is education, will 5 conclude that „because it is at least arguable that, in practice, education goes wrong because these basic logical requirements are absent‟ (Wilson 2003) that „other‟ education is education proper going wrong. Because of this the „weight or force... of conceptual clarity‟ in philosophy of education does not just „bear on practical choice and action‟ (ibid) but bears down upon education to mean that it excludes and marginalises all other claims to being education within the provided concept of education. This is likely to happen even if those claims to conceptually be education are valid within their own paradigm. This is because, due to Kuhnian incommensurability factors (Kuhn 2000), understanding cannot be „mixed‟ and those with the voice, the publication space, the philosophical resources and the hegemonic force or weight of application of the tools of conceptually clarifying and determining what education is or might be hold sway; subsequently the concept that belongs to their paradigm gains ground or holds ground as the concept of education. Rather than clarifying, any lack of „hermeneutical sensitivity‟ (Bernstein 1991, pg 92) regarding educational conceptual possibilities determines the concept of education. For philosophy of education as a community of practice to philosophise its concept of education under philosophical conditions where education is recognised as paradigmatic at the level of modality (such that mainstream schooling and alternative education are recognised as separate paradigms of education), philosophers of education must admit, disclose or make clear the paradigm of practice within which they speak. Their discourse must (and can) be true to its own world view but it also needs to „own up‟ to the world view of the type of education with which it works when it speaks of the concept of education in order for the philosophical display to be open to education as conceptually open. As we see from Wilson, this does not seem to be presently a commonly recognised requirement in philosophy of education. It is suggested here that this is because a) alternative education of the type mentioned above is largely ignored by philosophy of education as a community of writers 6 who publish within academia, as having academic validity of its own educationally philosophical kind, b) education as a field of academic research at the level of concept has not understood itself as paradigmatic at the level of modality, c) work in educational philosophy on educational concepts is in its earliest stage of development. These three factors create educationally unfortunate self-satisfied generalisations about the concept of education within philosophy of education which do not and cannot apply to education in general because of paradigmatic difference and Kuhnian incommensurability between differing worlds of education being in operation (see Lees 2010). The arena of educational philosophy and practice from which Wilson and others seem to speak fits closely within arenas of education commensurable to school education where structure, discipline, assessment, deliberate applied practice, etcetera are all principles of education as known – or argued - to be inside the concept of education. However, these definitions and explorations of concept do not apply to educational alternatives, where practice eschews many of the defining features of such „school-appropriate‟ education in order to construct for itself another form of education, where the concept of education is not dependent on the same Wilsonian given features of learning to have meaning for people qua people (Miller 2008; Mintz and Ricci 2010). Does that mean that, according to such a perspective of philosophy of education that educational alternatives are not education? In essence, we can say that the concept of education when non-paradigmatic is a vast territory of possibilities to be argued for in order to reach idealistic „agreement‟, but as soon as we admit that education is paradigmatic at the level of modality – or philosophy – of education, such a desire for agreement creates of (a certain type of) education a closed territory of elitisms of concept and meaning because closure is required to reach agreement in the face of Kuhnian incommensurability and paradigmatic difference. Despite R. S. Peter‟s notion that „to be educated is not to have arrived; it is to travel with a different view‟ (Peters 1967, pg 8), 7 we find that there is no different view within education and its philosophy if education is not seen as paradigmatic at the level of modality. These two issues of incommensurability and exclusivity, if not recognised, do neither education, nor philosophy and philosophers of education any favours either in the real world of practice or the fluid and complex world of thought pertaining to education as a broad domain of possibilities if the aim is a concept of education that is honest and open. How serious is this issue for philosophy of education? Wilson‟s attempt (2003) to revisit the concept of education develops the notion that whilst the „what of „what is science?‟ seems fairly secure and the „what‟ of religion is inconclusive, „„Education‟ perhaps stands halfway between these two extremes: we have some idea of what education is or what „education‟ means, but not a clear enough idea for us to institutionalise it effectively.‟ (Wilson 2003). Furthermore, he states: „To conclude: I have not here tried to talk the reader into accepting any particular definition of „education‟, or to give a full account of what „the concept‟ of education is. All I have tried to do is to show that, if we understand the word „concept‟ properly, then that understanding will have very considerable implications for practice. That alone suggests that the concept of education is well worth revisiting...‟ (ibid) Given that Wilson‟s self-confessed partial account or definition of education is clearly bounded within a particular paradigm of educational concepts pertaining to a particular paradigm of educational practice (not shared by educational alternatives), it begs the question as to whether conceptualisation on Wilson‟s terms of what „concept‟ means would ever be able to revisit education as a completely other concept? The problem of the „concept of 8 education‟, would on Wilson‟s terms of what is allowed to be education be merely a tweak here and a tweak there within a given and closed world of educational concepts if seen from an alternative paradigm of education. This would be fine and appropriate if the paradigm within which the exploration of „concept of education‟ were the only one and the right one. But, what if Wilson and R.S. Peters and every other philosopher of education interested in the concept of education was working with an outdated, irrelevant and philosophically moribund concept of the arena of education that was not able to admit of education as paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense of different worlds because it was so much a part of an old „school of education‟ that it could not change or even envisage alternative configurations of educational concepts? Then, for philosophy of education to be relevant and up-to-date, Kuhn‟s suggestion is that such philosophy would first have to die (rather than relinquish its non-paradigmatic –or rather- paradigmatic views) in order for newer theories to take a hold (Kuhn 1962). Such a waiting game would be a serious problem indeed if education was subject to crisis, anomaly and revolution at the level of practice, perhaps brought on by past-faced changes to do with technology for instance (see Papert 1993; Bell and Gray 1997; Mitra, Dangwal et al. 2005) and required a philosophy of education to keep pace with that change for philosophy of education to have impact. Such strong factors of challenge to empirical and conceptual forms of education were they to exist and be able to change the nature of education (because of pragmatic considerations?), would require philosophy of education to philosophise within the paradigm of practice that was a match. That present required match might not be the one previously experienced or developed (such is the power of philosophy of education), when educational practice worked with philosophical concepts – and vice-versa - deemed appropriate twenty or even ten years ago. This is because, following the Kuhnian thesis of incommensurability (Kuhn 2000), a mismatch would be incoherent philosophically and so in order for philosophy of education to have any meaning or make any sense for end-users it 9 would need to be seen to apply to the current model of education. Only when a match between the education needed for education to be meaningful for people qua people (see, for example, Burke and Grosvenor 2003) and the philosophising of the concept of education were achieved would the concept of education revisited be meaningful. Otherwise, revisitation to the concept of education becomes (because it stays within a traditional given educational set paradigm of commensurable concepts) a sort of revisitation to a platonic „ideal‟ Form of education such that education qua concept is ideal like a table. But wouldn‟t then revisiting the concept of education in this manner as a live and flexible concern for people qua situated people be something akin to visiting a person in prison on a regular basis? They‟re not going anywhere new, but the conversation is always slightly different. Feminism as a challenge to philosophy of education as „discipline‟ is one approach or issue which has strong similarities with the matter of modality paradigms as an issue applied to the concept of education. In feminist critiques, a female subjectivity is seen as a counterfoil to assumptions within philosophy of education that the starting point for discussions is a shared and understood given (Pendlebury 2005). Whereas in feminist critical readings of philosophy of education the positionality and perspective of a woman is rather ignored, in a modality critique, philosophy of education has failed to acknowledge differing philosophies of practice, concept and theory of education in favour of etching over and over in intricate new ways the same „walled‟ philosophical arena (the prison metaphor again?) or revisiting the same idealised and idealisable concept. That this philosophical arena has a strong and important connection and inter-dependent linkage to the globally dominant majority of educational conceptual envisioning leading to practice (children mostly sat at desks learning a curriculum?) outside of the community of philosophers of education which that community is supposed to serve with its philosophising does not mean that that is the only arena of educational practice, conceptual investigation or theoretical and philosophical exploration. 10 Other forms exist too, albeit marginally. Indeed, were the arena to remain „walled‟, surely its impact would shrink and whither from lack of vitality coming from exciting new influences over time? Is this perhaps the „unfashionable‟ element to conceptual work in philosophy of education of which Wilson speaks: „...the attempts of past and present philosophers to revisit it should not be dismissed simply because „conceptual analysis‟ is now in many quarters unfashionable.‟ (Wilson 2003). In other words, philosophy of education that deals singularly in a certain paradigm of education, deemed dominant but which is nevertheless fragile in its paradigmatic identity and open to crisis, is a philosophy of education arena that is open itself to charges of being in crisis, being boring, conservative, old-fashioned and potentially lethally (for the strength, health and vigour of philosophy of education) irrelevant and without impact, should the model of education with which it seems concerned to the conceptual exclusion of other models need to change. Whilst the model of educational practice may change, the philosophical paradigm stays the same or stays singular, enamoured of its historical achievements; etching the same space into some kind of ideal shape? If this is a charge that can be realistically laid against present philosophy of education as a community, the conceptual idea that education is a discipline or field that like natural science is paradigmatic - not just in terms of methodologies of practice and research (Guba 1990) but at the level of that practice and research itself, is a radicality which poses a challenge of potential change to the face of education and its concomitant servant „philosophy of education‟. If we can show somehow that philosophy of education is attached to a crumbling paradigm of educational practice, mired in anomaly, crisis and undergoing transitions to new understandings requiring new concepts of education we can suggest that a serious issue for philosophy of education is to look at the object „education‟ of its conceptualisation and perhaps seek to reconceive that object across and within differing and constantly evolving paradigmatic boundaries. This would be a more progressive and possibly productive approach 11 than allowing the „object‟ education to whip the carpet from beneath the feet of its own philosophy by changing in line with demand for more alternative practice of some kind (because of the impact of technology?), whilst the philosophy of education blindly continues to philosophise a singular traditional modality of education. There are two tasks then to follow. One is to show that the object „education‟ under current conceptualisation in philosophy of education is indeed the traditional non-paradigmatic object „education‟ as this would indicate a limitation of philosophy of education as discipline. The second is to show that this traditional object is in crisis. If these conditions for challenge to the idea of revisitation of the concept of education are met, we have possible grounds to suggest that that revisitation is working on a lost object. To establish an answer to the first task we can turn to a review of four key texts within the community of philosophy of education in the UK, which effectively show with what philosophy of education is concerned. J.J. Chambliss looks at a „companion‟, a „guide‟, a „reader‟ and an „anthology‟ of philosophy of education and in doing so discusses „philosophy of education today‟ (Chambliss 2009). Not only does this review generate a discussion about philosophy of education that never once indicates the specific kind or paradigm of education of which it speaks (whilst occasionally making seemingly „obvious‟ references to school curriculum or similar) but the books under review themselves have very few chapters covering forms of education which are not of a teaching and learning paradigm, underpinned by authority/discipline, structure, assessment, such as we find in mainstream schooling and Wilson offers as necessary features for education to not be „going wrong‟ as discussed above (Wilson 2003). It is not that alternative educational ideas from a schooling paradigm are not covered at all in these texts: Randall Curren‟s edited „anthology‟ discusses homeschooling and Paolo Friere‟s models of education (Curren 2007), but that there appears to be a strong assumption running through them. Education is portrayed as a singular non-paradigmatic field with the type of education found amongst practices of 12 learning and teaching common to mainstream schooling as its primary object. To fulfil the second task of showing that traditional education of the type found in such schools is in crisis is depressingly too easy. Serious issues to do with violence perpetrated by schooling (Harber 2004; Harber 2008; Harber 2009; Olson 2009), causing exit (Pilkington and Piersel 1991; Yoneyama 1999; Fortune-Wood 2007) disaffection (Carlen, Gleeson et al. 1992) and interpersonal harms (Curtis 11th March 2008; Campbell 2005; Walton 2005) are all strong indicators that the „traditional model‟ or paradigm of education is dysfunctional. So widespread, deep and serious are the issues that, although such education is a good experience for many, the model itself cannot claim to function either equitably or reliably as education for all and its function at the level of concept is thereby corrupted. Conclusion If education is after all – as the discussion above has suggested following the study on educational discovery (Lees 2010) – paradigmatic, it is a „science‟ or „scientific concept‟ of an altogether different type from the one we see assumed in texts „comprehending‟ education which discuss features of education as though they are known and knowable but only need reconceptualising for philosophy of education to do its given work. Indeed, in line with the challenges of complexity for education (Mason 2008; Osberg, Biesta et al. 2008), the idea of education as a paradigmatic field of practice and philosophy means that any academically and scientifically organised or influenced assumptions about forms of education to underpin philosophy of education are potentially lazy, self-satisfied generalities based on an idea of 13 education that is not at all advanced or in process of completion but is either finished or in its infancy and undergoing a „scientific‟ revolution right now so profound that it is about to be tipped off the edge of its own world. If not ready to revisit the concept of education in a deeply revolutionary manner, education and its philosophers risk no longer knowing of what they speak nor of what those „new world‟ philosophers who practice their own paradigmatically located „educational‟ philosophy mean. 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