Education without a philosophical foundation
Part nine in a ten-part series on the topic of public education in a liberal society.
This post is the eighth full exchange between myself and Patrick J. Casey on the role of public education in a liberal society. Read the introduction to learn more about the impetus for this project and our aims for the exchange. Click here to read the first full exchange, click here to read the second full exchange, click here to read the third full exchange, click here to read the fourth full exchange, click here to read the fifth full exchange, click here to read the sixth full exchange, and click here to read the seventh full exchange.
Our first full exchange focused on the topic of mandatory civic education and defined what we mean when we speak of liberal society; the second exchange outlined some assumptions we have about education; the third exchange dug into areas of agreement and disagreement between us, mostly surrounding whether to reform or rebuild our educational system; in the fourth exchange, per Patrick’s request, I lay out my vision for public schooling to which Patrick responds; in the fifth exchange we share our views on accountability and what ought to be the purpose of public schooling; in the sixth exchange, we go deeper into the question of the highest purpose (telos) of public education and whether schools are an appropriate means to create social cohesion; and in the seventh exchange, we discuss the idea of imparting a body of common knowledge and whether there is any body of knowledge that ought to be taught to all children across the nation or whether we should leave such decisions up to localities.
In this exchange, Patrick and I discuss developing a philosophy of education that is in line with schooling in a liberal society and whether liberalism can survive without a common philosophical foundation that undergirds our society—from how people live their lives to how institutions operate.
Dear Patrick,
I have been ruminating on this topic and how I might respond to you for far too long now. I am using our exchange as an opportunity to develop my philosophy of education, and I have been overthinking it. I’ve been spending way too much time fixated on the words I might use and the thinking of others that I might draw upon. This is a persistent problem for me when it comes to writing, even when I write for my Substack, which I have full editorial control over. (I blame schooling. :) So, I am going to try my best to just write what is on my mind without worrying whether the articulation of my thoughts would pass muster as an op-ed or scholarly article.
One question you posed was in regards to what I might call how I conceive of education—i.e., is it not liberal arts? My conception is probably best described as a liberal arts education, but I hesitate to use that phrase because I think that experiential learning is an important component of an education, though not necessarily in the ways that scholars like John Dewey have described. Generally speaking, I simply think that children and young adults need time to explore their interests, apply what they have learned to real-world situations, and learn from interacting with the world outside of books. Because the world of a child is small, I think that knowledge is best derived from books, but once they become more independent young adults, they need opportunities to expand their experience of the world, even if just within their local community. I’m not sure that the term “liberal arts” captures all of this.
I do think that we are on the same page regarding your three points, which I have copy and pasted here:
“First, a principle of subsidiarity—education should be locally run as much as possible. Second, education should be tailored towards passing on a minimal knowledge base supplemented by the virtues necessary for self-government and human flourishing. Third, stability and cohesion of societies can’t be secured simply by a shared language or a shared body of knowledge but requires having specific kinds of attachments to home, to one another, and to the state.”
First, yes, education should be locally run to the greatest extent possible. Second, in general, I think the central role of schools is to:
Pass on knowledge, and the primary means to do so is through reading “living books.” Charlotte Mason described living books as those that are written by an author who is knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter and writes in a conversational style. Living books make the subject matter come to life; they are not dry like textbooks. They don’t just list facts; they involve the reader’s emotions, making the content easier to remember. (I wrote an article for Discourse in which I talk more about Charlotte Mason’s approach to education, if you’re interested.)
Help young people develop the skills required to think well (i.e., process information and communicate effectively), which I think can be done by reading many books and often, using the Socratic method to process what they have read, which will also help them effectively communicate their thoughts.
Instill in students intellectual virtues, such as curiosity and attentiveness and intellectual humility, autonomy, and honesty. If for no other reason, I think these virtues are important for a school to promote because schools cannot (or should not) tolerate cheating and other forms of intellectual dishonesty. But I also think these virtues are worth instilling in the young because they contribute to the goal of helping students think well about the knowledge they are accumulating.
Give students opportunities to develop life skills and pursue their interests, such as sewing, engineering, gardening, computer science, etc. These pursuits can certainly be undertaken outside of school, and via other institutions, as well as within the home. These venues are likely better at providing the above-mentioned opportunities, but if we are going to hold students hostage for 7-8 hours a day, we should at least give them opportunities to figure out what they are good at and like doing.
Reinforce societal or community norms. However, I think this point only works when schools are the center of a tight-knit community.
The last point leads to our discussion about social cohesion. Zach Rausch, as an addendum to Jon Haidt’s recent book, The Anxious Generation, wrote an article claiming that tight-knit communities are a protective factor against anxiety and depression in young people. He noted that conservative religious communities experienced lower rates of anxiety and depression among young people because participation in community programs was higher, unsupervised free play was higher due to higher levels of trust, and screen time was lower. I think the larger point of this example is that communities that share a religion, for example, are more cohesive and such cohesion leads the members of the community to feel a part of something larger.
I share this example to say: What leads to social cohesion is not the school itself, or what is learned within the walls of the school, but rather living in high-trust tight-knit communities and
participating in religious and civil institutions within that community, which builds the trust and tight-knit disposition of the community. This, I think, is at least partly what C.S. Lewis was getting at in the Abolition of Man: when children are embedded within a tradition that their community shares, schools reinforce the norms of the tradition by simply being a part of that tradition as well.
Thus, I agree that schools, and the knowledge they impart, don’t foster social cohesion. Communities do.
This leads me to wonder: What unifies a large, multi-state country with a wide array of traditions? What will engender in citizens the feeling that they ought to defend the country (against foreign attackers on our soil; I’m not talking about going abroad to defend), if the necessity to do so arises? Do we rely on the innate intuition to defend one’s self and family and hope that people don’t decide to flee instead of staying and defending our country? The primary purpose of developing the school as an institution was to create Americans (the idea, not simply the legal status of citizens) among many groups of people with different customs and cultures.
I do think this can be done without school, so long as people feel an attachment to their community to the point where they are willing to help defend it. In this regard, I agree with Jon Haidt’s conclusion to The Righteous Mind. The idea of defending the entire country is too big and abstract, and I think that people view their corner of the country as different than, and perhaps more important—more special—than, the entire unit. And frankly, I’m not worried about foreign invaders so much as I am us destroying ourselves, thus a positive attachment to one’s community may be more pressing and more attainable.
I write all of this to say, if school is going to do anything in the effort of unity, perhaps it just needs to be a pillar of the community and represent the interests of the community in the sense that it gives its pupils the skills necessary to be self-sufficient (e.g., have the ability to acquire and process knowledge and information) and to self-govern (e.g., understand the basic functions of our institutions and governing bodies and what is expected of citizens) within their corner of the country.
Regarding the latter, the shared knowledge that students do possess should be: all graduates understand the legal system and have a general sense of the laws that govern the country. For instance, students should understand how the three branches of government function and the difference between the municipal, state, and federal levels. They should understand what is expected of them within the framework of the government. And, finally, they should understand their place within history, which can include, or centrally focus on, how our country came to be and how their state came to be.
And I would add that even if we think that providing a moral framework within schools is a stretch, and ought to be left to the parents and institutions in the community to impose, schools at least need to emphasize the importance of respecting one’s neighbor. A school cannot function well if kids are permitted to physically harm others or steal their stuff.
In conclusion, I think we are on the same page. What are your thoughts on what I’ve laid out? Pie in the sky but ideal?
Sam
Sam,
I loved reading your last letter and your piece in Discourse (I especially enjoyed the short critique of relying on textbooks, which I think are generally terrible). I also appreciated what you said about writing, and I think I know what you mean. It’s funny how we write as if it’s a kind of performance before others.
And I’m delighted to hear that you’ve been using the occasion of our letter writing to develop a philosophy of education. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve just started posting about this on your blog, no? I’ve been looking forward to reading your most recent post, though grading finals has kept me from doing so yet. I’ve been using our letters to do much the same. Well, perhaps with the qualification that I’ve been attempting to develop a philosophy of education that is compatible with living in a liberal society. I think in the context of these letters you’ve mainly been doing the same (correct me if I’m wrong) but I’m curious if in your blog you’ll be developing a universal philosophy of education or not. Thinking about philosophy of education in the context of a liberal society presents unique challenges given what many (including myself) have taken to be a primary purpose of the project—namely, how we can create a free society where people of diverse ways of life live together peaceably.
I do think we are circling in on a consensus. You mentioned a lingering issue about what kind of moral framework we can properly teach in schools. I think that this has been a recurring theme of our conversation since the beginning and I think it’s precisely because of the purpose of liberal societies to embrace multiple ways of life and traditions peaceably. This all flows from liberalism’s primary commitment to liberty—people should be able to live their lives as their reason and conscience dictates. As Locke says, we’re all created by God and put here on Earth for God’s own purposes, so it would be wrong for one person to presume to own another or even, ultimately, to try to compel their conscience.
I think perhaps what you might be articulating is something I’ve been wondering about since I recently taught Lewis’ The Abolition of Man this semester in my Philosophy of Education class. I’ve always understood Lewis to be a liberal in the philosophical sense. But some of what he says in The Abolition of Man seems to fit uneasily with how many liberals think.
Here’s what I mean: Lewis says, following the ancients and the traditions of much of mankind, that part of the point of education is to train children to like what they ought. He says that this has to be done before they have the ability to reason about it. This seems to be another way of raising the question we’ve been considering: Is that—what Lewis advises—a kind of indoctrination?
I suspect the answer kind of depends on whether Lewis is right about the doctrine of objective value. The doctrine of objective value is, he thinks, the idea that there is a proper response to the world and one another given the kind of creatures we are. He thinks that the Tao, or natural law, or whatever we want to call it, is the fundamental law of human behavior and contains the moral teachings that are universal across humanity: do as you would be done by, respect the elderly and your parents, care for the young and the vulnerable and the stranger, do not murder, tell the truth, be courageous, and so on. If he’s right, then the Tao is not a way of life, it’s the way of life. There’s no other way to be human than to exemplify the Tao. It’s not propaganda, as he says, it’s propagation. Teaching the Tao is just old birds teaching young birds to fly; older humans passing on what they know of how to be human to younger humans. If he’s wrong, then the Tao is only one way of life among others, in which case it would be indoctrination (perhaps).
This all fits uneasily with liberalism because liberalism is often taken to presuppose that there are different ways of life – Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Aristotelian, Millian experiments in living, and Nietzschean “create yourself.” Lewis would say that the first four are, at least in one important sense, actually the same because they share the Tao (in other important ways, they are different of course) and he would say that Nietzsche (and perhaps Mill, to some extent) are doing something destructive. Perhaps he would say that liberal societies can only survive insofar as they recognize this. But, my sense is that from the vantage-point of modern liberalism, all of these must be regarded as just different ways of life, equally valid.
However, here’s the rub: liberalism can’t enforce the Tao insofar as it does regard it as simply one option among many—it certainly wouldn’t want to enforce all of it, in any case. That would be indoctrination. If that’s right, then it looks like the education system can’t enforce the Tao. I think this is what we’re seeing now with children not having properly educated emotions, which Lewis regarded as one of the core objectives of education. Students these days all know that cheating is wrong—the trouble is that they don’t feel that it’s wrong. This means that, in practice, they cheat. (I should note that I don’t think this is uniquely a problem of this generation—the task of humanizing the young and making them into moral beings is a perennial one.)
I think this is what you were trying to express in your last letter. You were saying, in effect, “Students have to be taught not to lie, steal, and cheat, right?” I quite agree. You can’t have a society where people do things like that. However, Lewis thinks that the Tao is all one—you can’t pick and choose the elements you like and reject those you don’t like. So, if you can’t lie, cheat, and steal, then you can’t sleep with other people’s wives either.
This suggests to me that liberalism has a real problem. Perhaps liberalism made sense when it was grafted onto Christianity; it may not now. Nietzsche may have been right that the attempt to continue with the liberal project after its philosophical foundations in Christianity have been removed must lead to its collapse. Perhaps liberalism is like Wile E. Coyote after he has run off the cliff and simply hasn’t looked down to realize he’s running on air. A number of thinkers have been reflecting on this and similar problems—Jonathan Rauch and Alexandre Lefebvre come to mind.
My own suggestion—I’m open to persuasion otherwise—is that one of two things have to happen: (a) education can be removed from the purview of the state so that people can actually teach the Tao. Societies can’t survive without it being taught and liberalism, as it’s currently constituted, seems to be restricted from teaching it. Alternatively, (b) liberals may need to reject the idea that there are really different conceptions of the good and different ways of life and accept that for it to function, liberalism has to be grafted onto a more substantial philosophy, like Christianity or at least natural law theory.
There is a second lingering issue about how to achieve solidarity and unity in a country as large as ours. My initial reaction is to echo something I think I said before and which Lewis (sorry, he’s my guy!) articulates in The Four Loves. Namely, the way to achieve national unity is to have a kind of national myth about the society which attracts the affection and loyalty of the people but in such a way that it’s evident that it is just a myth. Lewis is clear that this mythical view of the society shouldn’t be taught in school (that would, I think, be indoctrination and propaganda) but instead be carried in culture.
We kind of do this already—we tell stories about the Founding Fathers where they are clearly larger than life. The Simpsons kind of warmly satirizes these stories in the myths that Springfielders tell about their own founding. When we talk of such things, it should always be done with a bit of a twinkle in one’s eye, similar to when one tells one’s kids about Santa Claus. The young should be able to pick up that there is a difference between the national myth and national history. And again, in school they should be taught the real history—often none too pretty in any society.
Obviously, this would need to be fleshed out and wise people should weigh in on the best way to accomplish it. But my best guess is that this would be the core of it. The difficulty is that if we want people to defend the country from foreign adversaries (or just not to tear ourselves apart), then we do need more than just mental assent to the ideals of the country. You need emotional attachment. Once again, I think having the schools inculcate that would probably be wrong and amount to a kind of propaganda and indoctrination. So, where is it going to come from? I think it’s got to be the broader culture and society.
I am curious about your reactions to what I’ve said. Perhaps three issues are on the table: (a) Are you presently thinking about your philosophy of education as a universal philosophy or one only appropriate to liberal societies? (b) Do you think my argument that either liberalism has to change or it has to remove education from its purview is plausible? And (c) You seemed to be favoring a view that perhaps our country is too big and unwieldy to expect loyalty to the whole and perhaps that we should settle for attachment to one’s local community. I’m sympathetic to this view as I think that most people probably are more attached to their neighborhood or city than they are to the country as a whole. However, what do you think about the idea of a national myth or set of myths as a way of providing an emotional attachment to the national project?
Patrick