CHAPTER ONE
On Education and Democracy
Everyone seems to have an opinion about education: whether it is worth having; whether it is necessary; whether theyâve had enough of it, not enough of it, or too much of it; how bad it is; how to make it better or less expensive; or how to make a profit from it. But even though everyone seems to have an opinion about it, few stop to reflect about what education might actually be.
Is education a privilege or a right? If it is a privilege, how do we decide who is to have it and who is not? If it is a right, why is it that some people have so much more access to it than others? When does education begin? At birth, or at age five or six when a child starts school? When does it end? At age sixteen; eighteen; twenty-two, when a young adult leaves school; or when a person simply decides to stop pursuing it regardless of age? Perhaps it never ends until we die? Is education something to âhaveâ (that is, a thing) or is it something that is âdoneâ (that is, a process)? What does it mean to be educated? Does it mean a person now has the skills necessary to get a good job? Does it mean that a person knows how to learn through reading and reasoning? Does it mean that a person knows the primary knowledge that it takes to be a well-functioning, adult member of a particular community? How do we know when a person is making progress toward being educated? How do we know when a person has made sufficient progress that she or he can stop?
The Latin root, ÄducÄtiĹ, refers merely to the process of bringing up children. And, of course, the upbringing of children begins when they are born and ends when they are recognized as adults. This idea that education is the process of raising children into adulthood remains one of the major uses of the term in English today, but it is hardly the only way the term education is used in contemporary English. At least since the sixteenth century, English speakers have used the term to refer to the cultural development of knowledge, understanding, and character.1
John Dewey began his 1887 educational manifesto, âMy Pedagogic Creed,â by stating,
I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the [human] race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individualâs powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization.2
Deweyâs understanding of education adds some specificity and clarity to the traditional understandings mentioned above. He understands education to be something that begins at birth and does not require schools. He also understands education as a process by which individuals become members of a larger community. Typically, of course, this refers to children who wish to become members of good standing in the adult community within which they are raised, but a careful reading of the above quotation suggests that Deweyâs community includes all humanity, which, it would seem, requires all of us to pursue education throughout our lives as our circle of humanity widens as we grow, age, and learn. To âshare in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting togetherâ is surely a lifelong project.
Deweyâs conception of education also clearly refers to the process through which individuals become integrated into human society. It is a process that seeks the development of the whole person in a multitude of knowledge, skills, habits, and attitudes. It is primarily, though not exclusively, intellectual and moral. It is the preparation of the individual to accept their responsibility and perform their part in continuing the ever-evolving improvement and growth of our communities. It is the process by which human civilization itself grows and progresses.
Education versus Training
In todayâs world, many people equate education with training, but education is much more. We can train a dog, but we cannot educate a dog. We can train a person, but we can also educate a person. Mere training may be sufficient for dogs, but people deserve more: they deserve education. Training is the process through which we learn a technique or a skill or a job. It is the process of learning to reason technicallyâto solve given problems by applying set rules. It comprises specialized knowledge and technical learning. In training, we typically learn how to do very specific things, such as operate a computer or balance a budget. Learning about computers becomes educational when it moves beyond the mere techniques of using the computer to a broader understanding through a critical inquiry into computers; their uses; their problems and possibilities; and their multiple social, ethical, and other meanings. In a similar way, although balancing a budget may be important training, it only becomes educational when budgeting comes to be understood as a way of thinking and approaching the world.
Certainly, teachers need some training, but they need much more than training if they are to be successful teachersâthey need education. Teacher training only becomes teacher education when the techniques taught in methods courses are understood within broader philosophical, ethical, political, historical, and sociocultural contexts. Part of the purpose of this book is to help students gain a better understanding of the broader contexts of education. Its purpose, then, includes helping students, whether in a teaching major or not, move beyond mere training to gain part of what is necessary to become educated about education.
Education versus Schooling
All societies educate their young even if they donât have schools. They teach their young the customs, language, traditions, myths, and knowledge that their society upholds as true, good, or normal. Similarly, these societies teach their young what they believe to be false, bad, or abnormal. Traditional societies use educational practices that are mostly integrated into everyday life, controlled closely by the members of the local community, and only sometimes situated outside of daily life. An example of this would be coming-of-age rituals when an age group of boys or girls is often removed from the community for a period of time where, under the tutelage of an adult, they are introduced to the special knowledge of the community.
On the other hand, even though modern societies certainly have many educational practices in the everyday family and community life of the child (such as dietary and moral education), modern societies rely heavily on institutions that are removed from the practices of family and community life, such as schools and the media. In traditional societies, the customs, language, traditions, and knowledge considered true or false, good or bad, and normal or abnormal arise in the daily practices of interacting with oneâs parents and other adults integrated into a common culture. In these societies, education is assumed to be an integral part of daily life. But in modern societies, much of what is learned takes place outside of the family in a public space controlled by public institutions, such as schools and the media, leading many people to equate education with formal institutions, as something separate from ordinary daily living. Equating education with schooling, however, is inappropriate; traditional societies may not have schools, but they have education. Also, much of the education in the contemporary, modern world still occurs in the ordinary daily life of families and communities.
If we follow Deweyâs reasoning as explained above, to be educated involves a lifelong process of learning and growth; to be schooled is a formal process of instruction organized by a particular institution (typically the state, but sometimes religious or other private organizations) and usually lasting for a limited time in a personâs life span. In the contemporary world, schooling is typically compulsory, sequential, and ends in young adulthood. To become an educated person, however, requires learning after schooling ends. It is a long-term, lifelong goal. If a person has received good schooling, he or she will have developed the knowledge, skills, reasoning, creativity, and dispositions necessary to continue the process throughout life. If all a person received through schooling is a set of acquired knowledge and skills, that schooling will not have prepared her or him well for a life in pursuit of education.
Even though many people in todayâs modern societies equate education and schooling, education is a larger concept. Education encompasses both informal and formal learning. It involves our everyday lived experiences as well as what we learn in such formalized institutions as schools. Schooling is an institutionalized system that we hope leads to education. Unfortunately, too often schools focus on training, on mere knowledge and skill acquisition, and not on a full education.
Even worse, much schooling is miseducative. That is to say, rather than coming âto share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting togetherâ (to use Deweyâs phrase above), too often schooling leads students to confuse their training with education, to embrace their ignorance and reject the intellectual qualities that are inherent in education, or to denigrate themselves as someone unable to become educated. In other words, schools have the potential to educate, but education does not always occur in schools.
Colleges and universities are schools. Whether or not students gain mere training while being schooled in college, or whether they gain some education, depends partly on their instructors, but largely it depends on them. Do they want an education, or do they just want to be trained for a job? Do they even know what one needs to do to gain an education?
Many educational scholars, myself included, believe that most American students have spent at least twelve years in schools dedicated to training them to be good technical readers, technical writers, and technical thinkers, but not interpretive readers, analytical writers, and critical thinkers. Having spent twelve years gaining âknowledge and skills,â most American students are well prepared for continuing their training. But having had little in the way of education beyond training, many American college students may be at a loss as to how to move beyond the technical requirements of knowledge and skill acquisition to the intellectual and moral prerequisites required to gain an education. Too often these well-trained students treat education as if it were a consumer productâsomething to pay for, ingest, and master. They wait eagerly, perhaps, but futilely, for their instructors to train them to be educated. Unfortunately for them, education is not a consumer good, and it is not something that one can gain through training. It is something that students have to do for themselves.
Nonetheless, that doesnât mean they have to do it alone. In fact, there is good reason to think that trying to gain an education alone is futile. Students must have the help of other students and their instructors; otherwise, how can they possibly become integrated into the larger community? Part of being a member of a community is the ability and inclination to engage others in the pursuit of education. To gain an education in college requires that students move beyond mastery of knowledge and skills and learn to read the world, to reason critically, and to engage others in a joint pursuit of wisdom. These are the purposes of this book: to help students learn to read the world in order to read the word,3 to learn to reason critically in order to critique the world of education, and to stimulate engagement with others in the sociocultural process that leads to wisdom.
Liberal Education
Many colleges and universities in the United States require that students not only engage in a specialized course of study (i.e., a major) but take courses in liberal education as well. When asked why they are required to do this, most college students respond that a liberal education broadens studentsâ knowledge so that they know about more than just their own major area of study. But when asked why this is desirable, few can give a good reason. And why a broad education is considered âliberalâ is equally unclear.
One of the primary reasons for this confusion is that in ordinary usage, the term liberal tends to describe a particular political orientation that is primarily understood as the opposite of conservative. Later in this book, that usage will be explored and complicated, but here I wish to explore an earlier, more fundamental, and original meaning for the term liberal. If we think about it for a moment, we should notice that the word âliberalâ appears to have the same root as some other English words such as liberty, liberalize, and liberate, all words that in one way or another have something to do with freedom. We shouldnât be surprised at this because the root for all of these words is the Latin word liber, which means âfree.â
We should suspect from this that a liberal education has something ...
