Understanding Skills

Thinking, Feeling, and Caring

Robin Barrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138933965
• eBook ISBN: 9781317390688
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

It is widely agreed that education should involve the development of understanding, critical thinking, imagination, and emotions. However, this book, first published in 1990, argues that our views to these key concepts are confused and inaccurate, and therefore what we do in schools is generally inappropriate to our ideal. This book will be of interest to students of education and philosophy.

Chapter 1 The Ideal and the Reality

DOI: 10.4324/9781315678276-2

I The ideal

In bold and simplified outline my thesis is that there is an ancient and venerable social and educational ideal, particularly but not exclusively associated with the Western democratic tradition, of which we have effectively lost sight. The tendency of much that we say and do in the name of education, while it may sometimes be thought to subserve the ideal, is actually misconceived as being in the tradition of, or conducive to, maintaining and promoting such democratic values as freedom, tolerance, respect for persons, and autonomy. Sometimes our theorising and our practice are positively antithetical to the ideal. Furthermore, I maintain, this matters. What we are doing is to a considerable extent detrimental to an ideal, and that ideal is a glorious and inspiring one towards which we should still be striving and for which we should still be fighting. I do not say this in ignorance of the fact that there are other traditions and ideals that have their champions. Nor do I make the mistake of assuming that because the ideal exists and is part of our tradition it must therefore be sacrosanct and good. I am aware also of the difficulties involved in arguing for the value or superiority of particular ideals. But it is my intention throughout the following pages not only to explicate this ideal and to point to its educational implications, but also to argue for its quality and value.

Essentially, the ideal is of a community that takes active steps to bring up its citizens in such a way that they come to have substantial understanding of a range of important matters. Most of the words used here need to be stressed: “understanding” rather than “knowledge” in the sense of mere “information or know how.” “Substantial” understanding rather than “cursory or superficial acquaintance,” and understanding across a range of subject matters, rather than highly specialised and narrowly focussed understanding. Above all, understanding of matters that are deemed to be important rather than trivial or peripheral. In particular, people will have understanding of certain distinctive types of reasoning or ways of thinking that are delineated by their logic rather than simply by their subject matter; for, such types of understanding can be shown to be powerful and necessary means for making sense of and controlling our world, and hence have the requisite importance to a considerable degree. For example, understanding the nature and manner of scientific inquiry and the kinds of problem and question to which it is appropriate, is considerably more powerful, useful, and important than being an expert in some subject such as Mexican post-war politics or photography. Similarly, understanding the nature of aesthetic discourse and judgement is more important than being an expert on Rembrandt.¹

The ideal does not welcome ignorance, but it is less concerned about people who lack information and specific skills than about people who in their reasoning and related activity misconceive or in various other ways make errors. In other words, the emphasis falls on the quality of reasoning rather than the accumulation of facts. We aim, for example, for people who are good historians in the sense of able to examine historical issues well and blessed with an historical awareness, rather than for people who are very well informed about the Tudor kings and queens of England or the development of the American West Coast.² Errors of fact may invalidate an argument. But they can be readily corrected. Much more serious, because more ingrained, harder to detect, and harder to rectify, are deep-seated misconceptions and flaws in one's ability to reason.

The ideal values reason highly. But it is not an exclusively rational ideal. In the first place, it wants to develop in people a passionate concern for truth, accuracy, precision, and appropriateness, at least as much as to ensure that they are able to exhibit these qualities. For this reason alone it cannot be said that the ideal is cold, heartless, or purely intellectual. It posits a world in which people can not only reason well, but in which they also care—care about getting it right, rather than scoring points, winning arguments, or getting their way, care about finding the truth, rather than being consistent with some second-hand ideological stand-point, care about understanding the way the world is rather than finding ways to keep it at bay or to escape from reality. In addition there is a host of other values, such as love, honesty, kindness, justice, respect for persons, friendship, beauty, and equality, which those who subscribe to the ideal may be committed to (not to mention those values that are an integral part of the ideal, such as freedom and autonomy). But it is characteristic of this view to argue that, while such passion and such values are of central importance, they should be rationally ordered. This does not mean that passion, emotion, and virtue should be subordinated to reason, let alone crushed by it, but that they should be organised and regulated by it.

More generally, in terms of this ideal, there is a desire to awaken in people a sense of awe at the amazingness, what some would call the mystery, of the world in general and human endeavour and achievement in particular, and a recognition of the complexity of life, even as we seek to understand and master it. Simplistic, partial, and stereotypical explanations and understandings are anathema to the ideal. Individuals will seek to understand by means of developed and sophisticated types of inquiry, as already indicated. They will not confine themselves to one particular all-embracing type of explanation, as, for example, some people see all problems from a sociological perspective only; they will not rest content with a pre-determined system of explanation, as certain ideological or religious believers may do, and they will not attempt to understand particular individuals and situations purely in terms of standardised categories, whether derived from psychology, religion, sociology, or anywhere else. On occasion, indeed, they will see reason to modify, and in extreme cases even abandon, the very forms of inquiry which they have hitherto utilised to increase their understanding of the world. In a word, the ideal calls for autonomy: for individuals who, while they naturally imbibe and develop the wisdom of others, ultimately seek to base their views and conclusions on no other person, school of thought, or motivation than their own reasoning ability. In principle, they test every claim and argument for themselves, acknowledging only the rules of sound reasoning and the evidence that they are satisfied with.

Finally, the ideal is also concerned with cultural and aesthetic qualities. The products of this education will have aesthetic sensibility and cultural aspirations. They will display imagination, creativity, and compassion. But it will be argued that these qualities are not of a wholly different order and entirely distinct from rational qualities. On the contrary, the true display of imagination and creativity, the display of genuine compassion, are partially dependent on a correct understanding of people, situations, and facts. The ultimate goal is thus a community of autonomous, liberal-minded, imaginative, compassionate, rational people, wedded to the idea of pursuing a true understanding of the world and the nature of humanity, both of which they recognise, with due wonder and humility, to be exceedingly complex matters.

Many readers will recognise in the above sketch an ideal that may be said to have originated with the Ancient Greeks—more specifically with the fifth-century B. C. Athenians and, in terms of its explicit elaboration, the fourth-century philosopher Plato. But its origins, and the question of how far what I have written imitates or deviates from Plato, do not concern me here. The ideal, in more or less the same form, has been with us for centuries, sometimes in the ascendant, at any rate amongst scholars and even from time to time rulers, sometimes on the defensive, even in hiding from the barbarities and philistinism of a particular age or setting. But the fact of its longevity, though that may give us pause for thought, and the question of who first expounded it, have no bearing on its quality. The question about this or any other ideal is whether we can make sense of it, judge it to be coherent, and provide reasons for holding on to it. Can we produce an argument to convince ourselves and others that we want the kind of education that will most likely contribute towards attaining in some measure to this ideal or something very like it?

I think we can. But it should be noted at the outset that, whether we choose to draw attention to the fact or not (and often these days we do not, because it has somehow become regarded as “bad form” to overtly assert the superiority of a way of life, a culture, or ideal), this ideal does not fit easily with a number of other widely held positions. It is fundamentally at a variance with the ideals associated with certain dogmatic and fundamentalist forms of religion, as well as with certain political ideologies.³ Some values and beliefs may be held in common by people with widely different viewpoints, and some individuals who regard themselves as Catholic, Marxist, Islamic, Capitalist, or whatever, may nonetheless subscribe more or less to this ideal. But, if we have an unswerving commitment to Islamic, Catholic, Capitalist, or Marxist doctrine, then we cannot consistently subscribe to this ideal, and vice versa. And it will do us no good in the long run to blink this fact, or to ignore it out of a misplaced sense that it is somehow hitting below the belt to criticise another person's beliefs, or that the tolerance and liberality that are associated with the democratic ideal demand our turning a blind eye to it. Democratic states can and should tolerate Islam, Catholicism, and Marxism, because democracy values freedom of thought and the open pursuit of truth. It must therefore allow the expression of rival opinions. That does not mean that democracy accepts the value of incompatible ideals. And the educational ideal of producing autonomous people of the type described is simply not consistent with the aims of upbringing implicit in thoroughgoing commitment to such ideologies.

No more is it consistent with any system of upbringing that aims in the end to produce conformity and the acceptance of received opinion at the expense of the active inquiring mind, regulated only by the canons of logic and the evidence as it is perceived. There are those who seek to minimise the differences between this ideal and the views of education associated with various ideologies by arguing that the liberal-democratic tradition is itself an ideology; and it may be said that talk of being guided only by the evidence and rules of logic ignores the fact that different people see different evidence and interpret it differently, and have different views of what is logical. But such an argument is confused. Of course, one who purports to be a liberal-democrat may have his prejudices, may regard as relevant evidence something that others would not, may interpret evidence in a particular way because of his proclivities, and may, for example, find it “logical” to countenance abortion where others would not. But the difference in question, the difference that matters, is between those, on the one hand, who deal with particular issues in the light of a framework of received opinions, values, and types of explanation of a substantive kind (an ideology), and those, on the other, who in principle are bound only by formal rules of logic (such as rules of non-contradiction and valid syllogistic reasoning) and the concern to see things as they are, regardless of what the consequences may be for any or all of their current assumptions. It is the difference, so to speak, between the Catholic who is concerned to take a position on abortion in terms of the traditional Catholic view of the world, and the Catholic who is prepared to examine the issue without reference to any peculiarly Catholic doctrine and see whether his conclusion accords with the orthodox Catholic view or not. One (current) Catholic presumption on this issue is that the foetus is human. It is not part of liberal-democratic orthodoxy that the foetus is not human. Rather it is part of the network of formal values enshrined in any ideal that values rationality that the question of whether the foetus constitutes something human is part of what has to be examined de novo in any discussion about abortion.

The type of education implied by the ideal in question would be referred to by many as “liberal education.” It makes no difference to the overall argument of these pages whether we call it that, or say that anything worthy of the name of education would be a form of liberal education. But it is important to recognise the implications of the above paragraphs: the education or liberal education that we are concerned with is to be contrasted with and distinguished from other commodities such as indoctrination, training, and socialisation. Any form of upbringing that is primarily concerned to initiate individuals into a set of substantive beliefs about the world in such a way as to ensure unwavering commitment to them constitutes indoctrination, whether the attempt to do this succeeds or not. It is the precise converse of education. Training, by which is meant the business of bringing people to perform certain specific tasks, is not necessarily opposed to education, and indeed is likely to play a part in schooling both for its own sake and as a means to furthering education, but it is distinct from it. While, on almost any view, we have to train people to behave in various ways and to perform certain tasks such as writing, counting, and blowing their noses, if we are to educate them we have to do something quite different in addition, namely develop their understanding. Socialisation, by which is meant the business of habituating people to the customs and expectations of their particular society, will likewise be a legitimate part of any society's schooling, but it should not be confused with education.⁴

Education is primarily concerned to liberate the individual, and thereby ultimately the community, from the dead and stultifying hands of ignorance, error, superstition, and fear. Hence the phrase “liberal education.” And hence its value, both intrinsic and extrinsic, both in itself and as a means to some further good.⁵ It need not be denied that people will sometimes differ in their view of what is erroneous or confused, but for the moment we want only to establish the principle that error and confusion are in themselves to be avoided. To admit as much is to admit the intrinsic value of this educational ideal. Its extrinsic value is surely equally self-evident: is it too much to say that at bottom all the miseries and injustices of life throughout history have stemmed from ignorance, superstition, error, and fear of one sort or another? If it is, it will not be an overstatement to assert that the world will at any rate be a better place for conquering these evils.

One assumption that lies behind this humanistic vision and educational ideal should perhaps be brought into the open, since it is one that is implicitly ignored if not denied by some features of the present intellectual climate. It is the belief that human beings are an exceedingly special and complex form of life, one that, in particular, cannot be entirely reduced to explanation in mechanistic terms.

In explaining this claim, it is necessary to make a few brief qualifications. First, I do not wish to enter the debate as to whether some other higher forms of animal life may not be more akin to humans than we tend to recognise, maybe in some cases potentially indistinguishable.⁶ If, in principle, monkeys could develop all the characteristically human attributes, that would not affect the tenor of an argument about humans and the kind of education that is appropriate to them. It would merely follow that we should extend the argument to cover monkeys as well. Secondly, in using the phrase “exceedingly special,” I do not wish to imply anything specific in respect of metaphysical matters. Rather I intend to emphasise that the complexity of the human being includes such things as the capacity to think in terms of souls, gods, love, and justice, which, as far as we know, is not given to other animals. Whatever the truth about such matters, whatever the answer to such questions as what a soul may be, whether we truly have one, whether it makes sense to point to the existence of gods, whether love is a natural phenomenon or a man-made construct, and whether justice has some absolute significance or is merely the name we give to rules that arise by convention, it is an undeniable fact that mankind is remarkable for being able to think in these and such-like terms. One of the single most noteworthy things about human beings is their capacity to conceptualise in abstract terms, and to become aware of or create (as the case may be) a number of ideas that cannot be directly apprehended except by the mind. Thirdly, in denying that humans can be entirely explained in mechanistic terms, I do not wish to deny that there is a great deal about them that can be so explained, and indeed that one of the notable advances of recent years is the extent to which we are beginning to understand the environmental, physical, and physiological bases of some of our behaviour and thought. It seems undeniable that to some extent what we do, how we feel, and what we say can be explained in terms of such things as our chemistry.⁷

But, with these qualifications in mind, it must be said that it is a presumption of this ideal that men are not simply machines of a particularly complex variety. This is implicit in some of the terms that have already been introduced. For example, it does not make sense to refer to machines having a sense of awe or being autonomous. The very concept of mind, as distinct from brain, implies an organism that is qualitatively different from the most sophisticated computer imaginable. Minds are capable of the creative act of conceiving, while computers are capable only of calculating. Of course, this is disputed by those who believe that computers already can, or will shortly be able to, perform all the functions of the human mind. In my view such claims misunderstand the nature of the mind, but, in any case, as with the issue of animals, it makes no difference to my overall argument: if computers can indeed be the equivalent of minds, then the conclusion should hardly be that we should treat humans as computers, but rather that we should start treating computers as humans. (The idea that we might educate computers just as we educate people strikes me as sufficiently absurd to settle the issue.)⁸

It may be noted further that the ideal rests ill alongside contemporary rhetoric to the effect that this is the age of information and information processing. Of course, it is a time when information is spawning to a point at which it is hard to control, one does need access to information, and it is necessary to find suitable means of storing and retrieving it.⁹ But these facts should not tempt us to adopt metaphors for education and development of mind based on information processing, or to a substantive view of education centred on information. Let us use our technical wizardry to house information (and therefore let us be capable of developing and using technical wizardry), but let us not lose sight of the fact that we have always to be able to query and test information and to make use of it. Understanding without information may be impossible. But information without understanding is barren. The fundamental conviction of those committed to the ideal is that human beings are distinctive in having consciousness. They are capable of, and need to develop their powers of, systematic inquiry of various types, creative thought, and rational argument. Those are the qualities that should be of central concern to educators.

II Two approaches to an aspect of the ideal

The ideal that I have outlined had some ascendancy at the time that the classical curriculum held sway in Britain from Tudor times to the end of the last century. Of course, the teaching of classics was not always undertaken in this spirit, and it was not always part...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Fulltitle Page
• Copyright Page
• Deadication Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Chapter One The Ideal and the Reality
• Chapter Two Six Erroneous Assumptions
• Chapter Three Giftedness: A Cautionary Tale
• Chapter Four Intellectual Qualities
• Chapter Five Imagination and Creativity
• Chapter Six Interpersonal Skills and Values
• Chapter Seven Curriculum Content
• Chapter Eight Pedagogical Points
• Notes
• Index