What I Believe about Education
Education is always ‘high stakes.’ Education attempts to change people, and people go out into the world, make decisions, and take actions. The potential of education to get it right – to influence people to make good decisions and to take positive action – or to get it wrong – and to influence people negatively – means that it cannot be left to chance or in the hands of people who fail to understand it or who want to use it for selfish or evil ends. Education is also high stakes because you get only one shot at it: individuals in any teaching and learning situation can have this moment only once. Nobody can reverse the clock and re-do a lesson. So it is vital that those involved try to get it right.
When considering ‘what I believe about education,” I start out by asking, “What are we doing education for?” I take as a basic premise that there are many possible answers to that question; and that, given the high stakes nature of education, whatever answer we reach must be grounded in sound principles and not simply be taken for granted. I also begin with the obvious fact that people are not all the same: they have differing strengths, weaknesses, dispositions, and talents. All are capable of learning, but may not necessarily master the same knowledge, skills, and qualities, and certainly not all in the same way. An attempt to impose a single educational process on all may be a convenient and efficient way to organize mass education, but is a denial of the diverse combinations of strengths and dispositions of individuals. Similarly, I believe that people of good will ought to be able to debate the purpose of education, especially public education, which concerns us all.
I contend, though, that more than ever, the economic rationale for public education in the United States is widely taken for granted, such that in public discussions about improving education, the purpose of education itself is rarely raised. As the New York Times stated in 1998, “the economic rationale for schooling has triumphed” (as cited in Kohn, 2004, p. 18). The report A Nation at Risk, published in the 1980s, was a key influence, as was George W. Bush’s 2006 American Competitiveness Initiative. I believe it is critical to question this rationale, because large sums of money are being spent to promote educational initiatives designed to serve the country’s industrial and economic needs, and these initiatives, if successfully implemented, will affect the education and the lives of millions of young people. Meanwhile, other possible rationales for education – strengthening democracy, building community, and developing each individual’s potential, to name but three – are being neglected.
The intention of initiatives like A Nation at Risk is to create an education system that produces an adult population whose purpose is conceived of as working for the good of the nation or state. The recent initiatives might be justified if we believe that the economic benefits, if they come, will lift up everyone in society through the creation of greater national wealth. However, we need to ask: What kind of individuals come out of an education that has been oriented to serving not their individual growth and development but the national interest, and ultimately what type of society results from this?
We can imagine other goals for education: looking around us at modern America, instead of a report claiming an economic crisis brought about by poor quality education, we can easily conceive of one describing a critical thinking crisis, a caring and compassion crisis, an ethical crisis, an aesthetic crisis, a peace and stability crisis, a citizenship crisis, an environmental crisis, a crisis of meaning – the list could go on. Each of these crises could conceivably become the justification for a reorientation of American secondary education.
But I have an even more basic reason for questioning the economic rationale that dominates American public education. I find it in the moral philosophy of the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose second formulation of human moral obligation, or categorical imperative, states that one should “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end” (cited in Law, 2007, p. 106). This maxim seeks to be a proscription against crimes against others, as well as an admonition not to coerce others. Its treatment of human beings as ends in themselves was enshrined in the French and American declarations of human rights (Lund, Pihl, & Slok, 1962), and more recently in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I believe it can be applied to any declared purpose of education: does it treat the student as an end in him or herself, or does it seek to use the student as a means to an end?
It is hard to imagine that teachers in particular and educators in a broader sense find their motivation in serving the national economic agenda; most enter the profession with a strong desire to nurture young people. Therefore, I think the application of Kant’s second maxim would be accepted by many if not most educators. Why, then, have they apparently accepted the current rationale? Those in a power who are promoting the economic agenda have so dominated the discourse around education that that it has taken on the quality of a hegemony – a way of thinking that has come to be so widely assumed to be correct that it is almost impossible to have a conversation outside of it. That is why discussion of how to improve education tends to be limited to the question of make education better serve national economic ends; and why, when anyone tries to argue for a different set of goals for education, they are dismissed as dreamers and utopians.
What would an education look like that treated each student as an end in him/herself and not as a part in the unstoppable economic machine? I believe that education’s fundamental aim is to bring human beings together in the quest for truth; that it should aim at human betterment; and that it should help individuals learn how to make a life, not just a living. Education should result in each individual having a sense of self-determination, agency in the world, a sense of responsibility, and the desire to do good. Such an education is not simply centered on the individual, however, since human beings, like all living things, live in a web of dependency that sustains and nourishes them. Therefore, education should lead students to an understanding of the human communities they belong to – local, national, and global – and the importance of nurturing these communities; it should teach them about the environment of which they are an integral part; about the social contract and the laws that enable human beings to live harmoniously together. It should help people become problem solvers, using mathematical, verbal, and critical thinking skills and their creative faculties; it should work on the development of their ‘excellences,’ their individual talents and skills, without assuming that everyone needs to turn out the same; it should impart knowledge and help them to use that knowledge.
Although I have focused on public education here, I believe that the principles I have argued for – that education has potentially a multiplicity of ends, and that we should treat others as an end in themselves – are applicable to all educators. In my own field (teaching English to international students), asking “Why are we doing this? And why are students here?” can prompt discussion on policies and practices such as English only, monolingual vs. bilingual dictionaries, non-native English speaking teachers, teaching methodology, and so on. Above all, it ought to serve as an antidote to fossilized policies and practices. And Kant’s admonition to treat others as an end in themselves informs program management decisions, especially where profit and educational motives compete, as they often do in my field.
I would like all educators of good will – in whatever situation - to question the underlying rationale of their context in light of these principles.
References
Kohn, A. (2004). What Does it Mean to be Well Educated. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Law, S. (2007). Philosophy. New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley.
Lund, E., Pihl, M., & Slok, J. (1962). A History of European Ideas. London: C. Hurst & Co.
