Reggio Emilia preschool piazza (common space)
It’s generally a good idea to get to know and learn from people you want to teach before you try to teach them anything. Here’s something huge that I just learned from Howard Gardner, who has probably reached more people with a message about the importance of truth, beauty, and goodness than anyone else alive today. He’s a psychologist (among other things), and I’m a philosopher (among other things), so I assumed I’d have something to teach him about philosophy. But I learned that he reads a lot of philosophy, especially in epistemology, the theory of knowledge.
Before Professor Gardner wrote Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed, he wrote another book that included extended discussions illustrating how these three concepts could be taught, not just as a survey, to master a particular example of each one. This earlier book is The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, and the epistemological lesson I treasure comes in his description of “the best pre-schools in the world,” which are to be found in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
The buildings and grounds of these preschools are as attractive as can be imagined, and the teachers act in “deeply caring and respectful ways” with the children and with one another. The teachers and staff invest unbelievable amounts of time and effort in recording and reviewing detailed notes about what the children say and do and how they respond to the stimuli in their environment. This ongoing daily research is to detect the spontaneous momentum of the group inquiry.
“In each of the classes in a school, groups of children spend several months exploring a theme of interest.” “The activities of next week (sometimes even the next day) grow out of the results, problems, and puzzles of this week; the cycle is repeated so long as it proves fruitful. Children and teachers are continually reflecting on the meaning of an activity, which issues it raises, how its depths and range can be productively probed.”
“Consider how this process works. Suppose that on the second day of school a rainbow appears, which can be observed through the skylight above the central piazza. Either a child or a teacher notices the rainbow and brings it to the attention of others. Youngsters begin to talk about the rainbow; and, perhaps at the suggestion of a teacher, a few children begin to sketch it. Suddenly the rainbow disappears; children begin to talk about where it came from, and whether it has traveled to another site. A child picks up a prism that happens to be nearby and looks at the light streaming through it. She calls over her classmates and they begin to experiment with other translucent vessels. The next day it rains again, but afterward the sky is cloudy and no rainbow is visible. Henceforth children set up observational posts after a storm, so that they can be sure to spy the rainbow when it appears and capture it in various media. And if no rainbow appears, or if they fail to capture its appearance, students will confer on the reasons why and consider how better to prepare for the next sighting of a rainbow.
“A project on rainbows has been launched, In the following weeks, children read and write stories about rainbows, explore raindrops, consider rainbowlike phenomena that accompany lawn hoses and mist, record a sensational double rainbow, and play with flashlights and candles noting what happens to the light as it passes through various liquids and vessels. No one knows at the start just where the project will eventually land; and while earlier projects clearly influence the “moves” made by teachers (and, eventually by students), this open-ended quality is crucial to the educational milieu that has been created over the decades at Reggio.”
At the conclusion of the group inquiry, each child creates something that can be shared with the community, and it is not just something quick and cute, but something that expresses the striking breadth and depth of what they have been through together.
It is well understood that inquiry has a social dimension. Darwin had remarkably good education and training at the hands of a number of academic and practical experts before he went on his famous voyage of discovery. Today scientific papers have a list of authors that may number dozens or over a hundred.
When Gardner discusses examples of outstanding Japanese education he observes that education in some cultures places greater emphasis on the group, while in other cultures the greater emphasis is on the individual. The obvious inference is that both are profoundly important.
At the close of his review of how different cultures educate excellently, Gardner summarizes contemporary understandings of learning and knowledge. Learning is situational: if we want to understand how it occurs, we need to know the texture of the environment in which the learning occurs. Good education, good teaching, adapts to the variables of the context.
Knowledge is distributed: different people possess different components of what is known; no one person knows it all, and sometimes it is unclear who knows what; but a group can function when the needed knowledge is shared.
And we learn by participating in the activities of whose who model mature practices; we may learn without any deliberate intention to learn what those other know.
In order to make knowledge our own, knowledge must be personal: we make our own by mastering it for ourselves and in our way.
What if one of the most important things that we could ever realize in this life is that we are family, the children of a loving God? What if loving service is the most important social virtue that we could acquire? How could we learn such things?
Quotations from Howard Gardner, The Disciplined Mind, are from pages 86-89; the closing epistemological summary draws on 98-99.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Spazi_comuni_nella_scuola_per_l%27infanzia.jpg/899px-Spazi_comuni_nella_scuola_per_l%27infanzia.jpg
If we could realize that we are all children of a loving God, then great things could and would happen. If we could realize this great truth, we would also realize the other great truth: We are spiritual sisters and brothers. And the realization that we are spiritual sisters and brothers would attack the social problems including educating our children at the root. If we could realize this great truth, then we would delight to provide service for one we regard as a brother or sister;
It is impossible without the eye of faith to realize that we are indeed spiritual brothers and sisters, even though most acknowledge that God is our heavenly Father. The consequence of the acknowledgment of this great truth seems to bounce off the minds of some like water bouncing off the back of a duck.
But still this is a desirable goal, for the achievement of this goal opens the gate for the unleashing of the potential of all of our brothers and sisters, and this unleashing of heretofore untapped potential will astound all of us as view the results of this liberation of potential. Just think. Some mind that is wasting away because of lack of opportunity might have the key to the cure of some debilitating disease.
What is the best way to achieve this goal? What is the best way to help our brothers and sisters becoming truly God knowing in their souls, and to induce them to dedicate their lives to doing God’s will? How can we convince those who do not believe in or know God to believe in and acquire spiritual knowledge of him?
In my experience, there is only one way: Those who believe in and know God must draw close to those who do not believe in and know him and by the spiritual power of their lives reveal the living God to them. Now this is a daunting task, and requires time for the unbeliever to realize that what they are witnessing is genuine. When the unbelievers observe the revelation of God under all circumstances and at all times, they will become convicted that what they are observing is a genuine spiritual reality. And since this genuine spiritual reality will appeal to that which is dearest in their hearts, most will eventually respond to it.
This revelation of God by person to person will assume geometric proportions in its spread, never stopping until the whole world is God knowing. And then we will have a world that is dominated by the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness as these become unified in love, for God is love. And all the necessary insights for constructing an ideal society will forthwith become available.
Dr. Perry
I made the mistake of responding to a tea party libertarian’s criticism of Obama’s proposal for free community college. Among other arguments this man proposed that it would encourage students to major in “useless” degrees such as those in humanities, liberal studies, and social science departments. His myopic view reiterated a position that even those who do not take such a strong libertarian position maintain: that education is predominately about economic participation. That this is an incredibly narrow view is nothing new to most educators who decry the view among most students that the only classes of value are the ones that lead directly to jobs.
Economic participation does have a public or social component, and no one should question that good job training has its place, just as having adequate wealth is needed to keep the economy going. Yet I cannot help but see in these students and some of the general population that education is primarily directed at the individual; in short, one is educated for oneself primarily and where it does benefit society is does so narrowly as career training.
John Dewey and his followers — Gardner seems as though he may be one — not only saw that freedom is far more complex than in the “negative” form, i.e., freedom from restraint, but that freedom, or liberty, becomes far richer when those participating in a free society can express the self in a robust manner, as well as adding value to society in multiple forms and traditions, including its ideas, literature, arts, science, and values. In short, even more than something for the individual, education is for the public, for society.
Harry Brighouse locates four aims of education: self-governance, economic participation, flourishing, and creating citizens. I think this is a solid list, but I also believe that the last two aims are too often neglected for, especially, the second one, economic participation.
Just as the values of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are distinguishable but ultimately inseparable, so too must the aims of education be considered in much the same manner.
I appreciate your balance here; and your concluding paragraph strikes me as quite insightful.
I would only add that libertarian-leaning views of political economy do not necessarily translate to benighted views about education.
Beginning with my years in high school, I was privileged to meet and get to know some of the finest conservative thinkers on the planet. My father had left the business world (in his 40s), took a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Virginia, and then began a new career as a professor.
Nowadays, because of my various cultural interests I occasionally find myself at events where people speak to me with the most dismissive criticism of “Republicans” or what ever group they may identify as being illiberal; these critics assume that any thoughtful and culturally sensitive person will of course identify with their antagonism and contempt for their opponents. Given much of the political rhetoric today, I understand their impatience, but I never encourage their attacks, because I have had the privilege of knowing several of the best conservative minds on the planet.
Plato was great at having Socrates demolish a ridiculous version of some sophistry, only to replace the defeated conversation partner by a stronger one, who was harder to refute, and finally by a very intelligent and conceptually powerful sophist who required the maximum of philosophical maturity, logical acumen, and insight. No cheap victories over straw-men in Plato.
And where political views are concerned, my axiom that almost all the antagonistic participants (“right” and “left”) have a real hold on some values–values whose implications they usually misunderstand, which leaves them unable to play the role of a peacemaker, even as they continue to speak up for their insights.
I quite like what you have said here and hope that something similar makes its way into your book. I worry that now more than any other time in my life is political division so acute and so dysfunctional. While I have often identified with left or liberal views, that the extremes are becoming mainstream is disheartening. This too goes for the other side, and from where I stand, and what I can see in the blogosphere and in social media, the gap between these two is widening.
Hang in there, Charles! If we find ourselves in a civilization in decline, we can slow the decline. It’s more fun to help lead an advance, and from time to time we may have the experience of participating in a progressing strand of culture. Either way, it’s a noble work.