"Pedagogy" and Education

In the last sixty years or so, education has been gradually transformed in the United States and some other countries.  The focus has shifted away from the teacher instructing and towards the student "discovering" knowledge, the latter now being considered more valid, in many cases, than the former.  This change in how children are taught in school has mirrored the evolution of the parent/child relationship, and on an even broader level, the way authority is viewed in the public mind.

The notion we have of the child as a special, separate being, with its own distinct sensibility, is a relatively recent one. This changed conception of childhood (and it was a revolutionary change, departing completely from the view, held for hundreds of years if not longer, of children as virtual non-entities) found its full flowering in decades following World War 2, and is of course still very much with us now.  

As regards education, the child's mind had been viewed formerly almost as a mere physical recipient, its personality a moral blank slate.  Through rote learning and reading material carefully selected by adults, all children would learn more or less the same body of knowledge, in the same manner.  There was also the belief that education could impart a sense of morals.  There was, on the other hand, little concern about the learning process itself and whether it was intrinsically at all enjoyable for the students.  Their individual will counted for little or nothing in the classroom.  The teacher's authority, in theory, was absolute.

Those with a nostalgic view of this style of education would say that, at the very least, the children at least used to learn a uniform body of knowledge: arithmetic, geography, literature, (in some cases) ancient and possibly modern languages.  Most of us, however (those with a living memory of this old-fashioned education are ever rarer), while we might admit to the quaintness of education as it was practiced before the interior life of the child had been discovered and exalted, would be dismissive of this strictly hierarchical style of education.

Educational theorists have, in more recent times, informed us that children are not to be instructed, but rather guided in their acquisition of knowledge.  The inherent creativity of the child's mind must be treated with respect; it should never subjected to excessive rigor, lest the child's spirit should somehow be harmed, or even extinguished.  Teachers must seek to "motivate" their students by providing an underlying rationale for learning a subject, by appealing to their imagination as well as to their reason.  Rote learning has been called into question, and if it is not possible to avoid memorization altogether, the tediousness of memorizing multiplication tables, chemical symbols, and so forth must be addressed by applying "creative" methods.  Students write on subjects they find appealing (grammar is seldom taught as a separate subject any longer); they also select a good deal of their reading based on interest.  If books are assigned, care is taken that they should possess some inherent appeal to the student.

In the contemporary view, the child's mind is a temple to which educators must show a devotion bordering on the dogmatic.  The teacher is not an absolute authority, but an "educational leader" with a strictly provisional hold over his or her classroom.

I am aware that in France, there has recently been a backlash against contemporary educational practices (which they call, with some contempt, "pedagogy", so as to distinguish the child-centered approach from what its detractors view as truly substantive education).  This dissent has firmly entered the public debate on education in that country.  For all the debate in this country on how to reform education, we, on the other hand, hear few lasting arguments that might call pedagogy into question.  The child in our society, for better, but so very often for worse, holds a place of outsized importance.  We could never again subject children to rigorous 'top-down' instruction lacking in creative amenities.  Children are our equals in some respects, maybe even our betters.  Pedagogy is the foundation of our American educational thought.

While the contemporary child's experience of school may be more pleasant, in many cases, than it was a hundred years ago, by any number of  measures American students leave school less well educated than their forbears (even allowing for the great advances in knowledge of the intervening years).  The ability to write a pleasing, grammatical letter, to read a map with confidence, to compute by hand, to speak of literature in a knowledgable way, to make a coherent oral argument -- all of these skills were once possessed by many citizens of modest upbringing.  Beyond the elite level of society, very few Americans can apply any of the aforementioned skills with competence anymore.

In the ongoing American debate on education, one sees a kind of circular motion of blame: adminsistrators complain of teacher's unions and their arcane work rules; teachers blame a fractured society for creating students who are unable to learn, or who lack interest in learning; parents say public schools are underfunded and chaotic; public commentators say school systems are self-protecting fiefdoms more interested in creating employment than upholding standards.  All of these arguments may be justified.  However, lacking a commitment to address them, we will make only halting progress in solving the many problems that face American public education.  And what we will never see, it is safe to say, is a serious questioning of our "pedagogical" teaching methods.  Our society is convinced that the exercise of pure authority in the classroom is inherently suspect, and that erudition need not be the principal goal of education.  The "process" of learning is more important than the acquisition of knowledge and skills, it seems.  Until we bring ourselves around to exactly the opposite view, our educational system will remain inadequate.

The Loblolly Pine

Through grafting, forestry science has developed an especially fast-growing variety of the Loblolly pine for timber (this variety has been termed a "super species", becoming ready for harvest in about 15-20 years). In Franklin County, Mississippi, stands of these artificially-planted trees are seen everywhere. In fact, in some parts of Mississippi (including Franklin County), the Loblolly has largely supplanted the native Longleaf pine.

Planted Loblolly stands give the appearance of a one-species scrub forest. Little other plant life can grow among them, as herbicide is applied among the trees to suppress the growth of hardwoods and other unwanted plant competitors. Some have termed these forests of cultivated Lobblolly a "biological desert", as they harbor so little other life (although a few animal and bird species do apparently like cultivated Loblolly forests).

However, one must remember that in Franklin County at least, if not elsewhere, in past decades one would have found cattle pastures, cotton, corn, or soybeans in some places where the commercial Loblolly now grows. Moreover, by the 1930's, much of the "old-growth" forest of Mississippi had already been exploited for timber.

And in discussing Loblolly cultivation, or any other type of monoculture, it is also difficult to avoid a certain preciousness. One is by implication rebuking society only for developing the resources that it seems we could not do without. Still, even an amateur's familiarity with the swamps, natural lakes, and forests that used to exist in Mississippi is enough to marvel at the elegant interdependence of life that once prevailed in them. A complex world existed and maintained its own balance, independent of humans.

One guesses that the natural world of Mississippi before the arrival of white settlers was brutal, inhospitable. Human beings* were seemingly its least important element: their greatest virtue (as regards the natural world) was their relatively small number and lack of technical ability and inclination to alter the land.

It is odd to think that the biological and cultural richness of the cypress swamps, lowland hardwood forests, and other largely vanished ecosystems of the South has gone mostly unmissed. They were only a kind of curiosity, without the clear human purpose of the Loblolly pine.

*the Choctaw and Chickasaw

Self-Abnegation

The notion that through the act of suppressing one's sense of self, one could achieve a noble result is an idea that has generally inspired our conduct up until relatively recently.

However, our notion of the self has changed over time. In fact, the very idea of the self is fairly new one, viewed over the span of history. The consciousness of self that we take for granted would be unfamiliar to our earlier ancestors. And now that we know we have a self, we must treasure it. To deny the self, or to allow it otherwise to be diminished, would be viewed as a violation.

I am convinced that at one time, people occupied less aesthetic and psychic space than is the case today. In fact, it is undeniable that many of our citizens could not care less how they are viewed, and if it is a distasteful chore to look at them, it is none of their concern.

I don't believe it was always so. Our dress, manners, and other modes of expression were much more restrained at one time. This societally-imposed restraint on our way of being in the world, it has been said, made it difficult to achieve happiness. But did happiness used to be the goal of living? I think it was not.

Instead, I gather, that if any one principle guided our existence in former times, it was a desire to find our place in the moral order of the society (whatever that may have been). We believed that there was an abstract notion of the good and the not-good that held true for all members of society. Not everyone could live up to it, but all could be measured against it. I do not wish to claim that virtue used to be more prevalent. But, for example, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that, successfully or not, an attempt used to be made to try impart "goodness" in the young, as an aspect of one's overall education. Such an emphasis would be regarded nowadays as quaint.

Formerly in society, because the notion of good and not-good held so much sway, I think we walked a humbler path. We ourselves were not so important; the moral order of society was. We accepted our lot, by and large. Whoever sought to stand out did so because he or she felt in possession of something genuinely worth exposing to the world, and not as much in order to bring attention to one's own person. And if our sense of injustice was aroused at all, it tended to be over larger concerns. I think one could prove easily that the public today is somewhat indifferent to the larger concerns of society and the world, but is acutely sensitive to anything that would impinge on what it sees as its prerogatives.

Since the self was not a sacrosanct entity, as it is now, it used to be more within the bounds of imagination to take on suffering, and use it for creative ends. The artist, for example, used to exist more or less in opposition to society. Now, partly out of guilt, I believe, for our past treatment of artists, but more so out of distaste for the violence to the self that art clearly could demand, the artist has been invited into society. We have institutions that "nurture" artists that did not exist formerly: creative writing programs, fellowships, teaching positions and the like. We have publicity, lest the artist's work should go unnoticed, as used to be very often the case in earlier eras. But however much our solicitude for artists has aided in assuring their personal well-being, it is questionable whether this solicitude has done much to make the art itself any better.

Our over-protection of the self has not just been harmful to artistic endeavors; it has affected virtually everyone's daily experience. Without denying that there are still lonely people around us, nowadays it would take a super-human effort to experience the kind of solitude that used to be an accepted part of life. To live in a rural community as so many of us did, with transportation slow or unavailable altogether, without the means to connect to the outside world that we take for granted, with books and musical instruments one's only diversion -- this is a way of living that we would find intolerable. The self-denial of such a life would be disorienting. The 'affirmation' we all expect nowadays would have been brutally absent.

We are offered wonderful variety and diverse means of fulfillment. But we have also, as a practical matter, made it impossible truly to abnegate the self, and thereby attain true solitude. Such extreme solitude would be unlikely to provide happiness or even long maintain health and sanity. But it used to be more taken for granted that this kind of solitude could either occur naturally or be attained through effort, and out of such solitude we have gotten the benefit some of our finest actions, as well as our most memorable thought.

Changing Relations Between Labor and Society

It would be ideal if nations viewed the contributions of their labor forces with close to the same respect, if not with as much regard, as those of their corporations and financial institutions.

In our society, however, the two can probably never have equal value. At best, labor can be the sentimental favorite over capital; it can be lionized in some quarters, but it lacks the hold over the American imagination that the corporation has. And over the last 30 years, however, labor in general has been devalued as manufacturing has gone into decline, while the management, and especially, the financial class has been elevated in the popular mind to the point that no amount of malfeasance has been able to reduce its status significantly.

As has been plentifully noted, during the period 1945-75, the working classes of Europe and North America rose into the middle class as their wages and benefits increased. Obviously, the improvement in the standard of living for many ordinary workers was the result of a generations-long struggle. But in the post-war era, labor finally took its 'place at the table' in the new consumer society that was coming into being. It was true that in some ways labor was feared more than respected, and the growing power (and oftentimes, corruption) of labor unions was resented. But at the end of the day, a person without much education could, through a union labor job, provide middle-class comforts for himself and his family. The larger society, in general, believed in providing this kind of opportunity to the workforce.

I can't exactly relate the series of events that has led to the precarious state of labor in the present day, but a couple of trends do stand out. The world is no longer as parochial, economically or culturally, as it used to be. There is now a willingness to have things manufactured wherever it may be cheapest to do so; at the same time, many more countries are able to produce consumer goods than before. In such a climate, a high-wage traditional manufacturing sector is difficult to sustain. The strongest argument for maintaining manufacturing jobs is, sadly, largely the sentimental one.

But for all the pain and dislocation caused by the loss of jobs making durable goods in this country, I have consistently been surprised at how weak the protest has been. The economy has probably adjusted well enough: other kinds of jobs, some high-paying (though many have not been so), have come into being; but the fabric of our society has been damaged severely by the loss of manufacturing jobs. For over 30 years, the regions of the country that formerly relied on factories, mills, mines, and so forth have sustained blow after blow, never really fully taking part in whatever prosperity we have enjoyed during this time period.

This is not a class-conscious society we inhabit -- that is probably one reason for the quiescence of the working class during these last decades of economic transformation. No matter our background, most of us don't like to be thought of as anything but middle class -- it would distasteful, in many cases, to see oneself as part of a victimized stratum of society, and to engage in protest on one's own behalf as a member of such a stratum. That social class is so difficult to define in a society such as our own has had the odd effect of making it difficult to try to defend the interests of those who are economically and socially most vulnerable. For all the evidence that birth often determines our station, we Americans refuse to believe that could be possible: at bottom, we believe that our place in society is always earned. So while we generally sympathize with the farmers, factory workers, and others whose ability to earn a living has dwindled in the past decades, the truth, I believe, is that we feel that if those whose skills have become obsolete or unneeded were just cleverer they could find the solution to their difficulty. This attitude is not particular to one's political affiliation, necessarily (and regrettably).

How else to explain the lack of engagement on the part of most of the influential classes regarding the diminishing rewards not just of all manner of blue-collar work, but of other kinds of jobs that are essential to maintaining society, such as teaching, nursing, and so forth? It might be romanticizing the past to say that work was ever held to be as intrinsically important as the product of that work. But the evidence that we at one time, as a society, believed far more in ensuring the long-term well-being of workers than we do now is incontrovertible.

The rightward turn of American politics since 1968 is often the scapegoat for many of the ills that have beset the American workforce. However, our government policy, as it impacts labor issues, is as much the symptom of our society's changed (or more to the point, diminished) view of work as it has been the cause of Labor's ills.

When our society was more hierarchical, it was also more paternalistic. This paternalism could be heavy-handed, as inevitably would be the case when institutions act in loco parentis. Like any solicitous parent, big business and government are inclined to make glaring mistakes: giving the wrong kind of support to its citizens (old-style welfare I believe is a fair example), or withholding support altogether. But they also created programs that they thought would be in the best interest of citizens: Social Security, Works Progress Administration, Medicare, in the case of government; fully-covered healthcare and other generous benefits for autoworkers and some other blue-collar workers.

Even when management and labor were in firm opposition (during the birth of the labor movement, for example), there was a sense that however much one side may have been anathema to the other, both were part of the same 'family' (forgive the continuation of this metaphor, for I think it is apt); there was no possibility of unilateral exit. Management treated labor at first as a disobedient child, but eventually accorded its respect to unions. Nowadays, companies must overcome a great deal of their own spite before even agreeing to the formation of a union, much less agreeing to union demands. And most manufacturers simply close factories and set up shop overseas to escape the burden of union contracts.

For reasons that are obscure, many Westerners, particularly Britons and Americans, grew weary of protecting and providing for workers. The costs of social supports for workers were (and are still considered) high, and strikes were disruptive. But something else was at work. We began to believe that the individual, unguided will was more efficacious than collective action. We no longer could see any advantage to large government, large management structures, and powerful unions: they stood in the way of individual decision-making and innovation.

This last observation is at least partly true. Even if we were able to do so, we should not wish to replicate the old-style war of attrition between unions and business. Nonetheless, while our business environment is more open to innovation than practically any other in the world, and there are numerous ways to acquire wealth, we find that our wealth, once acquired, is terribly vulnerable. Our individual persons are also vulnerable, as we have less and less health care, retirement savings, ability to afford tuition, and so forth than formerly. Our new-found faith that work is only a private matter that large, general-interest entities such as government and unions should stay out of has undermined society. Our freedom to fend for ourselves has left our economic and social landscape barren.