Remembering Esau

I have a bad habit of trying to read too many books at one time. I then compound this problem by constantly picking up other books to re-read while I am reading new ones.

Part of this is simply my job. As a school librarian I make it a point to read some juvenile literature just to keep up with what the kids at the school are reading. This semester I've been reading Tamora Peirce and Erin Hunter because I have whole giggles of middle school girls begging for them. But, these books can be blown through rather fast and seldom have anything in them that makes me think. I also manage the textbook inventory for the school that employs me and for some reason known to neither me or anybody else I will at times will pick up a textbook for History, Economics, Psychology or French and just browse it for a while.

I do find it somewhat disconcerting that in the past several years my pleasure reading has been non-fiction. I don't know what that says about me except perhaps my avocational interest (Philosophy & Theology) and recreational interest has merged; or I need to get a life. Of late I've been working my way through "The Everlasting Man" by G.K. Chesterton and "Art as Experience" by John Dewey" But in my bag that I carry back and forth to work I have another personal favorite by John Dewey, "Experience and Nature" I also regularly revisit "Being and Time" and the works of Karl Popper, Henri Bergson, and Richard Rorty. When not reading these I am often thinking about them; especially since my new bionic eyes make it harder to read on the bus so I contemplate rather than read in the mornings and evening. These times of contemplation have become the high-light of my days. I try to leave work and catch the last bus home before 5:00PM everyday or will wait until nearer to 7:00 PM because the buses are much less crowded at that time and I can have a seat to my self and just plug into the MP3 and think about stuff. Of late I've been thinking of Esau.

My personal devotions had been in the Gospel of Matthew for nearly two years until this fall. I was reading through it slowly, just sort of taking it patiently. At some point that changed and I've found myself back in Genesis. I think the reason for this is actually a statement made by G.K Chesterton in "The Everlasting Man" He talks about how historians often divide humanity into the "Civilized" farming and "Barbarian" nomads and how it is presumed that at one point all humans were nomads and that over time most of them settled down. However, where is the evidence of this? Chesterton claims that it seems that for as long people have been people we find that some were nomadic and some more settled so why do we call one type of society more advanced than the other? This made me think of the stories of Cain and Able but also of Jacob and Esau. Esau caught my attention. We do not know a lot about Esau and his name is not generally one that parents give their sons. Jacob is a common name but I do not think I have ever met anybody named Esau. We even use elements of the story of Jacob and Esau as a pejorative phrase when we say "He sold it for a bowl of pottage"

Yet, what do we see when we look at Esau? We see a man who was concerned with his work and living as much as the future. He was essentially right when he said "What good will an inheritance do me if I starve?" Was he angry that Jacob had tricked him? Yes, and he had a right to be. Jacob did not wait to obtain the blessing God had promised him in the way God intended but instead stole it. Jacob then, rather wisely fled to Haran so as not to face the wrath of his brother. Jacob then carried on with his career of larceny and deceit and effectively cheated his uncle Laben out of flock and herds as well as two daughters. At that point Jacob had to flee again. This time back towards his brother.

Notice something. Esau never went to Haran. Is it really feasible to believe that he didn't know where Jacob had gone? Is it feasible to believe that Esau couldn't have followed our had someone follow Jacob and kill him? All we know is that he didn't Indeed, Esau isn't mentioned again until Jacob returns to Palestine. At that time Jacob, assuming his brother is still angry with him attempts to buy off his brother by making restitution payments. When he arrives he finds that Esau has forgiven him and refuses to take even the gifts offered by Jacob.

When I look at Esau I see a man who is able to let go of past wrongs, to forgive and forget. I see a man who enjoys life and recognizes what God has given him and is thankful for it. A man who is content and does not blame others or hold a grudge. This must have been some experience for Jacob. While the other episodes in his life are the ones we are taught in Sunday School I can't help but think this was the one that really made an impression upon him. Did Jacob learn to be content by seeing that Esau was content? Did he learn to forgive by being forgiven? Did he cease striving with God because of what he saw in his brother? I don't know, but I can make a guess.

Yet, Esau was a nomad, a herdsman, a barbarian on a horse. The supposedly less civilized side of the human family. May I live to be as barbaric as Esau.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The blogger who should probably read an adventure novel

What is Educational Philosophy?

A slightly different form of this post was presented as a guest lecture in an educational administration class at HKBU.

An Annotated Definition of Educational Philosophy

I have a difficult task tonight because I have to provide you with an overview of the development of educational philosophy in a way that will hopefully help you develop an educational philosophy of your own in a single lecture. This is a difficult task when you remember that some schools of education split basic educational philosophy into two complete classes. That means that even going fast and just hitting the highlights so that you can get a basic understanding of what educational philosophy is will be difficult in the time we have tonight. I basically have two options: I can either talk really, really fast, giving you lots of names, dates and terms that would leave you saying “Gee he’s really smart but I still don’t have a clue” or I can simply the process. I have chosen to try and simplify the process down to what I consider to be the essence out of 4000 years of philosophic thought from several different civilizations and give you just the very top of the tip of the iceberg that is educational philosophy. So please, please, please remember what you are getting is just the most abbreviated of outlines, a skeleton, the bare bones of what it means to think philosophically about education. You will have to put flesh on those bones yourself but that is Ok because I believe that everyone is a philosopher. Everybody thinks philosophic thoughts. We just need some help and practice to organize those thoughts sometimes.

Even so, I'm going to have to talk really fast.

All that we are going to do tonight is define the term “Philosophy of Education” Once we do this you will have the ability to begin to flesh out you own philosophy of education. This may at first seem to be a silly way to proceed; but as with many things appearances can be deceiving. The way we are going to do this is to get to a working definition of each word, "philosophy" and "education" and then combine those definitions in what I hope will be a meaningful way.

But, before we go farther I want to allow about 10 second for you to take a deep breath and relax and clear your mind. Because we have a long way to go and a short time to get there.

Is everybody relaxed? Are you ready? Here we go.

What is Philosophy?

The word Philosophy literally means “The pursuit of wisdom or knowledge” That does not really help us much. Who doesn’t want to be wise? I’d be willing to bet that if you asked anybody at any time; “Do you want to be wise? Do you love wisdom?” they’d say “Of course!” So the meaning of the word doesn’t help us much.

So let’s look at a definition out of a dictionary:

phi·los·o·phy

–noun, plural -phies.

1.the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.

2.any of the three branches, namely natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy, that are accepted as composing this study.

3.a system of philosophical doctrine: the philosophy of Spinoza.

4.the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, esp. with a view to improving or reconstituting them: the philosophy of science.

5.a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.

6.a philosophical attitude, as one of composure and calm in the presence of troubles or annoyances.

Philosophy. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Philosophy (accessed: June 17, 2008).

As you can see the more complete dictionary definition does not help much either. Indeed, with definitions like that you’d think a forest was just a bunch of trees.

I think it was the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga who defined philosophy simply as “Thinking about things in a systematic way” and I think that he gives us a better working definition to start with though it is still rather broad. If you think about it his definition includes the literal meaning of the word but expands it in a good way. What I think he means is that all thinking, regardless of the subject is based in philosophy. Every thought, every word, everything that we think we know is tied to a philosophic concept in one way or another; and he if he didn't mean it that way I do mean it that way. When you think, as opposed to acting on an instinct you are engaging in Philosophy.

I know what some of you are thinking: “I’m going to be a science teacher. Science deals in facts not philosophy!” Now I am not going to ask who is thinking that but I am going to say you are wrong. Science is steeped in the philosophy of naturalism which is a type of philosophic realism that developed in the 16^th century and rest on a set of assumptions none of which are ultimately provable. Some of these assumptions are:

1. The Universe really exist

2. The Universe is orderly and obeys natural laws

3. We are smart enough to figure out what those laws are.

How do we know any of these statements is true? Yet to be a scientist you must BELIEVE all of them. They are simply considered to be “Self Evident.” Don’t you think I am just picking on science either; every field of study rest upon philosophic assumptions; if you look for them you can find them.

You could argue and some philosophers such as George Berkley have argued that at least of some the statements above are false. Berkley took the, at for me, rather extreme position that matter does not exist. That everything we see is product of our mind or the mind of God and when he did that the other two assumptions of science became problematic as well. Thus, for Berkley the universe does not really exist, it obeys no fixed laws and we cannot know anything true about reality but only what we see. You have probably already heard Berkley’s famous question: “If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it fall, did it make any sound?” The answer depends upon whether you think the universe exist independently of the observer. Most of us would say “Yes, it made a crash when it fell” but Berkley would say you cannot know that because you didn’t see it."

Now obviously I am engaging in a little bit of silliness here because I’m purposely using examples, the materialism inherent in science and Berkley's radical empiricism, that clash with each other. But the object is to show you the reason it is difficult to answer the question “What is Philosophy?” is because philosophers believe different things about the basic structure of the universe and to some extent what you believe the universe to be affects what you see. But how can we come to a definition of a subject is this diverse? Well we could break it up into specific types or branches of philosophy but I’m not sure that helps much at all in a general sense. We are looking for a general answer to the question “What is Philosophy?” not, “What is Scientific Philosophy?” Besides, if we simply put a word to modify “philosophy” in front of it then we just have two words of nonsense, not one. So before we can say "What is educational philosophy?" We must answer the question, "What is Philosophy?"

If you think the conflict between Mr. Berkeley and Science is problematic then I probably shouldn’t tell you that it gets worse. Please remember here that we are touching only the tip top of that iceberg and so most of these statements could be construed as over generalizations

Ludwig Feuerbach believed that the only things that exist is the physical world, no God no mind – just electrons firing in the brain with no higher purpose, nothing except what is. But Alvin Plantinga is Protestant Christian at a Catholic university who uses philosophy to defend a religious belief. Martin Heidegger believed we can only know we are human because we fear death and Ludwig Wittgenstein spent his life questioning our ability to communicate with each other. He thought language was so unreliable that we can never truly know anything about each other or even talk to each other meaningfully because of the connotative problems associated with language

Let me explain this last one a little bit because I see that some of you look like you don’t understand what I mean, which I guess also sort of proves Wittgenstein’s point. I want you to think of the word “Tea.” What images, words, or feelings do you associate with the word “Tea?” Take few seconds to think about what “Tea” means to you. Maybe even as you think about the word write down a few of the mental images you think of when you think of “Tea.”

What comes to mind when you think of tea? How many of you have at least one of these on your list?

1. Dim Sum

2. Milk

3. Lemon

4. Sugar

5. Cups

6. Saucers

7. China

8. A shop on the street

Do you know what I think of when I think of “Tea”

1. Big plastic tumblers

2. Lots of ice

3. Screened in porches

4. Ceiling fans

5. Baseball on the radio

6. The fatigue of agricultural work

7. Bales of hay

8. Big dogs

So, when you look at the things that I associate with the word “Tea” versus what you associate with the word “Tea” are we really talking about the same thing when we both say “I like tea?” Are we? Is your connotative idea of "Tea" even the same beverage as mine? Connotatively, the way we think about tea is very different. Now if something as common and simple as “tea” is so different because of our background, nationality and upbringing imagine how different our individual conception of much more abstract concepts will be. Doesn't Wittgenstein have a point? How is it possible to really know anything that someone else tells us?

So I ask you again. What is Philosophy?

I think part of the problem we've been having is that we’ve been looking at the problem wrong. Think of the word “Science.” Is Chemistry the same thing as biology? What about Genetics and Astronomy? They share some things but you cannot say that each is the same as the other. The different branches of science are held together by that common set of assumptions that I mentioned earlier and by adherence to the scientific method. Thus different branches of science are held together by the fact that they do different things, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy and so forth, in the same way.

Likewise, philosophers come in different flavors. Philosophers can focus on metaphysics, logic, morality and ethics to name a few and there are divisions within the divisions but they are tied together not because they believe or because they say the same thing but because of how they approach the subject. So what is the scientific method of philosophy? What links the writings of such diverse people as Jean Paul Sartre, Thomas Aquinas, Friedrich Nietzsche and A.J. Ayer? The answer is that science asks "How" and "What" questions but philosophy ask "Why" and "If" questions. All philosophers from the pre-Socratics until today look at something and ask "Why is that?"or "If that is so then what does it mean?" It could be argued that little children are the most philosophic people on Earth because they are constantly asking strange questions like: "If the cat wags its tail does it become a dog?" But is that any different than asking "If a tree falls in a forest and nobody heard it fall did it make a sound?" Well yes it is because children are, at least if you believe in a rational material that really exist, asking out of an ignorance of biology and at least some of the time Philosophers are asking because they want to challenge our perception of the world.

There is a fly in this ointment however, "Why" and "If" questions cannot normally be answered in a definitive way. So the question behind the question then becomes: Why ask why?" And here, believe it or not we have our answer to the question, "What is Philosophy?" Philosophers are looking for better ways to ask questions. You cannot get the right answer unless you ask the right question. To ask the right question you must question everything. Thinking about things or actually thinking about how to think about things is, I believe the first step in learning. It is the most basic type of intellectual activity and all of us do it all the time. It is also the fundamental activity of philosophers

Philosophy is the art or science asking what questions are worth asking.

Think about that a moment. What we are saying is that when we are looking for answers that we cannot find it might be because we have wrong question. Is it plausible to believe that you will every get the right answers if you are asking the wrong questions?

When viewed that way all of the sometimes contradictory answers above are understandable. So, when we think of education in philosophic terms we need to be sure that we are asking the right question. Our philosophy of education isn’t about the answers we have but about the questions we want to find.

Sometimes doing that means the philosopher ask very strange questions. This is the approach that Descartes used when he consciously tried to doubt everything. What he found was that he could not doubt that he was doubting and therefore there must be someone or some thing to doubt so he was able to say "I cannot doubt that I doubt and doubting requires thinking. Therefore because one must think to doubt and thinking requires a being to think so I think therefore I am.” Which leads me to sometime wonder how many people today are not really here since they never appear to think?

And that brings us to our next question: What is Education?

Most teachers would probably answer the question: "What is education?" by using one of these two models: "Education is imparting knowledge" or "Education is helping the student discover knowledge." because as an educator you can perceive yourself as delivering knowledge or facts to your students on one extreme; or you can, at the other extreme use a curriculum that is based upon letting students explore a subject in more or less unstructured way. Most of you will probably fall somewhere between the two. However, in Hong Kong the public schools tend to lean rather hard towards content based education.

What is interesting about these two ideas is that neither is actually education. They are pedagogy! Pedagogy is the science of educating but not education itself. Pedagogy is means to an end. It is how we deliver a curriculum in schools. If it were the sum of education then no education could ever occur without pedagogy or could have ocurred before a pedagogy existed.

Without a doubt John Dewey is the most important educational philosopher in the last 200 years and yet, in many ways John Dewey was simply an advocate of an improved pedagogy. However, I believe that his pedagogy was based upon a better understanding of what learning is and how education should replicate the way naturally learn. That does not mean I always agree with everything he said. It certainly does not mean that I agree with everything that is done in his name. Dewey believed that education should be tied to experience and that academic skills are best mastered when placed in context of real life situations and when solving actual problems.

Notice if you will the last three words of my previous sentence.

Now remember how we defined philosophy? It is the art of science of asking what questions are worth asking. Dewey, though trying to reform pedagogy got the right answer to the question "What is education" because he asked the right question Why do students find knowledge easier to learn if they see a purpose for those skills? Because if what they learn is seen as valuable to them they have motivation to learn it. Do we, through practice gain the desire for more esoteric knowledge that we have less use for? Yes but that is an acquired taste.

So what is education? Education is the way that humans learn to solve the problems required for living.

So if we put our two definitions together into a unified whole what do we have?

How about this: Educational Philosophy is the process of asking questions in a

way that allows students to gain the answers needed for living in society.

Question #3: Why do I need an educational Philosophy?

Well, given that we are out of time, you'll to answer that one yourself.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who dabble in Educational Philosophy

A more thought out response

As I said in an earlier post I went to a conference on Saturday. The keynote speaker was Mark Treadwell who helped design the new national curriculum for New Zealand.

Without being unnecessarily rude may I say that I found Mark Treadwell to be one of those "Visionary Leaders" that the other keynote speaker Jamie McKenzie warned us about that we should avoid in another session on Friday. Which is a shame, he seems like a nice guy and on a certain level I really liked him. I leave open the possibility that I completely misunderstood him.

He is I believe both misreading and misinterpreting the concept of child centered education as developed by John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Horace Mann and others.

I think that if Mark Treadwell's ideas were followed then we would have a society that could not maintain the machines that were required to sustain the society that the machines had created. In that sense his ideas are the antithesis of progressive education.

While I disagreed with him on many levels he made one point that was very true; humans are not necessarily logical beings. It is strange to me that he should believe that and then not see that technology will be neither our salvation nor our downfall. After all, how could a logical machine redeem an illogical animal?

His, at least implied assertion that written language is being replaced with verbal language is demonstratively false. If for no other reason than people can read faster than they can speak. Reading about something is a much more efficient way of gathering information for most people than speaking. Especially when written language removes the barriers associated with accent.

His graph about the growth of knowledge and the "New Paradigm" that supposedly emerged in 2002 was, I think misleading in that the amount of knowledge may increase faster as a whole but the slope of change remains the same and the plateaus are shorter You would expect that because humans have the same brain they had 100,000 years ago and can only learn so fast. Knowledge increases in part because there are more people. More than that, most of the new knowledge, especially that on the Internet is not really knowledge at all, but some combination of conjecture, misapplication and bigotry. Thus, it has no education value. Other areas of knowledge are applicable only to specialized fields. Most people do not need to know much more to live their lives today than they did 50 years ago. It does not matter how much more is known in global sense.

In his follow up session in the afternoon he had a chart that showed how he believed that character education had flowed from conformity (discipline by force) to self interest to a moral reasoning. While in one sense there is some truth in this in another way it showed an almost laughable lack of understanding of educational history. It can easily be shown that the primary purpose of education, since at least the time of Plato has been to instill moral virtue. The modern public education movement at least in the United States and Canada was in large part started in the 19th century as a way to increase literacy so that the illiterate working class could develop the skills needed to read the Bible and therefore improve their moral understanding and not to simply have their religion dictated to them. So, his chart was in some important ways backwards.

I would also challenge his assertion that we are entering an age where creativity is more important than the past. Was the caveman making a flint tip for his spear any less creative than someone today? Indeed, it appears to me that people in an agricultural or pre-industrial society had to be rather more creative than the accountant, banker or generic bean-counter professions that we have today. In the past you solved problems or you died; today if you are not good at solving problems you become a middle-manager, politician, fashion designer, entertainer or any of a host of other jobs where creativity is discouraged in favor of recycling old trends or following an existing, somewhat ridged set of directives.

I also found his characterization of the educational process to be skewed. While previous generations did emphasis more route learning and some cultures emphasized it more than others it simply isn't true children were not taught to think or be creative in the past. The entire cannon of literature and the complete body of arts and sciences testify against Mark Treadwell at this point.

I think that in the past, possibly because there was less to distract us, humans engaged more in what I call meditative learning. This is the act of simply pondering a problem as you walk or while sitting down. Just thinking about something. Now with the ubiquity of Internet access almost nobody thinks because we do not have to. Search Google and see what somebody else says. How is that creative? I believe and I believe it strongly that to improve education we may not need more technology but less. (Please note, I do not suffer from technophobia) As our curriculum has become more crowded it is this meditative aspect of education that has most suffered and it is in this aspect of education that libraries used to excel. It is also the aspect of learning that is most obviously absent in Hong Kong Schools. Do you want to see creative, thinking, mature, morally grounded students graduating from you school who can face the terrors of adulthood with the ability to gain and use the skills needed to meet the challenge of the future? Then maybe we don't need to speed up learning but to slow it down.

All of this means that, contrary to what Mark Treadwell appeared to say, I don't think that the way good teachers teach has or is going to change very much. Teachers may use different media for instruction, incorporate new technology into lesson plans, apply concepts to real life situation, make the educational process student centered, encourage thinking and creativity and try to mold character as well as academic skills; but, when have good teachers not done these things?

The more things change the more they stay the same; and that is many times a good thing.

After hearing Mark Treadwell twice on Friday I decided I'd rather not hear what he had to say on Saturday. I stayed home and went out to lunch with the really smart, good looking, looks twenty-five years younger than she is, hard working wife. We enjoyed our meal.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who styles himself as a part time philosopher of education