Let Us Compare Mythologies

The three great theories of learning dominate our thinking in the field of education, behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism. They all share one fundamental premise, and it is wrong: that teaching can be, and ought to be, a science. Human minds are too complex for all irrelevant variables to be excluded; science is based on observation, and human minds (but for our own) cannot be directly observed; and there is an insurmountable observer paradox—logically, the human mind cannot fully comprehend itself any more than one can swallow one’s own body, or pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. All this is aside from the difficult moral questions involved in experimenting on fellow human beings.

This does not mean we can learn nothing from these three approaches to learning. Elements of the mind, and effects of the mind, such as behaviours or test results, can be observed and measured. But at best, it is taking the long way around: like using a wrench to insert a screw, or a screwdriver to drive a nail. It is not efficient.

Science has a great deal of prestige in modern culture, but it is not now, and never has been, the only way of knowing. For understanding humanity, there are better ways—in a word, the humanities.

Let us consider the three modern schools in turn.

Behaviourism sees the mind as a machine—the best analogy seems to be a vending machine. You put in a coin, and get what you want out the other end. Failing that, you bang it a few times—if not rewards, then punishments. But this model is immediately disproven by experience. We do not experience our own learning as automatic; we are aware of making choices, having free will, and many other motivations than immediate sensory pleasure. We are aware of dreams, emotions, hopes, imaginings. And behaviourism is logically disprovable, because self-contradictory: if all thought is pure stimulus-response, so is the bahaviourist theory itself. It cannot claim to be true; only to be what BF Skinner's and perhaps our own conditioning makes us believe. No necessary relation to reality can be established.

Behaviourist experiments can certainly produce correct results; but has it really advanced our classroom practice? What parent or teacher does not already know, has not always known, that rewards and punishments can influence behaviour in predictable ways?

Cognitivism understands this flaw in behaviourism, and so sees the mind as a more complex machine: a computer. This is surely a better analogy. But it still contradicts our direct experience: computers are not conscious and self-conscious; we are. Computers are not autonomous beings; they must first be designed, made and programmed. This leaves the cognitive scientist with three choices: (1) either this is a false, or at least incomplete analogy, and we are not just computers, but computers-plus-programmers; or (2) we are “programmed” by mindless evolutionary forces; or (3) there is a Supreme Programmer, a cosmic Bill Gates, who has created our operating systems. If (2), we face the same problem behaviourism does—the cognitive thesis itself is the result of mindless evolutionary forces, and has no necessary relationship to truth or reality. If (3), we are beyond the realm of science.

Cognitivist studies too can produce valid results. However, there seems to be nothing discovered yet in cognitive research on memory which cannot be found in books of rhetoric from 2,000 years ago, or in cognitive research on metaphor which is not already plainly understood and stated by Homer, Blake, Shelley, or countless other literary writers. It is therefore not useful for the classroom as a practical matter. It has brought us nothing we did not, as teachers, as a profession, already know.

Constructivism is currently the fashionable approach. It understands the problem with cognitivism, that computers are not autonomous beings, and seeks to introduce this factor, at the same time preserving scientific objectivity and value neutrality, by claiming that we create our own realities: “reality is socially constructed.” But this too violates direct experience: it is possible for us to believe that the beliefs of others are socially constructed, but never our own. Our own are simply true, or we would not and could not believe them at all. It also slams into the same logical self-contradiction as the other two approaches: if truth is socially constructed, this necessarily includes the truth that “truth is socially constructed,” which is therefore no more than an arbitrary assertion any of us is free to socially “deconstruct” or reject. It is ultimately no more true, by its own admission, than any other random statement.

In any case, as teachers, we must accept that there is an underlying reality, or teaching itself becomes impossible. If there are no truths, there is nothing to learn, nothing to teach, and no basis on which to teach one thing instead of another, in one way instead of another. There is a danger, here, too, that without a fundamental agreement across the profession that there is a truth and that it can be known, individuals handed a classroom full of students may replace a dedication to teaching with pure self interest and personal will to power, to the detriment of all.

There is a similar danger, with the other two theories, that individuals or groups, driven by these premises, might take it upon themselves to “condition” or “program” students beyond the designated subject area, to promote a particular political or personal agenda. To the extent that it were possible, this would be the ultimate act of domination of one human being over another, in principle rather more extreme than slavery. Skinner even titled his 1971 populer treatment of his thesis Beyond Freedom and Dignity. But the attempt alone is an affront to the ethics of the profession.

Resolved, therefore, that there is a truth to be known, and that it is possible to know it; and that it is the duty of the profession to teach it; but the scientific method is not the way, in the context of the classroom. Fortunately, as mentioned, science is not the only way of knowing. Science inducts general rules from the specifics of sense experience (a little more complicated than that, as Karl Popper demonstrated; there must be a thesis to be tested. But for the sake of contrast--). It is also possible to begin with general rules, or general truths, and deduce practice from them. Certain things necessarily follow, for example, from the laws of mathematics, or from the rules of formal logic. And it is also possible to induce general rules from the specifics of our direct experience of the mind, as opposed to our sense experience.

Let us consider, first, the possibility of deriving teaching practice from abstract philosophy: deducing practice from general truths.

The first problem is finding a general truth—or at least, one as generally accepted as is the scientific method. In trivial matters and in detail, this is not difficult: a door is a door, and an umlaut is an umlaut. It becomes harder when we need to state a general truth about truth, the mind, or humankind; but this is what we need in order to arrive at any general truths about teaching. I believe however, that there is at least one such truth, self-evident and inalienable: the fundamental equality of all humankind. Do some deny it? If so, are we not inclined to consider them, not just mistaken, but morally wicked? It is not universally honoured in practise; but neither are the latest findings of science, without this reflecting on their truth. Essentially all the world's governments have signed on to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Philosophically, the functional truth of human equality seems to have been proven by Kant in his “categorical imperative”--to be moral, we must always act as if we were all equal. In one formulation, Kant states his univeral law as: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.” Or, in the more classic phrasing, I propose as the precise cognate, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

Of course, there can be difficulties and disagreements in working out the consequences of this truth, just as there can be with any given law of science. This or that specific “human right” might be debated; this or that specific act might be considered proper by one, immoral by another; what human “equality” really implies may be disputed or misunderstood. But these are not fundamental problems; they are problems with interpretation, not with the principle.

Does the truth that all humans are equal tell us anything about teaching practice? I think it does. First, it means that any elevation of the status of an adult teacher above that of an adult student must be justified in light of the specific aim, never assumed. The teacher's superiority is nothing more than his superior knowledge of a subject area or skill, and continues only insofar as that remains the case. The relationship is supplier-consumer, not ruler-subject or sage-idiot.

This being so, the student should be granted all possible autonomy beyond what is strictly and demonstrably required for learning. The teacher should take care to suggest, not dictate.

I believe this also implies that the teacher always see the student as a whole person, not merely as a student, and understand that the student is more important than the subject being taught. Accordingly, a teacher should strive to be a friend, and a true friend, to every student, always putting the interests of the student foremost, and not a judge and gatekeeper of the interests or standards of the subject or field being taught. For example, as an English teacher, my first commitment should not be to safeguarding officially correct English usage, but to helping the students meet their own real objectives and needs in the subject. It may be that, for this class and its goals, or this student, understanding geography is more important than understanding English usage. A good English teacher should be aware of this, and tailor their course and expectations accordingly.

I believe the doctrine of human equality also suggests that it is best, when possible, to separate the tasks of teaching and of summative evaluation; otherwise, the teacher is given unnecessarily great power over the student, and is to some extent working at cross purposes, as both judge and advocate. There is also, of course, one less objective check for the student's learning, and a moral hazard of grade inflation. Of course, there are legitimate objections to standardized testing, and I do not discount them.There are also any number of practical reasons why this might be impossible. But in an ideal situation, summative testing, standardized or not, should probably be done independently.

Given that the student is an autonomous being capable of choosing for him or herself, and most directly conscious of his or her own internal experiences, the best way to evaluate specific teaching and learning techniques—I would argue better than standardized testing--becomes this: you ask the students. This is a perfectly empirical and objective, if not perfectly reliable, test of practice, one used in business or the arts every day. If the students aver that a certain technique has helped their learning, they are, in the end, those most capable of making this judgement.

I believe that taking this empirical approach, of regularly soliciting student feedback, is the single most efficient way of improving teaching practice, on the individual level and on the level of the profession. This allows us to induct general principles from our direct experience of the mind: students are reporting on their own mental experiences. Students should be fully conscious of the fact that they have learned something, and the desire to do so is normally the primary reason they are attending a class. Their responses should therefore be generally reliable—and have indeed been shown in studies to be reliable against a variety of checks, such as their marks on standardized tests, and their opinions of the same class years later.

The utility of some learning techniques, of course, is not immediately apparent. As Aristotle said, “learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.” This is surely at least sometimes true. Accordingly, the most useful evaluation comes at the very end of a course, or as near to it as possible, by which time the final results of a given learning technique should be apparent.

It is part of the role of a teacher, beyond keeping up with subject knowledge, to be constantly on the lookout for new techniques or approaches to learning that sound as if they might be useful for students. When it is possible to do so, the reasoning behind the approach should be explained to the students when the approach is tried. The approach should then be judged by the response of their students, and adjusted accordingly. People being different, complex, and autonomous, what works may in fact differ widely by teacher and by class. It pays, accordingly, to have a very diverse bag of teaching tools at one`s disposal.

Beyond the benefit of being morally and logically correct, I feel this approach is the one best calculated to bring personal and financial success to an instructor or a college. Given a free market, the approach of respecting and responding directly to the learner (or, if dealing with minors, the parents) will also inevitably lead to maximum profitability. People will pay to get what they want; and they will cooperate more fully if they are getting what they want. With the opening up of the educational marketplace through distance education and the internet, this competitive edge is likely to become increasingly important very quickly.