J32 - A Human Education

[Note at the outset that the terms “education” and “school” are not synonymous, although they both mean something similar and are used seemingly interchangeably in this journal. Education is a more general term that embodies all valuable learning that children and young adults experience, whereas school is the formal institution that seeks to effectively facilitate this learning experience. I note this because, while I do not go into this in the journal, schools serve a slightly different purpose than education. I believe that, like everything else, schooling should be provided by the market. However, if school is provided by the market, then it is serving present consumers. At the beginning of this piece I delve briefly into the purpose of education, which is generally to serve the future interests of children. But schools do not serve these future interests; their purpose is not to prepare children for the future, but to serve their present desires. This may well be preparation for the future, but it also might not be. There may, therefore, be “schools” where there is no systematic training or instruction in set curriculums and instead the goal is just to make kids happy while they’re there. So, schools serve the present. Which is kind of interesting to think about, because that’s certainly not how they are thought of today and even within my own theory presented here creates an interesting tension.]

I think that my project, and really all of my intellectual contributions, can be reduced to the explication and application of the idea of purpose. That is, most of my academic work in life has been the applying of the idea of human purpose, which is a foundational concept in economics, to other fields and philosophies. My theory of being human, I think, is really just a series of ruminations on what a purposive existence looks like. This makes a great deal of sense, really, since I have long argued here and elsewhere that what makes man different is the fact that he acts, or behaves purposefully, and that this sense of purpose is unique to man. I’ve made a number of incursions into other, related, subjects, like reason and imagination, but I see these concepts as all wrapped up in each other, essential elements of that one concept of humanity. My project, then, has come down to reminding the world that humans act with purpose, and questioning what that looks like. 

With that said, let us begin this rather long piece on education with an examination of education’s purpose. I want to move quickly through this portion because I recently spent pages working through the purpose of education in a longer, more comprehensive piece which I’ve been working on, and I want to be sure to not take up as much space here. So, what is the purpose of education? There have been many different answers offered to this question, throughout history and even today, and, to be honest, many of them have merit. Which one is correct will depend on many different factors, not the least of which is one’s definition of education. Here, at this early point in our discussion, and given the ambiguity of our still-broad concepts, I do not wish to discount any of these answers but, rather, suggest a more broad answer that encompasses many of the more specific answers offered. The purpose of education, I contend, is to prepare students to be successful in life. This answer, as ambiguous as the question it answers, gives rise to a host of other questions. By briefly moving through these questions, I believe that we can develop a more precise definition of education’s purpose that will hopefully remain broad enough to retain consensus. 

Beginning with the assumption that the purpose of education is, broadly, to prepare students to be successful in life, the next question that must be considered is what it means to be successful in life. To be successful in life, I contend, is to be happy. I use the word happy in the same sense as the economists and philosophers of antiquity: satisfaction, utility, welfare. In this sense, the end of all human action is to increase the actor’s happiness, whether or not those actions are successful or the actor’s ideas are sound. If a human life is defined by its pursuit of happiness, then the successful life would be a life where happiness is attained. It seems apparent that human beings never reach perfect happiness, but it seems just as apparent that some are more successful than others. No one can fault an institution for failing to do the impossible; if perfect happiness is out of reach, then education can fulfill its purpose by enabling students to be happier, or more successful.

The next question, of course, is how we can be happy. This is where the individualist in me comes roaring to the surface. I don’t think that there’s one right way to be happy. Or, rather, I believe that everyone has their own right way which works for them and not for others, because everyone is different, and I think that this is a magnificent thing. Because value is subjective, and preferences are personal, only the individual can decide what he wants most, what will provide him with the greatest amount of happiness, and any philosopher pontificating on a mountaintop about the good life can be disregarded. So, there is no one way to be happy; each person will need their own path. But this implies that we will need tools with which to search for our own individual happiness. What tools are these? Well, in the most general of terms, we need material means that can sustain us during our search, and mental means with which to search. The material means, of course, will need to be produced before they can be consumed (if just through being recognized and classified as means by the human mind). Producing these material means, therefore, requires its own mental means. These mental means, like other human abilities, must be (or may be) developed to be more effective. In sum, then, the key to finding and attaining happiness lies in the development of our human minds. 

The development of the human mind is the task of education. Or, to be more precise, the purpose of education is to develop students’ abilities to produce and use material and mental means in the pursuit of their individual happiness which is the definition of a successful life.

Before we turn to a discussion of what this education should look like and what schools should be teaching and how, I’d like to briefly digress and explain the learning process, as I see it. Every individual has his own theory of how the world works. And everyone’s theory, insofar as it addresses every phenomenon, is complete. That is, even our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who knew next to nothing about the physical and chemical and even biological processes at work in their environments, had a complete theory about the nature of that environment and how it functioned. They were ignorant and wrong, of course. But they did have an understanding of the world, just as we all do now, as ignorant and wrong as our own understanding may be. Learning, then, is not just the acquisition of new information, but a revision to this theory of ours. To discover the idea of gravitational force, for instance, requires not just learning that objects fall to the ground because the Earth has tremendous mass, but also abandoning one’s previous theory for why objects fall to the ground (because the ground is lower than us, for instance, and things fall downward). 

Learning, then, is more than just the presentation or discovery of new information and the remembrance of this information. Learning is a process of revision to our theories of the universe. Therefore, learning requires two things from the learner. Curiosity, to seek new information, is obviously needed. But also needed, I would suggest, is humility. I plan on dedicating a whole journal to the subject of humility in the near future, so I won’t delve into it too deeply here, but I wanted to raise the point. For true learning to occur, the learner has to acknowledge that they have something to learn. Part of this, I think, is accomplished just by exposure to the world and information and other people with their own theories. Our understandings of the world are under constant revision; it’s a natural process. But, at the same time, there is, at some level, a need for this attitude of humility, and the internal motivation it provides to better oneself. It is entirely possible, as we see all too often, for a person to block off their desire to learn and hold fast to their own beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Political discussions are excellent examples of this; no matter what one says, some of the supporters of each side will not be swayed. Anyway, I make this point because it’s not easy to admit that you’re wrong, and therefore learning is not an effortless process. But, more relevant to this particular piece, this means that attempts to teach people who don’t want to learn will be in vain, or at least grossly ineffective. Education requires, on the part of the student, a willingness to learn, which can be approximated through a coercive system of rewards and punishments but will, ultimately, have to come from within the student. [Note that the reason this low-key humility and concomitant constant-learning is natural to human beings is because we are trying to attain our ends and the acquisition of knowledge, which we need to effectuate our designs, is a means toward that attainment. However, the search for knowledge is always purposeful. We seek information when we think that we need it. It is entirely possible, and, in fact, almost certain, then, that one may be curious and willing to revise their understanding in one area or on one subject but not in or on another.]

So, what should education, with a purpose of developing our minds, look like? Well, first of all, given the digression above, I think that education should be voluntary, and that by making it voluntary we could immediately and naturally resolve many of the issues that we face in schools today. But, I don’t know that I want to go into that right now. Rather, I’d like to examine the question of what schools should be teaching to the students who are in them, regardless of how the students came to be there.

There are, as I see it, three essential bodies of knowledge that must be imparted upon the youth. First are the basic pieces of knowledge and social norms that are necessary for functioning in society. This includes reading, writing, basic mathematical calculations, and how to interact with people peaceably. Now, this knowledge is necessary because it would be next to impossible to get through life without it. It is therefore of critical importance. However, I would question whether this knowledge needs to be formally taught, or whether the provision of opportunities for its acquisition would be enough. Much like my argument against Kant’s a priori categories of knowledge, I believe that the reason this knowledge is so important is because it is a constant presence in life and human affairs. But if it’s a constant in human experience, than the easiest, and perhaps most effective, way of teaching this knowledge might be to just expose children to human experiences. I find it strange that we take children out of the real world and put them in artificial environments (schools) to teach them skills and knowledge that they need to operate in the real world, when exposure to the real world might have been enough to allow the children to learn what they needed (and it seems that the real world would provide a quite accurate litmus test for determining what information was actually necessary for each child’s specific environment) through observation, imitation, and practice.

The second body of knowledge is job-specific. This is the advanced knowledge of science or math or history that one will need to be successful in the job that they’ve chosen. Again, as a nod to my belief in individuality, I think that this subject-specific knowledge should only be taught to students who believe it will be useful to them, because of the career that they’ve chosen. Now, I don’t expect ten-year-olds to be deciding what job they want for life, but I do think that the narrowing of possibilities can begin much earlier than it does currently. Children may not quite know what they’d like to do in the future, but they certainly know what they don’t like doing now, and this is enough, I think, to begin specializing relatively early (and to much advantage). By specializing, students will be able to accomplish much more in their field than they would if their attention was diverted by other subjects. Furthermore, the idea that all children should have the same (specialized) knowledge is an attack on the division of labor, in my mind, because progress is not built on the backs of more smart people, but on the backs of more different people, and to force everyone to learn the same things for well over a decade is an affront to this principle, an attack on the idea that being different is okay and, indeed, necessary for a colorful and flourishing society. So, specialized knowledge for specializing individuals would be an essential part of any education, once a student begins making those choices about his own education.

Finally, there is the third body of knowledge, which is the key piece to this education, I think. This is the skills that apply the unique abilities of the human mind to the living of the uniquely human life. I am speaking, of course, of reasoning and imagination and critical thinking. Education in this area would consist mostly of the cultivation of these inherent human traits such that they could develop into more effective and powerful tools. This body of knowledge is the most important because it makes possible the other two. To learn anything, you have to understand it. To truly understand new information and arguments, one must analyze and think critically about them. And to make any advances in knowledge, one must question the accepted body of knowledge and imagine new and different possibilities for doing and explaining things. These skills, too, are necessary at some level for basic functioning in the world, but a cursory view of the people around us reveals that the level these skills are developed to is subject to much variation. Therefore, here, as opposed to the first body of knowledge, there seems to be a need for focused training.

Another digression now, this time on the nature of progressing knowledge. Knowledge advances through the process of argumentation. Recall that every individual has their own theory about the world. Some are more informed than others, some are better reasoned than others, and some are more cohesive than others. It’s important to realize, I think, that a proper view of all these theories is not that one (one’s own, of course) is right and all the rest are simply wrong, but that there is one complete and correct understanding of the universe and then [insert current world population here] other theories which are more or less accurate. That is, one theory might be better than another, but that doesn’t mean that the theory is correct, or that it is better than the other in every way. Every theory could potentially have something to learn from every other theory, because it’s quite likely that even the most complete and correct theory of the universe could still be hopelessly ignorant and muddled from the point of view of a supernatural intelligence. So, theories are more or less correct, in different areas, rather than simply right or wrong.

Progress in science and intellectual life generally occurs through the examination of others’ theories and presenting arguments in support of your own. Every proposition, every statement that one makes about the world, is a part of one's theory of the universe and therefore backed by an understanding of the world that is unique to that person. Argumentation is the process of defending one’s propositions, one’s truth-claims, against the rest of the world. By exposing our ideas to the light of reality and the analysis of other thinkers, we can ensure that our own understanding of the world is correct. Now, every time one makes a truth-claim about the world, there is an argument in defense of that proposition, whether implicit or explicit. However, it is the task of every responsible person to try to make their defense, their argument, as strong as possible and public so that the rest of the world can analyze their truth-claim for its veracity and perhaps learn from it. In this world of competing theories of the universe, based on different experiences and observations and chains of reasoning, argumentation and analysis is the process through which bad theories are discounted and new, better theories are created through the synthesis of other good theories. [For more on this, talk to me about my classes on argument theory and method (maybe one day I’ll distill it into a post here) and see my post from October, “On Questioning.”]  But, here I would just like to say that the process of argumentation and analysis, which yields advances in both the scientific and practical sciences, is dependent on the quality of the participants’ reasoning, critical thinking, and questioning skills. These essential human traits, capable of cultivation to remarkable levels, are the source of progress in human life and society, as evidenced by their central role in even the advanced areas of academic knowledge.

Now that we’ve determined, roughly, what is to be learned through education, we can ask how these things should be learned. And, to skip entirely a seemingly useless chain of reasoning, I assert that these things should be learned in the way which is most effective for people to learn. So this question changes slightly, for now, to be “How do people learn?” Now, I have said before, knowledge is for a purpose. That is, people have to want to learn in order for them to truly learn something, and they want to learn things for a purpose, perhaps to merely demonstrate their knowledge, or because they find the material interesting, or, more likely, because they have a goal in mind, the attainment of which requires the utilization of certain knowledge. So, people learn most effectively when they have a need for what they’re learning. 

Many researchers in the education reform movement, most notably John Holt and Maria Montessori, have said similar things about the learning patterns of children. According to these anthropologists, children learn by doing. Children do not take classes in walking and reading; they just start doing it. They begin badly, but over time, through revisions to their understanding of their objective, they improve. They say that this is true across the field. Children learn by doing. And this lines up with my theory above, that people learn when they have a reason to learn. Children have a reason to learn how to do something when they want to and begin doing that thing, and so they learn with the help of their magnificent human minds.

[Interestingly, Mises hypothesized that the reason we can’t remember our earliest years is because we were passive observers of the world, with no sense of purpose. That is, when we were only a year old, we weren’t thinking yet, in that uniquely human sense, and therefore didn’t really exist yet. We can’t remember anything because we weren’t thinking anything to be remembered.]

An understandable reaction to the fact that children learn through doing and when they have a reason to learn is to then force kids to do more of that doing and to introduce more reasons for doing so. This is the idea behind, I think (rather, this is an argument that could be used in support of), much of modern schooling. Students are given repetitive tasks in the areas where they should be learning, and a grading system is established to provide motivation for doing the tasks and doing them well. 

But, as I discussed on our way through these areas of knowledge, all of this knowledge which it is education’s purpose to provide is naturally sought and acquired through the living of life. Living in the world, and wanting even a minimum level of flexibility within it provides both the opportunity and incentive to learn the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as basic social norms. When one decides how they wish to integrate themselves into the division of labor, they begin training for their job by learning the specialized information that they will need (oftentimes provided by the employer, who doesn’t wish to hire untrained workers), and the purpose for acquiring this knowledge, obviously, is to be successful in one’s work. And the essential functions of critical thinking and arguing and questioning are also present in daily life and useful in nearly every application, therefore capable of much cultivation through practice. All this to say that students will probably be doing all of these things naturally, without a coercive school system forcing them to do so, and with true purpose, rather than in fear of an artificial apparatus. 

[As an educator who has developed and runs an independent research program that is designed to develop students’ critical thinking and questioning abilities, I believe that the most effective way to cultivate these skills is simply through careful conversation. Demonstrate what you want the students to be learning, and then seize upon every opportunity to help them practice these skills. Ask questions, and teach them to question others, themselves, and even me (the teacher). When they want to talk about an interesting topic, even if it’s unrelated to their topic of study, engage with them, subtly help them build an argument and defend it. Throw out an idea or a news story every once in a while for them to analyze and think critically about. These skills certainly can be developed in a number of ways, but still all naturally, through careful attention and skillful enticement and appropriate amounts of respect.]

[I acknowledge, however, that there are multiple ways of teaching the same thing, and other methods or theories of education which are about as good as mine that exist and are employed successfully. Which will prove most effective and best for the students will depend on the individual and his circumstances and should therefore, I believe, be left to the market to discover.]

Now, all of this has just been a few of my thoughts on education generally. This is an area of particular interest for me (I design and run a high school program), and I have thought and written extensively on the topic. But now I’d like to, briefly, connect these general thoughts back to my project a little more explicitly. It should be somewhat implied in what I say above, but education should be developing children into adults with developed human faculties capable of leading purposeful lives in the pursuit of their individual happiness. As a voluntaryist, I do not believe that any child should be forced to learn anything specific, but in light of the rest of my project, there are certainly some things that it would be beneficial for everyone to know. To further develop one’s human abilities and become fully human, it may be necessary to become self-aware, or knowledgeable about what makes human beings different and special and how this state of affairs comes about. The basics of economics and philosophy, enough to understand man’s role in the universe and method of living, the necessity of society, how best to preserve it, and the function of other social institutions like law and morality and family, would undoubtedly be an asset to every person who cared enough to learn them (and everyone else in society). How, exactly, this should be taught should, again, be left to the market. But, in general, it requires educators to live the principles that can be derived from such knowledge: Respect everyone, even small children, as potential creators and shapers of their own destinies; create communities of learners where students can develop relationships and experience the benefits of working with others; and demonstrate a moral and just life to be observed, imitated, and practiced by the watchful little ones. 

There are, currently, many flaws with our current educational system. I have, for more than my entire adult life, been on the front lines trying to fix some of them. My colleagues help in my efforts and engage in their own campaigns. Some of my own students have picked up the standard themselves and are marching off to war. I have no doubt that education in this country will be radically transformed in my lifetime. As we make our changes, however, we should always keep in mind what the real purpose of education is. [For example, arguments for reform that begin by presenting evidence of decreasing student test scores could be regarded as implicitly arguing that the job of schools is to raise scores on standardized tests.] We should consider what we want students to be learning. Are we training future employees, or are we creating informed citizens, or are we trying to develop creative, thinking human beings? And finally, we should think about how we want to deliver this education to the students. For, as the great Gatto said, “The method of schooling is its only real content.” Will we continue to lock children into artificial environments where information they did not ask to learn is taught to them, or will we respect children as the growing human beings that they are and allow them the freedom to grow peacefully?