reflections on life, education, and the endless end of the world as we know it by CiRCE President, Andrew Kern. copyright 2004, CiRCE Institute
To be outdated doesn't necessarily mean to be wrong. We curmudgeons, when we think of viruses, still think of them in relation to diseases. The with it folks (who would never use such a 60's phrase even though their fashions have descended all the way to the unspeakable 70's with touches of the unthinkable 80's) think the idea of a virus started with computers and then was transfered by metaphor to the human body.
That's viral thinking.
I said yesterday that the college has great power over, and therefore great responsibility to, the secondary school. This power arises from the simple fact that when a student graduates from high school he often wants to go to college.
I could write endlessly about the muddle that the American college has become. I'd say it has lost its way, but I'm not sure many of them ever knew their way. The American college, since the late 1800's, is predicated on the need to produce intellects that can keep our economy operational. Anyone who reads about the history of the American college will be amazed at the unending conflict within our colleges, especially those with the most glorious reputations, as to what their purpose is.
One day we'll need to come up with some way to categorize colleges based on their formal causes. I tried but it's too hard to do in a brief blog. But very few colleges spend much time thinking past administrative concerns to the natural function of a college. In fact, I would argue that very few colleges are colleges any more.
My main point so far is to point out that most colleges haven't worked out what they are for. Some have, but their marketing doesn't reveal it honestly. Increasingly, colleges see themselves as the freedom train out of bourgeois bondage to the uplands of liberation and centrally controlled economies.
So in this muddle, how is a high school student to know how to prepare for a college? This is where the delinquency of colleges knows no limits. Most abandon their duties and turn the admissions process over to statistical engineers. Then they let anyone in who wants to come. Though some take great pride in excluding a certain percentage of test-takers from their hallowed precincts.
Colleges have to know what they stand for. They have to have a principle that organizes their activities. Very few do. Not knowing what they stand for, they cannot work out their standards for admission, so they lean on intermediaries. And these intermediaries work together with the college to create perverse incentives.
For example, thank God this is not as significant as it once was, the SAT or the ACT. Or the IB or the AP or the portfolio.
I want to cry when I see a young adult building his whole life around impressing a college admissions officer with his portfolio. A school can teach students how to think and that will help the student get into any college. But far too much control over high school curricula has been handed over to people who don't know what they are doing in the hope that they can inflict their confusion on our graduates.
There might be 100 good colleges in America. If you find one, bind it to your heart and help it stay good. For the rest, our country would be better off if we shut them down and let kids apprentice.
To assess incentives and their effect on human action, especially in regard to education, we need to consider their sources. Who is it that establishes the incentives in a school?
Certainly teachers and heads of school and parents provide the most immediate incentives: teachers are closest to the acts of the students in the classroom and thus provide the most constant feedback.
Parents and heads of school are removed from the immediate interactions of the classroom so they can distribute honor or punishment only through testimony. Usually the head of school has an advantage because he finds it easier to enter the classroom (which is, of course, altered by his presence).
And each of these provide incentives that range from being very immediate to being somewhat removed.
But the provider of incentives I want to think about for a moment is the university or the college. (At some point, we'll also have to think about the state.) When a student reaches high school, the shadow of the college looms darkly over all the activities of the school. Its spirit breathes into every event, every assessment, every interaction, every written record.
Educators cower before the college admissions officer as obsequiously as courtiers used to cower before Henry VIII and Louis XIV. For good or evil, the university rules the high school.
So how did the university gain this power? In a certain sense it always had it. Even in the 19th century or the 17th century, a person who wanted to be educated wanted to be as educated as possible. His goal was to get to the university. This is the natural order of things.
And it places a great responsibility on the university. One that the university in America has failed utterly to fulfill. More on that tomorrow.
What makes an incentive perverse? The best way to answer that might be to define what we mean by perverse. It is a compound word, drawn directly from the Latin. vertere means to turn. Per is a prefix with many meanings, the one most relevent to the word pervert meaning aside. To pervert is to turn aside. To revert is to turn back. To convert is to turn with or together. To advert is to turn in the direction of something (thus advertisements). And so on.
A perverse incentive, then, is an incentive that turns one aside. From what does a perverse educational incentive turn a student aside?
The only way to answer that question is to be aware of the purpose of education. Distinguishing between education and training, I have long insisted that education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. The purpose of education is derived from its meaning: to cultivate wisdom and virtue. Anything, therefore, that turns a student aside from the pursuit of wisdom and virtue is a perversion. And if incentives are provided to the student that turn him aside from wisdom and virtue, that is a perverse incentive.
Incentives are provided by honor and shame, pleasure and pain. So we need to evaluate what we are honoring and rewarding with pleasure, and we need to know what we are shaming (there is no way to avoid this happening, no matter how much we fantasize about a world without shame) and what we are rewarding with pain.
And in so doing we need to think deeply and honestly about the ways we honor and reward, shame and punish.
Again, if you have ideas, please visit the forum and share them. I'll have more on this over the next few days.
Teaching encounters dilemmas of judgment at the turning of every page. For example, is it possible to educate a child in an institutional setting? But is it possible to educate without an institution?
The home schooler might respond, "Of course it is possible to educate without an institution. We do it all the time." But I know home schooling. Most home schoolers are every bit as worried about the institutional measures as private and state schools are. Most home schoolers eagerly put their children into some sort of outside the home setting for substantial elements of their children's learning. I think that is right and good.
A head of school might ask what my problem is. Why do I even ask the first question? "Of course it is possbile to educate a child in an institutional setting. In fact, unless ideas are embodied in an institution they will die."
Nor do I deny that. The dilemma learning runs into is this: in an institution, administrative systems are put in place and standards of measurement are enforced (or should be), and the systems and measurements do not necessarily support the needs of learning.
Nothing is more obvious than the way we measure whatever it is we are measuring with our grading systems. Coming in a very near second we find the standardized tests.
I recently spoke to a parent whose children took the Stanford Achievement Test. Their mother was very concerned because they had not been learning the content of that particular SAT. They weren't studying what the testing board had decided they should study in order to form their minds into what the testing board wanted their minds to look like. The anxiety is understandable. After all, how do we evaluate our effectiveness?
Institutions must measure to analyze their performance and hold their members accountable. This is also right and good. But in education, the act of measuring creates decisive incentives. And far too often those incentives are nothing short of perverse.
I have watched eager, hungry learners metamorph into masters of system manipulation.
First, they focus all their efforts on pleasing the teacher.
Then they direct their efforts to getting good grades. After all, that will please the teacher.
Then they redirect themselves to mastering standardized tests - and that will go beyond the teacher to pleasing, um, ...
that great abstraction we call the Immortal They. After all, you know what They say. Plus it will help them get into the best colleges. A Headmaster friend calls this the "Harvard Syndrome."
Now they pour hours of effort into doing what they perceive to be required by the best colleges (I'm not sure what makes the colleges "best". I think it is their reputation, e.g. what They say about the colleges. It might also be the place where you can most effectively network. Then you can be one of Them.)
Here's the awkward thing: If they get into a great college, become part of the Immortal They, do well on standardized tests, get good grades, and please their teachers, that's all good.
But not if it gets in the way of their education.
And let's not pretend the American college exists to educate its students.
Indeed, this points to more problems with institutions:
1. They can be taken over without the supporters knowing it
2. They can lie easily and effectively, especially if they can hire a good marketing department and have standardized tests that show how successful they are
3. They become self-perpetuating or self-aggrandizing -their goal becomes either to survive or to look good depending on their status.
4. They can use statistical measurements as a smoke screen to carry on their social engineering, theological assaults, and ethical radicalism.
So how do we deal with this dilemma? The only way I can think of is vigorous and active integrity. Boards and heads and teachers have to function with integrity. That means honesty and faithful stewardship - not only administrative stewardship (i.e. the money and systems of the school) but also intellectual stewardship. They must deeply understand what the purpose of a school is and they must understand and fight off the perverse incentives to which institutions are prone.
Last year at the SCL conference, Tracy Lee Simmons, author of Climbing Parnassus, pointed out that the only good schools are those who would rather die than lose their vision. He's right. But it's hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky, now that the spring is in the air...
But the institution that would rather survive than faithfully pursue its vision is already dead. And it will only produce carcasses.
In my next entry, I'll try to reflect more on the perverse incentives that we need to overcome. If you'd like to respond to this entry, PLEASE do. This is a subject that we all need to think about very seriously. To submit your thoughts, please visit our forum by clicking on this highlighted text.
Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and Acts 1 all describe the moment when Jesus ascended with the clouds into heaven.
Matthew ends with the commisioning instructions of Jesus:
"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw Him, they worshipped Him; but some doubted.
And Jesus came (had He been at a distance? Think of their anticipation if He had been) and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me (this is an established fact - not a goal). Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (then His authority will be energized), and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you (then His authority will be realized!).
And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
That last line is even better than the voice over of Obi Wan in Star Wars. Remember? "Run Luke run. The force will be with you always."
I prefer the incarnate, resurrected, and seated Son of God.
Listen to Mark's version:
"So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God."
And Luke:
Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy..."
Luke adds this in The Acts of the Apostles:
"When they had come together, they asked Him, 'Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel.' (They don't seem to have been ready for what followed) He replied: 'it is not for you to know the times or period that the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
When He had said this, as they were watching, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight.
While He was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven."
This is no secondary point. The ascension of Christ into heaven has been confessed every single day by (all together) billions of people for nearly 2000 years. It is essential to the Christian faith and to our blessed hope.
He ascended into heaven
And sitteth at the right hand of God the father almighty
From thence He shall come
To judge the quick and the dead
Whose kingdom shall have no end
Amen.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension! I will be writing more after I return from class, but let me suggest a set of readings for you first:
Read Psalm 8
Ezekiel 1
Hebrews 2
More later.
The arts and maths show us that we are often unable to enjoy a work of art or a fact of math because we lack the skill or understanding to perceive and thus to appreciate some wonder. Perception always precedes true appreciation. Thus teaching an appreciation course should be teaching a perception course - not how to feel about things, but how to perceive things.
For example, a music course might be called "Listening Lessons in Music" rather than "Music appreciation". You can teach people to listen to music. It's just a skill. You can't directly teach them to appreciate it. But if they learn to hear and if it is worthy of appreciation, they will, more often than not, come to appreciate it.
This process of appreciation serves as an analogy for the enjoyment of God. If we are not moved by God, the problem is not with Him. It is we who are unable to enjoy what we ought to enjoy.
And some things simply ought to be enjoyed.
There is an "ought" to pleasure. Pleasure has many aspects, but one of them, and probably its essence - or at least its high point, is adoration or worship: that experience in which we are drawn out of ourselves and absorbed in the object of our perception. We are made to adore, and what we adore will form us into its image.
The history of classical education is the story of men confronting educational, philosophical, theological, practical issues and making decisions about how to deal with them.
The history of progressive education is the story of men reducing all these issues to their cash value and making decisions accordingly.
The first priority of childhood is to learn submission. He must learn to submit to the laws of thought, the rules of efficient operations, the principles of each art (especially the seven). The degree to which a child learns this submission determines his capacicty for progress on the path of wisdom.
Demanding and modeling this submission is the first duty of the teacher.
Have you seen the new CiRCE forum? I'm very anxious to know your thoughts and opinions. Please come to the forum and teach me! Ask questions. Express opinions. Disagree. Let's grow together. Click here to enter the CiRCE Forum.
I didn't hear this, but a local radio talk show host was discussing spanking children yesterday. Parents were calling in and describing how they had to spank their children when they did things that were wrong or dangerous.
The host said he could understand spanking a child for leaping from a car while it is moving (I wonder why a child would need to be spanked after doing something so stupid). But he also said this: "Just because a child doesn't do what you want that doesn't mean you can spank them."
I will not be tricked into discussing the abominable grammar. In fact, I may surprise some of you. I agree with what he meant to say.
It is absolutely true that you cannot justify spanking a child because he doesn't do what you want him to do. But that really isn't the point.
A parent has the right to spank a child for no other reason than that he has the duty to spank a child (sometimes). All of our legitimate rights are simply the right to fulfill our duties. When we separate rights from duties and fail to recognize that our rights are derived from our duties, we come up with any right we want to come up with.
It leads to peculiar contradictions. For example, a baby can be aborted but not spanked.
It leads to silliness too. Listen to what else I am told he said: "Who am I to judge another person's behavior to be bad." What's wrong with that, you ask?
He was talking about a father judging the behaviour of a five year old child. And there is your answer.
You are the father. You are the one obligated to judge. If you cannot distinguish right from wrong, then you are not fit to have children. It is your duty to judge your child's behavior. That is the source of your right to judge his behavior.
The idea is missing from modern education. That’s why even in AP programs students spend too much time on what becomes busy work – worrying about facts, data, things to remember - and not the ideas that make the facts meaningful. While AP courses seem better than the disturbing standard fare, even they place too little emphasis on actually understanding ideas.
The loss of the idea is the loss of a focal point in education. When you take away the idea it is impossible to determine what one is being educated for, precisely because the purpose of education is to understand and live in ideas.
The ultimate idea is the logos. It is the sun in the solar system. You take it out and you’ve got a mess.
