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Toward a Place for Study in a World of Instruction
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Robbie McClintock
Institute for Learning Technologies
Teachers College — Columbia University
December 2000
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Section 1 — Study as Education
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¶ 19
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Whether we like it or not, many former educators considered
education to consist of neither teaching nor learning; instead,
they found the diverse forms of study to be the driving force
in education. We could considerably extend our sense for the
diversity of forms that this study could take by dwelling further
on the Renaissance. To begin we might read carefully the letter
that Pantagruel received from his Rabelaisian father, Gargantua.
Then we might assay The Benefit of a Liberal Education
as Robert Pace perceived it; ascetics could also try The
Spiritual Exercises suggested by Ignatius Loyola, and the
aspiring could emulate the arts and ideals of the courtier,
as well as his amusements, that Castiglione portrayed. Aesthetes
might observe the profound blend of pagan and Christian iconography
that Italian artists worked into scenes seemingly so realistic,
while the responsible could practice the political pedagogy
propounded by Sir Thomas Elyot's Book Named the Governor. Finally, summing it up,
we might all savor the bittersweet wisdom that Cervantes hoped
his readers would extract from his Exemplary Novels and the adventures of Quixote.
[ 18 ] Such a survey, however, would simply
display more and more of the innumerable uses to which study
would be put; yet men relied on study not only because it suited
many uses, but more importantly, because it seemed to them to
be in accord with the intrinsic character of human life.
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¶ 20
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Many held that study was not only a convenient form of education,
but that it was the essential basis of all education. This conviction
developed as men dwelt on human individuality, autonomy, and
creativity. Considering each man in his living particularity,
he was more than the sum of the influences playing upon him;
rather each made himself individual by responding freely and
creatively to his mundane problems, great and small. In this
self-formation each man appropriated ideas and skills, tastes
and beliefs from the world around him, doing so with a certain
selectivity, even on the part of the most humble: this selectivity
was the great conundrum to be understood. Did the teacher make
the choices that guide the learner? Sometimes, perhaps; but
not always, and perhaps not usually: instead there seemed to
be an inward, almost inborn power of judgment in every man —
as it directed the man would attend. To those who thus recognized
each person's autonomy of judgment, education could only incidentally
be a process of teaching and learning; more essentially, it
had to be a zig-zag process of trial and error, of studious,
self-directed effort by which an inchoate, infantile power of
judgment slowly gave itself form, character, perhaps even a
transcendent purpose. This effort was study in its most general
sense.
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¶ 21
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Socrates was the first educator, of those whose work we know,
to have based his practice on the primacy of study, and Plato
was the first theorist to have abstracted from that practice
a complete theory of education through study. Here the historian
meets a subtle problem, the problem inherent in all efforts
to teach: he cannot by himself communicate an understanding
of the importance of study; he can only remind others of the
doctrines, which they must put to the test of their own judgment
and experience. So too Plato cautioned his readers against believing
in the adequacy of his words; words alone could not teach, although
they might prompt recognition and help us discover what deep
down we know, provided we are willing to study the matter, to
question, inquire, weigh, conclude, and question anew. Plato,
the poet, practiced his doctrine: within his writings, therefore,
one encounters numerous contradictions that draw the thoughtful
reader into the labor of dialectical study. For instance, with
respect to the theme of education, Plato wrote striking passages
that seem to counsel a most paternal instruction. At the same
time, he hinted that these passages were not to be taken too
literally, and his invitation still stands -- for any who judge
that they may profit from the effort — to give it trial and
to study the problem themselves. In doing so, they will experience
the heuristic pedagogy that is the mission of philosophy. [
19 ]
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¶ 22
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Historically, what Plato hoped to achieve by prescribing a
program of instruction for his guardians matters little. Plato
had scant effect on programmatic practice, for practice was
shaped instead by Isocrates and the Sophists. What Plato did
accomplish, however, was to influence educational theory through
a number of his most characteristic doctrines, which all coincided
in suggesting that meaningful education could result only from
personal study, from inwardly directed inquiry. In his theory,
Plato preferred neither general education nor technical training;
his doctrines were amenable to both, and to much else, too,
provided that in all cases the condition of the student was
recognized concretely, and not by means of thoughtless stereotype,
and that the initiative of study was always left with the man
studying. These stipulations rested on Plato's most important
convictions.
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¶ 23
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First, the Socrates of historic influence, the hero of the
early dialogues, depicted himself explicitly as the spiritual
midwife, the teacher who could not teach but who could help
another give birth to his soul; Plato immortalized this Socrates
as the Delphic martyr, the inspiring questioner who provoked
others to know that they did not know and thus to join the thoughtful
search for self. Second, the doctrine of recollection asserted
that words could teach only more words, that all comprehension
of things, be they corporal or intelligible, derived not from
words but from prior experience with the things and from inward
reflection about them; this doctrine was an early, profound,
yet unsatisfactory, effort to make sense of the unsolved mystery
of creative thinking, thinking by which men really learn.
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¶ 24
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Third, the fervid god, Eros, denoted the expectant, fecund
force that stimulates man's craving urge, drawing men towards
all forms of perfection; thus ardent attraction and vaulting
aspiration were unconditioned, they existed in the eager eyes
of the beholder; this Platonic eroticism, this insatiable, polymorphous
teleology, has not been bettered as an explanation of the student's
essential power, his selective attention. Fourth, the theory
of forms presented a reasoned idea of transcendent perfection;
its metaphysical fruits and difficulties have been great, but
its pedagogical implications were clear as they took hold in
diverse systems: superficial opinion and commonplace discourse
were estranged from reality and hence neither could teach; rather
men learned from the ideas, from the logos, principle, reason,
form, law — natural or divine — for in searching incessantly
for the stable idea behind every appearance men would find form
in the flux around and within them. Men in search of wisdom
would study form in life, form in their lives, converting the
chaos to a cosmos; all else was either preparation or slack
evasion.
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¶ 25
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What these convictions implied for educational doctrine Plato
best summed up in his allegory of the cave. Vital truths, he
stipulated, could not be taught; they could be learned only
through the pains of uncertain, unconditioned, open study, for
which every man had the capacity but not necessarily the will.
"We must conclude that education is not what it is said to be
by some, who profess to put knowledge into a soul which does
not possess it, as if they could put sight into blind eyes.
On the contrary, our own account signifies that the soul of
every man does possess the power of learning the truth and the
organ to see it with; and that, just as one might have to turn
the whole body round in order that the eye should see light
instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away
from this changing world, until its eye can bear to contemplate
reality and that supreme splendour which we have called the
Good." [ 20 ] Teachers, Plato added, could
not fruitfully instruct those who would not teach themselves,
who would only respond passively to the most convenient appearance;
the most teachers could do was to convert such inert souls to
active study. This theory of teaching has sunk deep into our
philosophical heritage, but it has not fared well in practice.
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Endnotes
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| Note 18 |
See, François Rabelais. The Five Books of Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans.
Jacques Le Clercq. New York: The Modern Library, 1944 pp. 190-4;
Robert Pace. De Fructu qui ex Doctrina Percipitur, eds. and trans.
Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester. New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co., 1967; Joseph Rickaby. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola: Spanish
and English with a Continuous Commentary. New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1923; Baldesar Castiglione. The Book of the Courtier,
trans. Charles S. Singleton. Garden City, New York: Doubleday
Anchor Books, 1959; Sir Thomas Elyot. The Book Named the
Governor. S.E. Lahmberg, ed. New York: Everyman's Library,
1962; Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, texto intego. Garden City, New
York: Doubleday and Co., 1962; and Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Ozell and Motteux. New York:
The Modern Library, 1930. For the iconography of the Italian
Renaissance, see Erwin Panofsky. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic
Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1962; Jean Seznec. The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition
and Its Place in Renaissance Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions.
New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961; and Carroll W. Westfall,
"Painting and the Liberal Arts: Albert's View," Journal of the History of Ideas, October-December,
1969, Vol. XXX, No. 4, pp. 487-506. [Back] |
| Note 19 |
See Günther Böhme. Der pädagogische Beruf der Philosophie. Munich:
Ernest Reinhardt Verlag, 1968, for an interesting discussion
of the philosopher's educational role. [Back] |
| Note 20 |
Plato. Republic, 518 c-d; from The Republic of Plato, trans. F. M. Cornford. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1945, p. [Back]
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